Dam Good Connections - Los Angeles

About the speakers: 

Shraddha Aryal, ’03, is the executive vice president of exhibitions at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, shaping its exhibitions program and visitor experiences. A strategic planner and a creative thinker, she played a key role in the museum’s opening, collaborating closely with internationally renowned architects. Previously, she led exhibitions at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha and designed exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. She holds a bachelor’s degree in graphic design from Oregon State and a master's in interior architecture from Rhode Island School of Design. 

Kenan Heppe, ’11, known online as "The Chinese Tones Guy," has over a billion views on his Mandarin Chinese videos that both educate and entertain. In China, he's known for being one of the only Western actors to land a lead role in a Chinese feature film (you can also see him as Mike Evans, the lead antagonist in Three-Body on Amazon Prime, the original Chinese version of The Three-Body Problem). His talents and skills have taken him all over the world, but his background hasn't always been performance. He earned an honors bachelor’s in chemistry from Oregon State and was the first student in over 16 years to graduate with a 4.0 GPA in that major. Heppe believes OSU's campus, courses and community helped him take advantage of the necessary skills to fuel his dreams, and he's excited to share that with anyone interested in pursuing theirs. 

Connor Kelsay, ’16, graduated from Oregon State with an honors degree in mechanical engineering. He discovered a passion for aerospace while working on a guided parachute payload with the OSU rocketry team. After graduation, he joined Airborne Systems North America, designing decelerator systems, including components of the Mars Perseverance Rover parachute. He later founded a parachute department at Inversion Space for space re-entry systems. Kelsay has designed, tested and manufactured recovery systems for interplanetary missions, weapons, UAVs, personnel parachutes and autonomous guided parachutes. He enjoys spending time with his wife, Bonnie (a College of Engineering alumna) and their daughter, Sky, and pursuing adventure sports like paragliding, skydiving, surfing and scuba diving.