2023 Distinguished Alumni Awards
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Meet the Honorees
(From left to right: Mike Beckage, Lauren Conrad, Ronal Gregoire, Karen Vaughn, Sean Yu, Dr. Mercedes Gutierrez Ed.D., Matthew Kou, Michael Mellano, Al Tarkington)
Retired- Former New Car Dealer;
Cerritos Ford, Lincol, Isuzu, Subaru/Suzuki, Dodge and Infiniti
Retired, Mellano & Company;
Harry Michael Mellano’s Italian immigrant father began working in the Los Angeles Flower Market in the 1920s, and then along with his new wife, started flower farming in Los Angeles County in the early 1930s.
From those roots, Mellano and Co. became a top horticulture business with an international network of growers and distributors. The company is a major source for traditional florists, internet delivery services and the Tournament of Roses Parade. It is the grower for the amazingly colorful Flower Fields in Carlsbad and manager of the L.A. Flower Market.
Mellano and his siblings worked for their father from the time they were tykes and all through high school and college, and each inherited a third of the business. During Mellano’s time at Cal Poly Pomona, he studied with and was inspired by plant pathologist Jerry Dimitman and other professors, including Oliver “Jolly” Batcheller, to study plant pathology at UC Riverside, where he earned a doctorate.
As he was considering teaching job offers, his brother had a proposal: come back to work with the family to manage the expansion of the business into San Diego County. After some reflection, Mellano and his wife agreed to give it a try.
The third generation of family members now owns the company. Mellano, now retired, continues as a consultant.
While at Cal Poly Pomona, Mellano first connected the family’s flower business with the Cal Poly Rose Float project by volunteering to work on the 1959 float.
“Flowers? I can do this,” Mellano says. He also was an enthusiastic participant in flower acquisition and float building for the Rose Parades of 1960 and 1961.
“It was good for our business and good for Cal Poly Pomona,” he says. “We still help them with whatever they need.
“My two and a half years at Cal Poly Pomona expanded my horizons and taught me a lot about horticulture,” Mellano says. “As a career, horticulture is difficult to beat, plus I have friends all over the world.”
Retired- Partner;
Al Tarkington’s father and grandfather were engineers, so it was expected that he would be, too. The College of Engineering was a major reason Tarkington enrolled at Cal Poly Pomona. It turns out that an engineering career didn’t appeal to him, so he decided to major in business administration.
“Cal Poly Pomona’s learn-by-doing approach was an important part of my education,” Tarkington says. “The advanced accounting classes were exciting, and the instructors were outstanding. They were CPAs out in the field and came back to Cal Poly Pomona to teach. There was a lot of interaction with the students.”
He worked as an auditor for a Los Angeles accounting agency.
“I could see how different businesses operated,” he says. “Some were successful, some not.”
After earning a certified public accounting certificate, Tarkington moved to Del Mar, California and formed a busy and successful accounting partnership. He was elected to a four-year term on the Del Mar City Council, which included a year as the city’s mayor.
Tarkington and his wife donated the proceeds of an appreciated rental property sale to fund the Tarkington Family Fellowships for Entrepreneurs as part of the College of Business Administration’s program that fosters the creation of consumer products inspired by NASA technology.
“We wanted to support students to do something that goes beyond academics,” Tarkington says.
As a student, Tarkington was active on the swim team, the Rose Float and the Poly Post newspaper, all of which allowed him to interact with students of different majors. That paid off well in his first job, when he was the only accountant who could understand the unique problems of the agency’s agricultural clients.
He even met his wife Stephanie while working on his senior project, at a San Dimas park.
In the early ‘60s, “Cal Poly Pomona was very green and beautiful, and unlike anyplace else,” Tarkington says. “I owe a lot of my success to Cal Poly Pomona. It was a great start.”
Vice Presidend/Assistant Superintendent Human Resources;
It was June 2022. Negotiations for a new contract between the Cerritos College faculty and the district were not going well. Mercedes Gutierrez had been on the job at Cerritos for two weeks when the president/superintendent asked her to meet with the faculty association’s president to try to resolve some issues.
“The faculty were already preparing to strike,” Gutierrez says. “I had to navigate quickly.”
Gutierrez and the association president developed a rapport, and together resolved the more contentious disagreements. Two weeks later, they agreed to try mediation a second time. After a 16-hour mediation, a contract emerged and was approved by both sides.
Employee relations is an important aspect of human resources, so Gutierrez – who had several years of experience in the field and a doctorate in educational leadership from Cal Poly Pomona -- was fully prepared to meet that challenge as well as others.
“Cal Poly Pomona gave me the ability to gain insight and conduct research in my area of study,” Gutierrez says. “The degree helped me with moving forward with professional growth.”
It was not an easy path. Gutierrez worked full-time and took care of her family while she studied.
“The three-year EdD program was enticing in that it was designed for working professionals and took place every other weekend,” she says. “But in addition, there was homework and writing papers. It was a bigger commitment than I thought.”
Support and encouragement came from friends and family members as well as other members of the cohort. “We enjoyed giving each other pep talks and sharing our lives,” Gutierrez says.
She was one of the 15 to graduate with doctorates in 2015, the program’s first cohort.
Gutierrez frequently returns to Cal Poly Pomona to give lectures to the first-year students, and has taught within the doctoral program.
“I want to inspire students in all programs to find motivation within, to find a support system,” she says. “Women of Color have many challenges. They need to know that others have taken the same journey.”
Chief Technology Officer;
Michael Beckage knows it can take time to reach goals. He worked upwards of 30 hours a week while pursuing an engineering education, so it took three and half years to earn his AA degree, and more than five years to claim his Cal Poly bachelor’s degree in 1987.
Beckage jokingly called it his 10-year plan.
He showed the same kind of patience in business: in 1990, he co-founded Diversified Technical Systems, Inc (DTS) with two partners, while working full time as an engineering systems specialist for Nissan to pay the bills. It took about 10 years for DTS to be profitable.
Today, DTS is a leading provider of electronic test and measurement electronics, sensors and software for critical testing applications required by the aerospace, automotive and defense industries.
His success propelled him into the College of Engineering Hall of Fame in 2019.
“I could not have done this without Cal Poly Pomona,” Beckage says. “I received a life-changing education there that enabled great personal success.
“My entire educational journey at Cal Poly Pomona was important to my career advancement,” he says. “Even before I received my degree, the knowledge that I gained incrementally led to promotions and increased responsibilities in the jobs I had while in school. The things I learned there applied directly to my work.”
As a member of the Dean’s Leadership Board, Beckage helped develop a highly popular student success strategy course on practical post-college concerns including resumes, job interviews and salary negotiation.
Beckage and his wife also donate to a 六色网 program that encourages women to study science and engineering, and another called Maximizing Engineering Potential (MEP), which he says helps people like him, those who have no choice but to work while in college.
“My story is a lesson,” he says. “Take full advantage of the unique opportunities a Cal Poly program offers. Work hard. Pay attention to detail and stick with it. You will achieve success.
“Also, extremely important: when you have success, make a point to give back.”
Pamela Conrad '06
Founder, Climate Positive Design;
Pamela Conrad is an internationally recognized landscape architect and climate advocate. Her mission as founder of Climate Positive Design is to positively impact the climate crisis through advocacy, education and design of the exterior built environment. Through the 2019 Landscape Architecture Foundation Fellowship for Innovation and Leadership, she developed the free online Pathfinder landscape carbon app for the Climate Positive Design Challenge.
Growing up on a farm, Conrad started working in landscapes as a young girl.
“Taking care of the environment was second nature to me,” she says. “It just made sense. You take care of the land, and it takes care of you.”
After earning a degree in plant science from the University of Missouri, she attended Cal Poly Pomona’s Master of Landscape Architecture program.
“Cal Poly Pomona set me up for success,” Conrad says. “It increased my relevance and encouraged forward-thinking.”
Her time at Cal Poly Pomona was transformative, and the environmental focus framed her career. Conrad connected deeply with the ethos of John T. Lyle, a landscape architecture professor who founded the Center for Regenerative Studies and was the author of “Regenerative Design for Sustainable Development.”
After completing the 2022-2023 Harvard Loeb Fellowship, Conrad will begin teaching at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design this fall. As an Architecture 2030 Senior Fellow, she strives to find multi-disciplinary ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while creating healthier, more equitable communities and biodiverse environments.
“Learning about the climate and biodiversity crisis -- what humans have done to cause it and how we have opportunities to heal our planet -- has left me with a deep sense of responsibility for taking action,” she says.
Her father’s love and connection to nature inspires Conrad’s passion.
“It is what keeps me going and fuels my drive to leave the world better than we found it: to find solutions for a resilient future.”
Sean Yu '99
Managing Director, Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management;
Sean Yu manages his own wealth management group in Pasadena and has repeatedly been named a top financial advisor by industry publications. He says he owes much of his success to Cal Poly Pomona and has plans to commit $1.3 million in charitable contributions, endowments, and student internships and scholarships. Closest to his heart is a fund for students to travel abroad, to learn self-reliance and empathy.
His support has earned him a 2023 Distinguished Alumni award and, earlier this year, an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.
Yet Yu has not forgotten how he struggled to fund his education with part-time jobs and loans.
“When I graduated, I had $100,000 in student debt,” he says.
Originally, Yu planned to get a doctorate, with the goal of becoming a political science professor. Before completing his master’s degree from the University of Chicago, he attended a money management seminar for ideas on handling his student debt. That’s when he discovered Wall Street would be a good career fit. He worked long hours during his first several years in finance and gradually reached the top of his field.
He gives Cal Poly Pomona credit for his strong work ethic and something he calls grit.
“With grit, you plan, set goals, work hard and develop certain strengths,” Yu says.
He learned about several success strategies, such as setting short-term goals as well as one-, three- and five-year plans.
Among his fondest Cal Poly Pomona memories were office-hour talks with Political Science professors David Speak and Sid Sillman and History Professor Jon Lloyd. These men helped shaped Yu’s perspectives on politics, economics, social sciences, philosophy and the way he views the world.
Yu serves on the board of directors of the Cal Poly Pomona University Philanthropic Foundation, having formerly chaired the investment committee for three years and the audit committee for a year.
“Endowment investing is important,” he says. “If we can help the university have a more stable return, then we can help so many more students in the years ahead.”
Karen Vaugh '80 & '82
Lecturer, Emerita;
Then known as Karen Head, Karen E. Vaughn arrived at Cal Poly Pomona in 1975 as a freshman math major. She loved her dorm (Palmitas, 3rd West), the Rose Garden, the flexibility to take classes in music and engineering and meeting her future husband, fellow math major Jeff Vaughn, through the National Mathematics Honor Society (KME).
She started graduate studies as well as a part-time lectureship in the fall of 1979.
“I deeply valued the faith my professors had in my abilities to do an excellent job,” she said.
Fast forward 39 years: Vaughn retired from full-time teaching in 2018. As a lecturer emerita, she continues to teach one or two classes each fall.
“I am still eager to help students learn to see math in the world,” Vaughn says.
She treasured teaching advanced mathematics to aerospace engineering majors and having multiple generations of families attend her classes. While Vaughn knew she wanted to be a math professor back in the eighth grade, she also harbored a desire to be an astronaut. Her interest in flying continued until she earned a pilot’s license in her 50s. Not that making time for flight lessons was easy, what with her career, family and the cancer diagnosis while pregnant with her fifth child.
Vaughn understands that students struggle with demands on their time and pressure to excel while they work and borrow money to pay for college. The pandemic magnified the difficulties.
Just don’t perceive obstacles as deterrents to your goals, she advises. Rather, make them challenges to overcome. Bear in mind life might not follow the trajectory you think it will.
“Sometimes the actual path you take and where it takes you is different from anything you had imagined,” Vaughn says. “Your degree may take you into a new, unchartered yet-to-be defined career. Every journey is different, everyone makes a mark, and every mark is unique.”
Matthew Kou '06
Principal, Green Door Hospitality;
Cal Poly Pomona opened doors for Matthew Kou.
Growing up, he loved cooking and helping his mother entertain guests. It seemed natural he might want to be a chef. Yet rather than go to a culinary school after high school graduation, Kou enrolled at Cal Poly Pomona, majoring in hospitality management .
The program helped Kou find the path that was right for him.
“I worked long hours at the Restaurant at Kellogg Ranch, which is entirely student-run and required coursework,” Kou says. “I have fond memories of being part of the team of students hosting charity events.”
As exhilarating as the work was, Kou realized that for him, cooking was best kept as a hobby, not a profession.
“The most valuable part of my Cal Poly Pomona experience was time with the professors who had real-world experience,” Kou says. “Don St. Hilaire and Margie Jones guided me to the finance and investment side of hospitality. I never knew that existed until they introduced it to me.
“They also opened the door to a network of contacts that would benefit me throughout my career,” he adds.
His internship and first job after graduation was as a consultant in hospitality real estate. Subsequently, Kou worked in investment banking specializing in hotel financing and then for a large owner-operator of West Coast boutique hotels in investments and acquisitions.
In 2021, Kou co-founded Green Door Hospitality, a privately-owned company that invests in primary destination hospitality properties. One early acquisition is the historic Sierra Sky Ranch in Oakhurst, CA, close to Yosemite Valley.
Now, Kou is opening doors for current students at Collins College. As a frequent guest speaker and stints as professor for a day, he gives behind-the-scenes look at real-world transactions and urges them to start networking while still in school. He also generously contributes to the annual Hospitality Uncorked event, which raises funds for the college.
“I tell them to absorb everything that is taught and to not be afraid to ask questions,” Kou says.