For Hispanic Heritage Month, the OneHaas Alumni Podcast is honored to share the story of Richard Velazquez, a mission-driven executive who is using his decades of experience in a variety of industries to help other Latinx MBA students and alumni succeed.

Every time Richard felt like he hit a ceiling at a job, he pivoted and found new ways to keep moving up. Hailing from Brooklyn, New York, Richard learned the value of education and hard work from an early age. It was this drive that got him accepted into one of the most competitive engineering colleges in the U.S. and launched his career into the automotive industry. Richard’s relentless pursuit for personal growth led him to hold senior leadership positions at Microsoft, Pepsico, and Amazon. But through all those jobs, a constant for him has been his desire to give back and uplift other Hispanic business professionals in their careers.

Richard chats with host Sean Li about his career journey from designing cars at Honda and Porsche, to being one of the key masterminds behind Xbox Kinect, his pivotal role at Pepsico, and his new position as CEO of the Latinx MBA Association.

*OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*

On his journey to Haas and getting his MBA

“When I had the opportunity to move to Germany to work for Porsche, I put my MBA plans on hold and I was like, you know, I'd rather go to Germany and live in Europe for a few years before I take that route. So it was great. I really loved living in Europe. That's where my love for traveling started. I've been to 105 countries since then, but it all started living in Germany…So after two years at Porsche in Germany, I applied through the Consortium for Graduate Study Management, they give full fellowships. At the time it was for underrepresented minorities who were looking to get their MBA and was open to anyone who has a commitment to diversity. And I applied, I got into Haas.”

On Xbox Kinect’s success and Richard and his team’s involvement

“People just really got into it... So the thing with Kinect was since it was doing skeletal tracking, if you just flick your wrist, the character on the screen would just flick their wrist. There was no like faking it. So Dance Central was phenomenal. It showed you which arm was wrong. It highlighted in red when you were doing something wrong and it was game changing at the time. So it set a Guinness World Record, it was the fastest selling consumer electronics device, it was like 10 million 10 million units in less than like two and a half months or something like that. So it was a big deal.”

On his decision to leave Microsoft for the beverage industry and a top role at Pepsico

“ It was similar to like the car design and like, it's gonna be slightly different [but] it's all gonna do the same thing. So it wasn't advantageous for me to do it 'cause I wasn't linear or growing in any way, shape or form.  I'm still an individual contributor. I'm not leading any teams. I want to get promoted, I want to advance.”

On why he wanted to pursue a full time role in helping other Hispanic business professionals grow

“ After 30 years, I was like, well, I'm getting more personal fulfillment from these scholarships that I'm getting for students who are like me who didn't have those opportunities to get into school, for helping people get their first jobs, for helping them invest in their careers, than I am by making an extra billion dollars or a hundred million dollars for Amazon or these other companies that don't really need it…It's not giving me the personal satisfaction that I'm getting from this work I'm doing with people.”

• LinkedIn Profile
• Latinx MBA Association Website

This month, the OneHaas Alumni Podcast is excited to share the story of Joshua Ahazie, founder and CEO of ATIDE and marketing lead at Warner Music Africa.

Joshua grew up in Lagos, Nigeria in a household brimming with music and entrepreneurial spirit. After following one of his brothers to California and attending Berkeley City College, he set his sights on the Haas School of Business. Through his Haas education, Joshua found a way to combine his love for music with his desire to make the world a better place.

Joshua joins host Sean Li to chat about the inception of the ATIDE Project and the community impact it’s had in Lagos. They also discuss the growth and global success of Afrobeats, his work with Warner Music Africa, and his vision for Nigeria's music industry.

*OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*

On what drew him to Berekley Haas

“It was this campus and school that had values or principles that were very clear in their culture and they sort of embodied that into the learning process as well. So I was drawn to the principles because that was pretty new for me, and I just ended up spending the next couple of months learning more and more. I was stopping people that were wearing Berkeley Haas merch like, ‘how do I get into this castle atop the hill?’”

On the origins of ATIDE

“ So it started off as a philanthropic project, right? Our focus was sort of giving back with commerce. The name by the way, it's Yoruba and it means, ‘We are here.’ In the early days, we had launched this curated online store in partnership with a couple Nigerian entrepreneurs who were passionate about social causes. And during my time at Haas, I was very inspired by brands like Tom's. Like, you know, the idea that commerce could fund impact in a very sustainable way because as opposed to donations, you are actually building a customer, building an audience and that can scale. So our goal was simply to sort of help these local businesses reach the global audience while also funding meaningful social change.”

On the important role music plays in his work

“ That's the language I speak, man. Like, I play instruments, I collect records, I love seeing artists perform. It's such a vulnerable and expressive form of art. And even though we've worked across different industries – hospitality, nonprofit, e-commerce, gaming, whatever it may be – my most exciting projects, personally, are our music campaigns and our artists like rollouts.”

On the booming music scene in West Africa

“ A couple of things that could have helped with the growth that we're seeing now is just the confidence that we have in our identity. I think in the early 2000s, we were sort of focused on fusion. How do we put in R&B with our sound and how do we put in this record with that one? But now, being African is cool and our artists are leaning into their identity of what it means to be African and make music as an African. I think that confidence in our Africanness has been something that has allowed us to sort of stand out in a very saturated music market globally.”

• LinkedIn Profile
• ATIDE Project
• The Cavemen.
• JOEBOY
• Joyce Olong

On this episode of the OneHaas Alumni Podcast, learn how alum Liz Castelli went from a middle school science teacher to co-founder and CEO of Tinsel Experiential Design.

After planning her own dream wedding, Liz wanted to pivot from education to the events planning space. With the help of her two friends, they launched Tinsel and quickly grew it from a boutique agency to a powerhouse experiential company working with clients like GitHub and Uber.

Liz chats with host Sean Li about the evolution of Tinsel, the importance of having a clear vision when it comes to company culture, and why she wanted to pursue an executive MBA at Haas with an already successful business under her belt.

*OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*

On Tinsel’s early days

“ How do brands connect with their audiences? This was sort of the beginning of experiential. And man, we were the redheaded stepchild. It would go through like capital A agency, it would go through create, it would go through digital, you name it, every other entity…And then they'd be like, I think there's $3 for experiential. And now it's wild. It's totally the opposite where everyone is thinking about how does the customer experience the product?”

On why she wanted to pursue an executive MBA

“ Well, if I'm going to be able to exist as this person who started a company and it is successful, I'd like to feel confident enough in a room of other people who run businesses and know what I'm talking about. And I do know for myself, but I've always done it by learning the hard way or by learning from other people that we've hired. And I think that I wanted to know that what I had done was right.”

The surprising lessons she gained at Haas

“ That's one of the greatest things that Berkeley gave me. I thought I was coming for the operations. I thought I was coming for the finance, but actually I was coming for politics and power and difficult conversations. And I can think of like 12 different classes where I'm like, oh my God, that's what I came to Berkeley for.”

On where she’s headed next

“ I have always thought of myself more as a builder, then this like visionary, you know, futurist if you will. And so I know that my skillset is around building tinsel into a sustainable model at scale within this holding corporation. That's what I'm excited to do. I'm excited to see the right teams and the right people and things sort of moving in the right direction and taking it from where we were post acquisition, which was still nothing to sniff at, you know. But I think there's just a different level of complexity and growth that's there. And I wanna see it through and I wanna make sure that Tinsel is an entity that will stay on and continue.”

• LinkedIn Profile
• Tinsel Experiential Design