Paolo Posadas, University employee and graduate student, has a senior project in the works that fulfills not only a course requirement but a personal mission as well.

A technical specialist in the Office of the Registrar, Posadas is also enrolled in the MSIS program at the Leavey School of Business, where he’s required to complete a capstone project that puts to use his newly acquired knowledge of business and technology.

Up until now, MSIS students have geared their capstone projects to the corporate world, spending at least two quarters with companies like Cisco and Lockheed, where they apply technical classroom concepts to real-world challenges.

Posadas and a group of fellow students, however, aimed their project at an atypical industry: nonprofits.

“I really wanted to take my project in a different direction,” he explained. “I thought that a nonprofit organization would feel a greater impact from any work I did, and I like the idea of leading a project that is service oriented; it fits in well with the Jesuit ideal.”

It isn’t always easy to match such student undertakings with respective charities, and that’s why Posadas’ project is only the first of its kind in the 5-year-old MSIS program. According to MSIS Director Manoochehr Ghiassi, “We deal with implementing systems, and most nonprofits don’t have the funding to buy expensive computer applications.”

Posadas spent two months searching for a place that would benefit from the technical expertise he gained during his two years in the MSIS program. Then, in March, he approached the Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education and Associate Director Valerie Sarma told him about the Women’s Community Clinic in San Francisco. From there, said Posadas, everything fell into place.

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