>>DAVE: The interesting thing about me,
when I was in college, I was definitely a lot more,
I would say, focused on studies and just like
hard-core. >>JORDAN: Yeah.
>>DAVE: I definitely didn't party as much.
[laughs]
Since then, that has changed.
[laughs]
My name is Dave Liu,
I am a, I used to be a computer engineer,
actually graduated from Michigan back in 2006,
so its been a little bit.
I was born and raised in Ohio
betrayed my state to go to Michigan.
[laughs] >>JORDAN: Ooh.
>>DAVE: Yup.
But for me, I was always really passionate about
more of like the 'innovation creativity' side and like,
so that just led me to engineering in general because
you're creating cool stuff every single day.
My initial experiences with programming were literally on
my little dicky TI-83 Plus calculator and
programming little games during my random courses in school.
[laughs]
Its probably not the best thing to say but
doing that, I was like oh this is cool,
its actually creating something
and then being able to share that with others and
having them play those games and stuff too.
How do you kind of continue that on and that's when I
started playing around web-design and
going more in towards the
the programming side just on my own.
So my original thought in going to Michigan was
'Hey, gonna go for my undergrad engineering degree,
and then after that, go for MBA.
[chuckles] That didn't happen.
[laughs]
I was like oh I'm probably good with enough of
the 4 years of undergrad, [chuckles]
just gonna go try to-- [laughs]
go right into the work force at that point.
>>JORDAN: Did you ever take any entrepreneurship classes or kind of
you know explore the other elements of Michigan
while an undergrad?
>>DAVE: Surprisingly no. [laughs]
I definitely in retrospect would've wanted to, like the
the Ross business school is fantastic and I
I feel like I missed out a little by
not going through all those. >>JORDAN: Yeah.
>>DAVE: But at the same time I also couldn't imagine
going through those while still doing engineering
at the same time so. [laughs]
>>JORDAN: And so you were doing computer engineering undergrad,
and then bounced all over and now you're in
the consulting industry?
>>DAVE: Correct. Yeah.
So when I left GE and then BC universal
originally I had joined them as part of their
rotational leadership programs so it was like a two year
rotational program every six months you're
moving into different roles.
GE and BC, they're large corporate entities right?
So having worked in there for about 5/6 years I realized
like I constantly wanted to grow in my career,
do more, just being completely candid,
in the corporate environment, you sometimes run into
situations where you can't continue moving up until
the next person above you moves into a new role or--
>>JORDAN: Exactly.
>>DAVE: I even remember my boss saying, 'Yeah basically until
someone moves onto a new role or passes away,
[chuckles] it'll be hard to move
up the ranks.
Even though you're doing a great job.'
And so, that's when I started looking at consulting
usually the interesting thing about consulting is
you're getting brought in because your client has
problems that they need you to solve.
At the end of the day they want someone to come in that
knows their stuff and can really get ish done,
just to put it bluntly so. [chuckles]
Basically every single day,
you're facing some type of new challenge
whether its a technology challenge,
or a process challenge or just organizational challenges.
And coming up with,
I would say leveraging a lot of the engineering
process and mindset to come up with a logical plan of how
you would approach it, your hypothesis,
actually doing a proof of concept,
rolling out a solution,
and then ultimately
there's a lot of other pieces that come involved into that
but from a high level, that's kinda the same flow.
So one of the projects for instance,
that I've done in my consulting side,
that I never would've even imagined as an industry
to get involved with, was working with a
deaf communications company.
And so, literally it was getting thrown into a project,
having really very little knowledge around the whole
deaf community and
basically having to learn a little bit about sign language
and really just how they
work day to day.
Allowing the capability for deaf person to communicate with
a hearing person. So its not like they can just pick up
the phone and say, 'Hey how's it going?'
There's a whole brokerage service in between that
its their whole job of doing ASL and then
being the voice for that person to someone on the other end
whether that's to calling your bank,
or calling up for a pizza.
Its been definitely a highly collaborative space because
I think, at the end of the day
that's one of the key skillsets
that can help folks in their career right?
Its being able to communicate with others and
understand issues and
with a Michigan engineering degree, the part that's
really helped is having that balance of
the super duper technical piece and being able to understand
exactly how the nuts and bolts are being done,
versus also being able to
summarize that and communicate that in a
easier to consume fashion for your business folks,
so more functional versus technical blend.
>>JORDAN: How did your undergraduate experience
and maybe some classes, kind of tie or prepare you
or not prepare you
for what your currently doing or what you've done
in the past?
>>DAVE: So I think
the biggest thing in my mind from a Michigan engineering
computer engineering degree
the thing that I gained the most was really that more
logical approach towards problem solving.
I wouldn't say its tied into one particular class
it was the combination of everything that I learned there
in Michigan, and so
even though I'm not necessarily programming nowadays,
its still the same concept of
hearing a problem, understanding and getting to the root of
the hypothesis and then actually coming up with different
solutions to solve it right?
>>JORDAN: What advice would you give
current students as far as like
what to focus on while at school,
and how to really make the most of Michigan or
you know college in general?
>>DAVE: I think the number one thing is,
definitely focus on just learning as much as you can right?
Like as you're going through it
discreet math and all those things
may not seem that interesting to you but
you never know when you'll actually run into them again.
Coming out of high school I definitely at least
thought I had plan of where my life would go.
[chuckles] >>JORDAN: Right.
[laughs] >>DAVE: That goes out the window
very quickly.
The main is being able and being open to change right?
So seeing opportunities as they come up adjusting and
pivoting and just being open to learning new things
that can take you pretty much anywhere right?
The ability to learn quickly I think is the biggest thing
that you can get out of there and.
>>JORDAN: Yeah. >>DAVE: And that
ability to do that critical thinking and
being able to build networks
those are really the main things I think that come to mind.
A lot of those friends I still keep in close contact with
over here today.
In fact my college roommate
lives here in Dallas as well and is probably like 10 minutes
away from where I live so.
[laughs] Its kinda crazy.
You never know.
>>JORDAN: Thank you so much for taking the time to do this.
I'm sure you're busy especially with everything going on
>>DAVE: No problem.
>>JORDAN: But I hope you stay healthy and are enjoying each day.
But yeah thanks so much.
>>DAVE: Yeah happy to help.
All right. Bye!
>>JORDAN: Take care. >>DAVE: Thanks.