JONATHAN YOUNG/Daily Bruin Former mayor Richard
Riordan participates in his Riordan Programs, which
provide underrepresented students in Los Angeles with graduate
student mentors.
By Dexter Gauntlett
Daily Bruin [email protected]
Richard Riordan, the business tycoon turned two-time mayor,
awarded top scholars of his community outreach program, at the
Anderson School at UCLA Saturday.
The Riordan Programs select some top achievers from
underrepresented populations in Los Angeles schools and provide
them with graduate student mentors and professional advice in an
attempt to encourage them to become future business and political
leaders.
Students in the program received awards for their participation
in a stock market simulation designed to expose the pitfalls and
the perks of the business world and advantages of pursuing a
graduate level degree.
“The idea is to develop minority leaders for the future
and to let them step into the big leagues,” Riordan said.
Four of the thirty Riordan Scholars in the 2002 class will be
attending UCLA this fall. All of the Riordan scholars are attending
four year universities, many of them the country’s finest;
Stanford, Georgetown, Berkeley, Princeton, Duke and Cornell.
Graduates of the program often return as “fellows”
and volunteer one Saturday a month in order to introduce minority
students from across Los Angeles to business and finance
issues.
The program is in its fifteenth year and Riordan said it
addresses the main problem for inner-city education, which he said
is not lack of money, but a lack of leadership.
“The graduate students go there and teach them they can
compete,” Riordan said.
“Going to UCLA is like going to Mongolia for them,”
he added, citing the wide gap in application to upper level
education between whites and people of color.
But for many of the scholars, college was already the next
logical step. Many of the families fork out up to $7,000 a year for
their children to attend private schools.
Kim Mizumo, a senior at Downtown Magnet high school took five AP
classes before even entering the Riordan Program and said most of
the students are in no way underprivileged.
“We’re all very good students already, but the
program helps with networking and preparing for college and
business,” he said.
Deena Williams grew up in Inglewood, but went to a boarding
school near Santa Barbara for high school. She is now a Riordan
Programs graduate who helps mentor and will be graduating from
Anderson business school in June with a focus in marketing.
She said many students believe the only reason they were
accepted into the school was because of their race, which hurts the
image of the program.
“Once they see our experience, they get over it,”
Williams said.
Williams was introduced to the Riordan Program as an
undergraduate at USC, and said she was already considering graduate
school. But she said the program solidified that goal, by showing
her steps to get there, in terms of advice about the GMAT exam, her
GPA and work experience.
“These students were already being successful and are the
ones taking AP classes and had always had the potential for
success,” she said. “It’s kind of like a
finishing off process.”
But some students said they never would have considered business
an option until going through the Riordan Programs. Jacqueline
Amaya, a sophomore at Holy Family High, a private Catholic school,
said the program opens a lot of doors and encourages her to follow
her aspirations to enter a world where there are few Latino
CEOs.
“I was a good student, but it really helped me with career
studies and opened my eyes to the world of business,” Amaya
said.
The last hour of the event shifted from the future of aspiring
people of color to advice from Riordan and praise from
colleagues.
A friend of Riordan’s, Frank Baxter, the chairman of
Jefferies, a global investment firm, commended Riordan’s
courage “to get right back up the day” after losing the
Republican gubernatorial nomination to Bill Simon, and “get
back to work” on Riordan’s latest project, starting a
newspaper.
Though some cringe at idea, Riordan’s excited about the
possibility.
“Nobody would know from reading the Los Angeles Times,
that Los Angeles is the capital of culture for the world,”
Riordan said.