While growing up in Peru, Andres Aleson saw firsthand a lot of need in his community and among those close to him. So he had one goal in mind when the time came to pursue a college education: “I wanted to become a leader in whatever career I pick, where I can make a positive social impact in people’s lives.” Now, as an alumnus of the finance program at the BYU Marriott School of Business, he strives to impact individuals through service and personal connection.
Aleson’s desire to help others is why BYU was the only university that he applied to, despite the school being more than 4,000 miles away from his childhood home. “With the values and mission at BYU, it just made sense for me to go there,” he says. He set his aim on a business degree and, after taking the prerequisite classes, joined the finance program at BYU Marriott.
Aleson found ways to jump into social impact from the start. He started with an on-campus internship with Alta Global Ventures, a venture capital fund designed to help entrepreneurs grow companies in Latin America. His internship prepared him to work at the Sorenson Impact Center, housed at the University of Utah, where Aleson used his finance background to influence investment decisions. During his year at Sorenson, he also became copresident of the Social Venture Academy at the then Ballard Center for Economic Self-Reliance, mentoring student entrepreneurs as they navigated the early stages of building a startup.
In all three roles, Aleson says he used finance principles such as sizing markets and analyzing a company’s financial health to aid entrepreneurs in building socially minded businesses. “I’m glad I picked finance,” he says, “because it opened up some of these critical components early in my career.”
Despite being involved in many opportunities as a student, Aleson says he felt some imposter syndrome. He was calling and visiting business executives to analyze their company’s financials—without having actually worked in a corporate setting himself. “I felt like I needed to get into the industry and develop as a professional,” he says. So, after graduating from BYU Marriott, Aleson took a job with Adobe as a financial analyst.
“That was fun for a little bit,” he says. “But I found out very quickly that corporate finance was not my thing.” The realization led Aleson to pivot: He found new roles at Adobe, first in automation engineering and later in product management, while also seeking out opportunities to get involved with the community. He joined Adobe’s diversity and inclusion council, where he hosted events to mentor students of diverse backgrounds and started an annual appreciation dinner for the cleaning staff at Adobe's Utah office. “It wasn't in my job description, but I've always cared about having an impact on people,” he says.
While he enjoyed working in technology and finding ways to serve at Adobe, Aleson says he felt a desire to shift his career back toward the social impact space. So, he enrolled in the MBA program at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. After graduating, he accepted a job at the Walmart Foundation, where he brings together his varied experience—from finance to social impact to technology—to streamline the foundation’s grant-giving initiatives.
Although he primarily works with the bigger-picture strategy of the Walmart Foundation, Aleson also spends time connecting with the nonprofits and Walmart associates he works with. “The best way to sustain meaningful impact is actually having that personal connection with the people that you want to have an impact on,” Aleson says. “Unless I’m actively engaging with those individuals, I can lose sight of their needs.”
Approaching work with a focus on people is a decision that Aleson says carries over from his experience at BYU Marriott. “My time at BYU opened up meaningful opportunities to make important life decisions,” he says. “The people I met there guided me throughout those decisions—not just about a job but also about who I want to become.”
