Most people who start a scholarship fund do so in the mid- to late stages of their successful career. Edwin Aguilar is only 28 but he has already started one.
More about the scholarship in a minute. First, here’s the backstory: Aguilar grew up in a one-bedroom apartment, the oldest of four kids in an immigrant family. He attended Cal State Long Beach and bartended in Pasadena at night. Several of his regular customers, business people, encouraged him to go into business.
“Those mentors meant a lot to me,” Aguilar said.
In his junior year, he switched majors to accounting. He blossomed. Aguilar became president of the accounting honors society, where he met an Ernst & Young alum. He soon was offered a position at EY’s downtown L.A. office, where he is now a senior accountant, working directly with clients.
But he wanted to help other first-generation students at his alma mater. So he recently founded a chapter of the Association of Latino Professionals for America, which helps prepare students for a career. And he started funding a scholarship, paying $1,000 a semester to a student who excels at school, works at least 20 hours a week and produces a winning one-page essay.
It’s not a great sum, Aguilar said, but pointed out that “there were times when I was in school when a few hundred dollars meant a lot to me.”
The scholarship may well grow, however.
“I’d love to create a much bigger fund,” he said.
Line on Comfort
Though it might’ve been faster to fly, Southern California Biomedical Council Chief Executive Ahmed Enany preferred to take high-speed trains while traveling from the south of China to the north a few months ago.
While attending conferences and visiting biomedical parks to discuss Chinese partnerships with Southern California life-science firms, Enany took the high-speed rail network from Guilin to Wuhan and then on to Beijing.
While these trains often travel faster than 100 miles an hour, the speed didn’t spoil the view, which was Enany’s favorite part of the trip.
“It’s fun. You can see the countryside and how it’s changing,” he said. “You can really see the transformation there with all the villages being abandoned from people moving to urban areas. … On the horizon you can see cranes where they’re building in the cities and smoke stacks in the distance.”
Both trips took about five hours each. Even though it would’ve been a shorter flight on an airplane, Enany said airport delays tend to eat into time savings. It also doesn’t hurt that the trains’ lay-flat business-class seats look an awful lot like what you’d find flying first class.
“The only thing missing,” Enany said, “was Wi-Fi.”
Staff reporter Marni Usheroff contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by Editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].
