Alumni Profiles
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Christian A. Garza
Plan II Honors & Government
Class of 1998
Senior Counsel, Enterprise Products Partners
Christian (Chris) A. Garza is a proud Longhorn and Plan II alum. He credits the mentorship and guidance obtained during his Plan II education for his career accomplishments. His Plan II Philosophy Class with Professor Kane and Freshman Plan II Literature class with Professor Twombly were life changing. Chris is always happy to speak with current (or prospective) students about how the Plan II Program prepared him for a legal career.
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Marissa Duswalt Epstein
Plan II Honors & Nutrition
Class of 2010
Director of The University of Texas Nutrition Institute
Marissa Duswalt Epstein is the Director of The University of Texas Nutrition Institute, a partnership between the Department of Nutrition, McCombs School of Business, and College of Natural Sciences focused nutrition education, innovation and entrepreneurship. Marissa served at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and on The White House staff of First Lady Michelle Obama as Associate Director of the Let’s Move! initiative. She is a Truman Scholar, recognized nationally for her policy writing, public service commitment and leadership in health education and childhood obesity.
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Kwabena Ackie
Plan II Honors
Class of 2008
Director of Business Development, TSEG at Cloud [8] Sixteen, Inc
My name is Koby Ackie. I'm currently the Director of Business Development for a small digital marketing agency that markets for law firms all over the country. In addition, I also own a small real estate investment firm that owns and manages a few properties in Central Texas. When I'm not working, I enjoy traveling to various parts of the world, journaling, listening to music, and connecting with good friends.
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Vicki Chang
Plan II & Chemistry Honors
Class of 2010
Product Manager at Facebook
Hi there, I’m Vicki Chang. I’m currently a Product Manager on the New Product Experimentation team at Facebook. I lead a team that's working on a standalone product called E.gg. As a Product Manager, I lead product teams of software engineers, designers, UX researchers, and people across many other different disciplines. My goal is to figure out what products we can build to connect and empower billions of people around the world in meaningful ways and then I work with teams to get them built. I’ve worked at Facebook since 2013, and in that time, I’ve had the opportunity to dabble across multiple teams and roles. Prior to being on the New Product Experimentation team, I was on the Novi/blockchain team at Facebook, where I was one of the earlier members involved in thinking through what a new blockchain and financial services product could be.
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Sara M. Saastamoinen
Plan II Honors & Management
Class of 2015
Development Director at Children of Bellevue
My name is Sara Saastamoinen, and I have the honor of being an alum of the Plan II Honors program. I graduated in 2015 after five years of studying for degrees in Plan II and Management from the McCombs School of Business, with an additional minor in International Business, a certificate in European Studies, and summer spent studying abroad across Italy. That laundry list of academic pursuits was one of my favorite parts of the program—being able to pursue my intellectual interests, regardless of whether I was formally receiving a degree in that area or not.
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Miguel Rayos-Velázquez
Plan II Honors & Advertising
Class of 2014
Project Manager, New York Public Library
Miguel is Product Manager at the New York Public Library, where he supports product development and access for all New Yorkers. His product responsibilities center around user accessibility and data privacy. He transitioned into a tech career after being the Operations Manager for Canada and Mexico at BuzzFeed. In this role, he managed digital product operations and oversaw international market growth. Before joining BuzzFeed, Miguel was a Research Analyst at L2 Inc, a business intelligence firm benchmarking the digital performance of brands, where he analyzed markets to help brands guide capital allocations and maximize digital competence.
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Kristen Hogan
Plan II Honors & English Honors
Class of 1998
Director of Collections Strategy and Library Operations, Barnard College
When I found my way to my first Plan II class in a seminar room in the Calhoun basement, I knew I had found my way home. “Write the first paragraph of your autobiography,” Professor Carol MacKay assigned, exhorted, conjured in the first meeting of the Women’s Autobiography class. And, just like that, we were also writers. She circulated feminist books like sacred texts, and they were. In one class, I saw a familiar passage of Alice Walker’s poetry, and I felt called, here, feminist literature is life’s work.
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Sai Gourisankar
Plan II & Chemical Engineering
Class of 2015
Stanford School of Medicine
I’m working on my doctorate at Stanford, pursuing interdisciplinary research in Chemical Engineering and the School of Medicine. Our lab combines chemistry with human genetics and modern genomics to develop targeted therapeutics. One project I’m currently working on, for example, seeks to discover the pathway regulating a highly mutated family of genes in Autism Syndrome Disorder and other neurodevelopmental disorders.
