When I Grow Up: A Career Panel

Do you know what you want to be when you "grow up?" Have you always known? Or are you still looking for that perfect career? What does your family think of your plans? Do you plan on having a family of your own?

Join us for a dialogue with Asian Americans in a variety of different careers - an artist, a software designer, a public health educator, and more.

Tuesday, February 6
7:00PM to 8:30PM
Location: AAC Multipurpose Room

Paul Pascual

Paul Pascual is a Pilipino, born and raised in New York City. He graduated from The City University of New York with his Bachelors of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering. Six out of his eleven years as a Mechanical Engineer have been with Raytheon. Professionally, he focuses on heat transfer, shock, and vibration analysis on military electronic equipment. He is currently a Sr. Mechanical Engineer at Raytheon.

For Raytheon Asian Pacific Association (RAPA), he currently serves as the Assistant Vice President. Last year, he was the Site Lead at the Marlborough facility.

Quyen Truong

Quyen Truong was born and raised in Vietnam until the age of seven, when her family immigrated to the United States. This move across oceans and cultures continue to influence her art today. In Connecticut, her family was the first Vietnamese Americans in the neighborhood. During her high school years she participated in Neighborhood Studios, a paid apprenticeship art program that introduced her to a community of professional artists. This experience showed her art can be a viable occupation and influenced her decision to pursue art in college. At Brown University, her extracurricular activities led her to help start RiverzEdge Arts Project, an arts entrepreneur program for high school youth in Woonsocket, RI. These experiences helped me land her current job as a project coordinator and a painting mentor at Artists For Humanity in South Boston. Quyen continues to paint in her spare time. Since college, she has exhibited at the Hunt-Cavanagh Gallery in Providence College, the Arlington Center for the Arts, artSPACE16 in Malden, the Lewis Gallery in South Boston, and notably at the Cambridge Multicultural Art Center for a solo show in 2007.

Ramani Sripada

Ramani Sripada has fifteen years of community organizing, coalition building and social change experience. She has organized on a grassroots level with groups such as South Asian Women for Action (SAWA) in Boston and Youth Allied Against Racism (YAAR) in New York City. Ms. Sripada received her Bachelor’s Degree in Social Thought and Political Economy from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and her Master’s Degree in Applied Urban Anthropology at City College, NYC. She currently holds a position as Director of Programs & Capacity Building Assistance for the Massachusetts Asian & Pacific Islanders (MAP) for Health. Lastly, Ms. Sripada has conducted over 100 trainings, presentations and research projects on topics including: HIV/AIDS prevention, immigrant & refugee health, reproductive health care options, violence prevention, program development, LBGT youth of color, cultural competence, anti-racism, policy and advocacy development.

Santosh Dawesar

Santosh Dawesar has been Senior Systems Engineer II at Mission Innovation (MI) for Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems (IDS) since February 2006. In this position, he is involved in a software design, development and integration of Raytheon Adaptive Mission Profiler (RAMP), and Raytheon/USMC, and US Navy, experimentation. Prior to joining Raytheon in July 1999, Dawesar worked as a software engineer with Lockheed Martin IS, Burlington, MA.

Dawesar, is the president of Raytheon Asian Pacific
Association – Northeast (RAPA-NE). In 2005 he served as vice president /acting president, and in 2004 he served as treasurer of RAPA-NE. He successfully organized various professional development, educational, networking and cultural events within and outside Raytheon.

Dawesar earned his Masters Degree in Computer Science from Boston University in 2001, Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Wentworth Institute of Technology, Boston in 1996. He is a qualified Raytheon Six Sigma Specialist.