Day 4 - Palo Alto, Tableau, a Stanford tour, and more!

On Thursday, we kicked off the day with an hour-long bus ride to Palo Alto (well worth the wait). We met with a Rivers alum, Dilan Lockman '07, who worked at a software company called Tableau. After giving us an overview of the work that people do at Tableau, we ran through some exercises to give us an idea of Tableau's functionalities and capabilities. Dilan then introduced a panel of four employees at Tableau, and they gave further information about the company’s goals and the kind of work that they each do there. Upon answering one of the questions, Russ, a sales consultant for the company, explained the significance of his own business and the skills that he gained as an entrepreneur and its value to his work at Tableau. At this point, we had all been sitting for a while, so Mr. Ebner treated us all to burgers at a create your own burger restaurant, where we were again able to continue to ask these same panel members questions about their roles at Tableau.

After Tableau, we drove over to Stanford University, where we walked around what we thought was the whole campus, due to its massive size. And in case anyone was somehow not aware of its beauty and impressiveness, let me tell you this: everything you’ve heard is true.

Anyways, we then went to visit Ken Friedman '86, who after realizing finance wasn’t his passion, moved on to do what he truly loves: building houses.

Ken was generous enough to give us a full-length tour of one of the current houses he was working on and didn’t hesitate to answer any questions we threw his way. Overall, today was great because although we got to fulfill the portion of the trip that works with entrepreneurship, it’s also important to acknowledge that you’re in a different part of the country and that things are very different in many ways to life back in Massachusetts. It’s taking advantage of these opportunities that are important to the success of this trip, and so far, I think this trip has been the most successful than any other Rivers trip I’ve ever been on before.

Thanks for a great day everybody!

- Sawyer H.