“I learned not only in the classes but by the example of other girls who study with me.”
Congrats to Shadia Mattar, a student in the UCSC Silicon Valley Extension Administrative and Executive Assistant certificate program, who is one of five finalists recently nominated for the 2018 Silicon Valley Admin Awards Rookie of the Year Award.
The Silicon Valley Admin Award winners will be announced in nine categories at the annual competition that recognizes administrative excellence at a celebratory gala on Thursday, April 26. Hundreds of nominations are submitted each year to be reviewed and evaluated by an independent panel of judges. Several AEA graduates and instructors have been honored at the event in previous years.
“The nomination shows I’m doing something good,” says Mattar, who has been taking classes one at a time while working full-time as an executive assistant for the Small Business Self Employed Group (SBSEG) Developer Group at Intuit in Mountain View.
Mattar, who has a bachelor’s degree in Hotel Management from Piura University and is a certified real estate agent, is no stranger to the business world. She used to co-own a Peruvian knitwear factory in Lima and was chief fundraising and events director for the U.S. Embassy Association of Lima.
Mattar, who moved to the U.S. a few years ago to be with her new husband, left everything behind to start over.
“It just makes me very happy to be nominated and become a finalist,” she says. “I had to overcome a lot of things to get here, to understand how things work here. Everything is very fast-paced compared to my country.”
After a couple of years volunteering in the community and getting used to the U.S. culture, Mattar began the executive assistant program in January 2017.
“I learned not only in the classes but by the example of other girls who study with me,” she says. “I put in practice every day what I learn at UCSC Extension.”
She found her current job at Intuit through one of her classmates in the AEA program.
“It’s a pretty good start,” she says.
Intuit, a company that often appears in articles about positive corporate culture, ranked fourth this month in the Silicon Valley Business Journal’s annual list of Best Places to Work in the Bay Area.
“My company is amazing,” Mattar says. “I really like my team. Every single day is a learning experience.”
After earning her AEA certificate, Mattar plans to pursue a certificate in the Project Management program.
“So, you’re going to see me awhile,” she says.
Learn more about the UCSC Silicon Valley Extension Administrative and Executive Assistant Specialization.