For Shadman Samin, one of the clear advantages of studying at Portland State University was the connections to top employers.
As a graduate student of Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science, Samin started networking with industry leaders. As he made new connections, he uncovered a pleasant surprise: many of the engineers working at the big tech companies — including Apple, Google and Facebook — were PSU alumni.
Now an engineer at Intel, Samin regularly interacts with PSU alumni. “Everywhere I look, everyone around me is from PSU,” he says. “I really see the strength of the alumni network — and how PSU really is a strength for the city of Portland.”
Every year, thousands of students graduate from Portland State University, and more than 70 percent of them go on to live and work in the Portland metro area. As a result, more than 64,000 people who work in Portland (or roughly 10 percent of the city’s population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau) are Portland State alumni.
Portland State provides the local workforce with highly skilled professionals and top talent. PSU alumni go on to work at leading companies like Nike, Providence Health, Amazon, Columbia Sportswear, Intel, Portland General Electric and more. Their impact — individually and collectively — is felt across industries, and explains why local employers actively seek out PSU graduates.
These are three stories of exceptional Portland State alumni who are powering Portland’s workforce.
ETHAN WEEKS, PIPER SANDLER
Ethan Weeks traded his first stock at age 13. “I knew I wanted my career to focus on markets and companies,” he says. “I just didn’t know what that meant yet.”
Weeks, who graduated in 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in finance, is now an equity research associate at Piper Sandler, an international investment bank with a small office in downtown Portland. He is part of a team that advises portfolio managers at investment firms on which stocks to buy — and which ones to avoid.
His job involves researching cybersecurity companies to better understand their performance and value. “Understanding the market and what’s going on with these companies is what drew me to this career,” Weeks says. “Something about it clicked with me.”
Weeks wanted to stay close to his family in Portland while pursuing his undergraduate degree. He considered a handful of schools, and chose PSU after meeting with faculty in the finance department. “Those meetings helped me understand that this was a good program with really interesting and dedicated faculty members,” he says.
The excellence of PSU faculty was a consistent theme throughout his degree. He took classes in both finance and accounting, and found the faculty “phenomenal.”
Having faculty who can explain the theory in an in-depth manner, and then bring it back to the experience they’ve accumulated and talk to you about how the theory is put into practice, helps you hit the ground running in a workplace.
Some of his favorite classes were taught by Jessica Rutledge, adjunct professor of finance, who helped him understand financial institutions and how the system works. “Having faculty who can explain the theory in an in-depth manner, and then bring it back to the experience they’ve accumulated and talk to you about how the theory is put into practice, helps you hit the ground running in a workplace,” Weeks says.
Weeks got the opportunity to put his learning into practice much earlier than most undergraduates. He began an internship at Piper Sandler the summer after his sophomore year, and continued working there through his junior and senior years.
Though most Piper Sandler interns are further along in their degree programs, Weeks was “far and away the stand out candidate for the internship” says his supervisor, Rob Owens.
“We got Ethan before he took a lot of his finance classes, so he was learning a lot in real-time,” Owens says. “But his work ethic stood out, and his emotional maturity was far beyond any other candidates.”
Owens describes Weeks as someone who is intellectually curious and humble, with a strong work ethic. “If Ethan doesn’t understand something, he’s going to go learn it,” Owens says.
Weeks credits a surprising feature of PSU with facilitating his work at Piper Sandler: the location. The Piper Sandler office is just five blocks from PSU’s campus, allowing Weeks to walk to the office from class and back again.
“I don’t think you’d be able to get that anywhere else,” Weeks says. “There are no other schools located this close to downtown Portland. The location is a really interesting and underrated part of PSU.”
For students like Weeks who want to stay in Portland, Owens says PSU provides a great opportunity to go to a very good school and stay local. But the location is just a bonus. “The quality of education at PSU is very good,” he says. “The accounting and finance departments are some of the best out there.”
“I was really happy with my time at PSU,” Weeks says. “It was a great experience, and I’m very pleased with how it helped me get to where I am today.”
DENISE ESCAMILLA, DAIMLER TRUCKS NORTH AMERICA
“Anything you touch has gone through a supply chain,” says Denise Escamilla. “Seeing that helped me decide to go into supply chain management. That, and because it was interesting to me. I knew I’d never get bored.”
Escamilla received a bachelor’s degree in logistics, materials and supply chain management from PSU in 2019. Now, she’s a strategic project manager supporting a director of procurement and supply chain at Daimler Truck North America, a commercial vehicle manufacturer headquartered in Portland.
In her role, Escamilla leads department projects and coordinates presentations for her team. She also oversees the project management office for her team, which translates into tracking project progress, prioritizing workflows and resolving bottlenecks. Her role focuses on bringing people together and improving team operations to ensure leadership can drive key initiatives and continuous improvement efforts.
“Denise is a high-impact contributor with a structured, strategic approach,” Tracy Royal, director of procurement and supplier management at Daimler and Escamilla’s supervisor, says. “Her curiosity, bias for action and positive energy elevate both performance and team culture.”
Though her work in supply chain management is a strong fit, Escamilla had a winding road to this career. She worked in hospitality for several years before deciding to pursue a bachelor’s degree. A first-generation college student who grew up in the Portland area, she wanted to go somewhere accessible and affordable. So, she started at Mount Hood Community College and took advantage of their dual enrollment program with Portland State. PSU was an appealing option for her bachelor’s, she says, because it is affordable, accessible and has a strong business program.
Their education emphasizes real-world application, which translates into immediate impact and strong problem-solving on the job.
In addition, PSU’s flexible class schedule allowed her to continue working during the day and take classes in the evening. “I could get off of work at 5 p.m. and be in class by 5:45 p.m.,” Escamilla says.
When Escamilla was introduced to Daimler at a PSU career fair, her future came into view. Her dad is a truck driver so the idea of working for the company “really clicked and connected,” she says.
Escamilla landed an internship at Daimler, then was hired as a contractor. But it wasn’t a smooth road from there. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, all of the contractors at Daimler, including Escamilla, were laid off.
Determined, Escamilla continued applying to full-time positions at Daimler. Less than one year later, they offered her a full-time role as a supply chain planner.
Now, Escamilla’s career is moving full-speed ahead, thanks in part to the strong foundation she built at PSU. She pulls from her experiences with group projects to work collaboratively and solve problems. The case studies she worked on in her classes provided a foundational skill set that she’s built upon in her current role.
“Now, I’m in that case study,” she says. “I’m dealing with tariffs and gaps in the supply chain and similar issues.”
Escamilla is one of more than 300 PSU alumni employed at Daimler. PSU graduates are well-regarded at the company because they are pragmatic, well-prepared and action-oriented, says Royal, who also graduated from PSU’s Logistics and Supply Chain Management program.
“Their education emphasizes real-world application, which translates into immediate impact and strong problem-solving on the job,” she says.
As for Escamilla, she loves working at Daimler, and is happy with the decision to go back to school.
“It was 100% worth it for me to go to PSU,” she says. “Without that piece of paper, I couldn’t get in anywhere. It carries a lot of weight.”
SHADMAN SAMIN, INTEL
As an international student from Bangladesh and transfer from Lewis & Clark College, Shadman Samin came to PSU seeking a more applied curriculum. “As an engineer, I wanted to get my hands dirty in the lab,” he says.
He was not disappointed. At PSU, he spent much of his days (and nights) in the lab, where he found his calling. Samin earned dual bachelor’s degrees in computer engineering and electrical engineering from PSU in 2016, and came back for a master’s degree in engineering later that year.
Now, Samin is a verification engineer at Intel, a global manufacturer of semiconductors with a large presence in Oregon. (Semiconductors, commonly known as microchips, power many modern electronic devices from cars to computers, smartphones to solar panels.) His current role involves “debugging” the code for the microchip before the chip is made in physical form.
Samin has lost count of how many chip designs he has worked on in his nearly seven years at Intel, though he estimates it’s around five. “Intel has given me the opportunity to bounce around to different things and grow technically,” he says. “It has been very challenging and very exciting.”
PSU offered me a lot more applied tools to put on my resume. At the end of the day, that’s what I was looking for.
Samin’s supervisor, Eirik Esp, says Samin’s drive to learn new things is one of the qualities that make him a standout employee. “The business is always changing,” Esp says. “We need engineers who are hungry to grow their capabilities and knowledge.”
At PSU, Samin leveraged every opportunity to launch his career. He attended career events and mock interview sessions, and worked in Dr. Eric Wan’s biomedical lab. He also contributed to Wan’s company, which is housed at PSU’s startup incubator, the Portland State Business Accelerator.
In graduate school, Samin narrowed his focus. In particular, his classes with Assistant Professor Mark Faust — who focused on strong industry fundamentals — were formative.
“Even now, when I interview PSU graduates for jobs at Intel, I’ll ask them about their classes with Faust. And they say his classes were amazing, and really hard. Faust teaches you the type of work you will do in your career — the types of projects, the intensity of deadlines. He sets you up for a job,” says Samin.
After Samin’s first year of graduate school, he landed a summer internship at Intel. This became a full-time internship during his second year of graduate school, and eventually transitioned into a full-time job.
Samin credits PSU with setting him up for a successful career. “PSU offered me a lot more applied tools to put on my resume,” he says. “At the end of the day, that’s what I was looking for.”
Courtney Martin, Oregon community affairs director at Intel, says internships are a common way PSU students and graduates enter the company. From technical talent to business savvy, PSU has been one of the top sources for talent at Intel, says Martin. A large percentage of these hires contribute directly to developing cutting-edge processing technology.
Portland State’s contributions to the workforce go beyond the strength of their alumni, she says, and PSU’s computer and electrical engineering departments really understand the needs of the semiconductor industry. With several PSU adjunct professors working at Intel, there’s a lot of opportunity to shape the curriculum to meet the emerging needs of the workforce and prepare students for impactful careers.
“PSU has been a really important partner in many of the regional- and state-level public-private workforce development partnerships,” Martin says of PSU’s school-wide efforts. “The university has done a great job leaning into the need in the semiconductor industry, especially given the outsized presence of this industry in Oregon.”
Though they come from diverse backgrounds, the stories of these three graduates share some common threads. They came to PSU to develop their skills and build career connections; they were rewarded with professional jobs at top companies. Now, they are making the kind of impact that explains why leaders across industries are eager to hire PSU grads.