Thankful for attending a university that values student success and an inclusive environment, Jason Jones wanted to give back to Cal Poly Pomona by starting a new club this semester, the Google Developer Student Club (GDSC).
Jones is a second-year transfer student from Norco College majoring in computer science and minoring in data science.
Google Developer Student Clubs consists of more than 1,500 college and university chapters across more than 100 countries. It aims to connect undergraduate and graduate students who have an interest in developer technology and gives them the opportunity to use Google technology to build solutions for local businesses and communities.
He applied to be the lead of the CPP chapter through the club website in May 2022 and got accepted in July.
With Jones’ knowledge and passion for computer science, he is hoping to provide experiences for other students to increase their exposure to industry-related technology, particularly ones that are not part of the academic curriculum. He is also arranging guest speaker meetings for club members to network with technology industry professionals.
In addition, he is working to implement technical interview workshops for members to hone their communication skills. For engineering, science, or software roles, technical interviews are common. Prospective professionals in the field do a technical interview to demonstrate their technical abilities and succeeding in those kinds of interviews is vital for employment opportunities, Jones said.
“Though we are a tech club, we also want to reach out to students beyond those who are just majoring in computer science or engineering,” Jones said. “We want to open doors to communication, business management, law, and any major where tech would be useful or just simply anyone interested in tech. I also value inclusion and diversity, so another goal of mine is to make sure our club reaches out to the underrepresented.”
Jones serves as the president. The rest of the officer cabinet consists of fellow students Giselle Avila, Ty Chow, Shane Dirksen, Dany Marcha, Lokaranjan Munta, Galvin Prieto, and Richard Reyes Urbano.
Jones also is a part of the Kellogg Honors College, Big Data Cloud Computing (BDCC) Apprenticeship Program, The National Society of Leadership and Success, and Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society. He also serves as a mentor for sheCodes Club.
After Jones got accepted to CPP, he attended alumni speaker panel events to listen to multiple alumni share their experiences. It was then that he knew he wanted to transfer to CPP.
“All the alumni who spoke shared that they already had employment opportunities before graduating, and I found that cool because that’s something I value for myself as well,” Jones said. “CPP has amazing programs in general too, and I just wanted to be part of this legacy.”
Aside from being a student, Jones is also married to his wife, Krystal, and has two sons, Luke and Liam.
“As the president of Google Developer Student club, Jason has poured a good deal of time and effort into finding people around him who share a similar level of passion as he does,” Ty Chow, the club’s vice president of marketing, said. “This level of determination and commitment is hard to come by as a working father and husband in school all at the same time. His drive and resourcefulness are definitely the largest factors in being an outstanding leader.”
Ever since he was a kid, Jones loved computers and grew up enjoying gaming, naturally leading to his desire to study computer science and eventually become a software engineer.
“I also want to facilitate solutions to human problems we face today using technology,” Jones said. “I’d like to create innovative technology to create a positive net impact for society as well.”
Jones has valuable experience in the computer science field. This past summer, Jones interned at Costco’s headquarters in Issaquah, Washington and was part of its Enterprise Monitoring Team.
He was responsible for infrastructure, network, and application monitoring. His main task was developing and deploying monitoring solutions for various customers, internal teams, and external vendors.
Though his internship took place in the summer, Jones has been affiliated with Costco since 2015 when he started his current full-time job working for the company as an inventory auditor. He investigates and corrects inventory discrepancies, recovers losses, conducts inventory counts, and prepares inventory reports.
In addition to running the Google Developer Student Club, Jones has started a new position as a Full Stack Engineer Intern with the Global Merchandising Team in Costco’s Infrastructure Department this semester. He is also working on campus for the BDCC apprenticeship program as a cloud service administrator.
To balance school, work, family, and his extracurriculars, Jones shares that his love and commitment to his family fuels him to work hard each day.
“So, the secret is love,” Jones said. “Krystal’s hard work in caring for our family makes all this possible. Without her dedication to our sons, none of this will be possible. The love for a life other than yours drives you to be willing to face the long hours.”
Jones also believes that a healthy diet, quality sleep, exercise, and mindfulness has also helped him be productive.
Membership to join GDSC CPP is still available. Jones encourages anyone who wants to connect with like-minded individuals, expand their technological knowledge, and work on impactful projects to be part of the club. You can join the club’s Discord server and sign up on this website to get started.