Meet Ben Yan: SCEO of Saxbys Penn State University
Meet Ben Yan. He races go-karts. He break dances. After college, he plans to work on a coffee farm. He’s just the type of wildly inquisitive, hard-working person we want to lead our brand-new Saxbys Penn State cafe.
Through our Experiential Learning Program, the 19-year-old sophomore will run the day-to-day operations of the cafe and manage 100 undergraduate team members. He’ll earn college credit, wages and seriously valuable experience in the process.
Let’s learn a bit more about Ben:
What do you hope to achieve as the SCEO of the brand-new Saxbys Penn State University cafe?
I want it to be something I’m proud of in the end. I want to look back and say that I made a positive impact on the people around me. Personally, I want to learn to be more resilient, gritty and take on big challenges that I thought were previously impossible. I also want to foster genuine connections with people from all different backgrounds, and enact positive change in the community. I know it sounds cliche but I also want to be inspirational. I’m managing such a big team, and keeping them inspired will be a major part of the job.
How do you plan on interacting with the Penn State community?
On the community aspect, I want to take advantage of my role. It’ll lead me to have a lot more connections that can let me have a bigger impact on the community than a normal student. I will be meeting with many important and powerful figures of the University that can make my ideas heard. That’s not something that’s going to happen if I’m just a regular student. This role makes you stand out and gives you a platform. It’s a massive opportunity to do positive things that are beneficial to the community as a whole.
You were very diligent in trying to land the SCEO gig at Saxbys. Tell us about that.
I looked up Saxbys SCEOs on LinkedIn and reached out to every one that had “SCEO” in their bio. I spoke to Julia, the SCEO at Temple. It was really impressive listening to her and I came away really wanting the role. I heard that Shawn Clark was the professor at Penn State in charge of the whole program. I tried to set up an appointment but didn’t hear back immediately. So I just went to his office. His assistant didn’t let me in at first but then Shawn heard me and waved me into his office. We spoke and he told me I’d have a really good chance of being successful in the position. Then I had an interview with Nick Bayer [CEO of Saxbys]. I must have practiced for six or seven hours. I was totally committed to this whole thing but it really paid off in the end.
What are your hobbies outside of work and school?
I’ve been biking around Philly this summer. It’s an adrenaline rush. Weaving around the cars — it’s a freeing feeling. I like doing things that require you to be so focused that you can’t think of anything else in the world. It’s almost relaxing. I love racing go karts. You have to be inch perfect with everything you do. If you take the corner a half mile per hour too fast, you spin out. A half mile per hour too slow, you get passed.
And you also like dancing?
I’m in RAM Squad, a hip/hop breakdancing group at Penn State. I just wanted to do something outside of my comfort zone and try something new. Now I love it. If I have 20 minutes in my room, I’ll just put on some music and jam out.
You’ve got some pretty cool plans after college. Tell us about them.
First I want to go to Toronto or Seattle. I really like coffee and Seattle is sort of the hub of that. It’s also a big cycling city. Toronto is a city I really enjoy too. I had a road trip there and stayed four days. It’s my favorite city I’ve ever been to. Then, I want to go to Colombia for a few years because I worked at a coffee shop and formed a lot of connections with people in that country. I would want to work on coffee farm to figure out what the industry is like from a growers’ perspective.
Then the next country would be Estonia. They’re trying to be the most high-tech country in the world. Everything is on their phone. Everything is on a blockchain ledger. There’s a lot of innovation going on. From there, I’d love to go to Finland. I am absolutely fascinated by their culture of Sisu, or Finnish grit. I’d like to live there and be surrounded by the culture one of the most mentally strong peoples in the world. I have a lot of things I’m interested in — and I don’t want to read about them or watch a movie about them, I want to experience them.