Finance Superstar Scholarships

MS in Entrepreneurship and Innovation alumna Barbara Janczer ’18 was recently awarded a scholarship from the Financial Women of San Francisco.

I am overjoyed and extremely grateful to have the amazing opportunity to join this network of accomplished and empowered women...[Financial Women of San Francisco’s] generosity has inspired me to further help others and give back to the community.

BARBARA JANCZER
MS IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND INNOVATION '18

The Financial Women of San Francisco (FWSF) honors undergraduate and graduate female students with interests in financial services, social impact, and the empowerment of other women. For her FWSF essay, Janczer explained the prompt was if she was given 10,000 dollars to start a project, what would the project be? Her response involved creating an organization that would support, empower, and provide resources for women that have been sexually harassed in the workplace.

Before USF, Janczer was living in Hamburg, Germany, where she interned as a product manager for the Lufthansa Technik. There, she was in charge of products on first-class airlines and private jets. However, she was determined to follow her passion for entrepreneurship and venture capital and decided to move to Silicon Valley. Janczer is currently working as a part-time Product Manager at Splunk, a data analytics company and is involved in several endeavors including venture capitalist work and co-creating an innovative consumer-to-the consumer marketplace. She said moving to San Francisco was inspiring because of the amazing aggregation of creative individuals determined to make meaningful changes in the world. Janczer’s future has a lot in store, but she just laughed at her long list of upcoming projects and said confidently, “I’m a hustler, creator, and entrepreneur and will get as much done as possible.”

Monica Rin MBA ’19, an aspiring venture capitalist, was another USF student to receive a scholarship from Financial Women of San Francisco.

Rin was born in a refugee camp when her family was fleeing Cambodia during the time of the Khmer Rouge genocide. “I am the byproduct of war, starvation, compassion, and hope that transcends across time and continents,” she explained. Until the age of seven, she lived in a Thai refugee camp. Her mother was the only one on the maternal side of her family to survive. Her father and two uncles were the only two survivors on her paternal side. Both of her parents witnessed the murders of their family members.

“Despite all these tragedies, I still consider myself lucky,” she said. At the refugee camp, Rin and her family lived in a house made of dried palm leaves; their bed was made of wood, and each month they were given about eleven pounds of rice as rations. “My most memorable experience was when Thai robbers raided our neighborhood past midnight. They broke into houses, took valuables, and fired shots endlessly to keep everyone low,” she said. “My mother carried my one-year-old sister in a Cambodian scarf used by poor farmers, tied on her shoulders across her chest.” A neighbor of Rin’s grabbed her by the hand and they fled to the trenches to hide. While climbing a barbed wire fence, two bullets flew past her, three inches away from Rin’s ear. She fell to the ground. “I barely realized I was still alive when my mother cried out for my name,” she said. Rin’s foot was bleeding. It had been torn open. “I want you to imagine what goes through your mind at that moment,” said Rin. “For me, I was given a second chance at life, and decided I would never take anything for granted.”

By Lonny Wysard