This spring, Jessica Yuan ’21 MBA walked back onto Santa Clara University’s campus to co-host a panel on AI and healthcare—a lineup she’d helped assemble herself from a professional network that stretches from venture capital and Intuitive Surgical to her own employer, Gilead Sciences.
Now, there are full-circle moments in life. But, according to her, this was closer to a transformation. The Jessica Yuan on that panel was a completely different person from who she was a decade ago—thanks to Santa Clara.
Ten years earlier, Yuan, a mother of three, was working a remote procurement job for a Chinese tobacco company when she noticed a nagging feeling she couldn’t shake.
“I found myself reflecting on whether my work aligned with the impact I wanted to have on the world,” she explains. “Having had family members affected by cancer, working in tobacco felt like I was not supporting the right mission.”
This wasn’t the first pivot of Yuan’s career. She’d already left Shanghai and career plans in government or banking to follow her husband to the U.S. for his Ph.D., rebuilding herself from a political science graduate into a CPA while raising her kids across four states.
Luckily, Santa Clara University made that second return to school possible: the Leavey School of Business kept her close to family in the Bay Area, accepted her CPA credits in place of the TOEFL/GMAT, and came with a generous scholarship.
As an immigrant, she had faced many challenges adapting to a new country, language, and culture—experiences that emphasized the importance of empathy and community for Yuan. Though she isn’t Catholic, she found those values echoed across Santa Clara.
“I was surrounded by faculty, staff, and fellow students who encouraged us to think beyond academic or professional success and consider how our work could positively impact others,” she recalls. “One concept that stayed with me was the idea of aligning your career with your values. The Jesuit emphasis on values like purpose, service, and contributing to the greater good really influenced my career transition into healthcare.”
On top of the culture of conscientiousness she found at Santa Clara, Yuan sings the praises of the school’s real-world Silicon Valley connections, recalling one MBA class she took with Professor Chris Paisley.
“He took teaching so seriously, and because he was involved in the industry, he was able to bring us cybersecurity company Fortinet’s financial books and had us draft year-over-year comparisons based on that. This was an exceptional, real-life experience that helped me connect the dots between academics and industry.”
Through career fairs and site visits held by the business school and the Career Center, Yuan landed an internship at Varian Medical Systems, and later found a spot in a financial leadership development program for MBA students at Gilead through Santa Clara’s internal job board. From there, the rest was history.
Now, Yuan is a finance business partner at Gilead, overseeing budgeting and global manufacturing strategy for a research-based biotech company developing innovative therapies for HIV, liver diseases, and cancer.
“Santa Clara was the starting point for me to flip from a cancer-causing industry to a cancer-curing industry,” she says. “Looking back, I believe my time at Santa Clara helped shape not only my professional goals but also my understanding of what meaningful work looks like.”
