Who Are We?
Our Mission
We are a career development and elite mentorship program initiated by Google VP, Megan Pi, and UC Berkeley Dean of College of Engineering, Prof King Liu.
Why Toppa is Founded
East Asian students add great cultural and intellectual diversity to college campuses, but they also bring racial stereotypes that can affect cross-racial interaction as well as campus climate.
Positive cross-racial interactions did change negative stereotypes; however, a lack of opportunities to interact with racial out-groups, international and domestic student balkanization, and language issues led to stereotype ossification in some cases.
As close witnesses of how racial stereotypes have others challenged or reinforced these stereotypes over time, we want to utilize resources from Google to provide opportunities to East Asian students who are willing to challenge the stereotypes — “apologetic”, “submissive” and “introvert”.
What We Offer
Mentorship network
TOPPA members have opportunities to communicate with Google employees and startup founders — getting career insights from professionals. Past alumni have entered Fortune 500 companies Google, ByteDance, Tencent, Amazon, etc.
Projects
Our aim is to provide a safe space for members to work on projects — concentrated in the areas they are interested in. Here at TOPPA you can get hands-on experience in diverse projects to hone your skills and explore your interests — take initiative in your passion and build your leadership abilities.
A Tight-Knit Community
We provide semester-long social activities (buddy and family systems, club retreats) to provide a safe place for members to meet like-minded people, with the goal of building lifelong friendships.
Alumni Network
Past alumni have set themselves up as successful role models with their grit and talent during their time in TOPPA. Every week, we invite back past alumni to share their success stories. TOPPA is a safe solace to bond with leaders (and future leaders of course!) in diverse fields.
A Tightly Knitted Family
The leader of the excutive team, the director of the club who is responsible for the logistics and carries the club mission and future. The President also formulate strategies to improve Toppa and empower all Toppa leaders to do their jobs successfully: coordinating leaders, hold meetings, and whatever that is necessary to make Toppa great.
The Vice Presidents oversee the club’s operation and carries a special task in the Internal, and External Development fields. Each VP will also lead two Directors forming a small leader “family”. In addition, with the direct help from General Members, they will be responsible for the club development at different stages.
Department Directors work directly with the President and Vice Presidents to enhance and promote Toppa @ Berkeley in and out of campus. The Professional Development and Community Building directors will be working with the Internal VP, and the Marketing and Outreach director will be working with the External VP. Together, they will be creating the Toppa experience for all our members.
Each project director is selected based on their previous semester’s performance and their project proposal evaluation at the beginning of each semester to carry out a semester-long project. Together with their projects, they lead the community to explore different technicalities and areas in STEM, Entrepreneurship, and Mentorship. Each project is expected to feature two deliverables at the middle and end of each semester. Through working directly with the executive team, they will be developing their leadership experience and preparing to step into greater responsibilities in the future semesters.
Project Members are selected during the semester recruitment season, and will be working directly with their corresponding Project Directors during the school weeks, applying both their technical and team skills in a collaborative environment while being able to expose to different industries through our mentors and speaker series.
By applying with first and second project preferences, they will be evaluated directly by the Project Directors in two rounds of interviews, where both their technical experience and collaboration ability is assessed. They will also work with a Department Director to build the Toppa community. PMs will have higher priorities when applying for the Project Director position in future semesters.
General Members consists of Toppa alumni and members who isn’t a Project Member. GMs will have access to all Toppa events (General Meetings, speaker series, internal trainings, bonding events) but will not be working on a semester project lead by a Project Director. However, General Members will be working directly with our four Department Directors to contribute to the development of our club in Marketing, Professional Development, Outreach, and Community Building.