A New Perspective on Business

Reza Zandinejad comes by his love of cooking naturally. His parents operated a successful bakery in Charlottesville, and he followed in their footsteps by starting his own catering business. Increasingly, though, he found that the marketing and management side of operating his company had more appeal to him than meal planning and menu preparation. Hecompleted an associate’s degree in business at Piedmont Virginia Community College and then applied to SCPS’s Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Study (BIS) program. “I had heard good things about the program, and I needed to be able to work full-time during the day,” he says. “BIS was ideal for me.”

Once he enrolled, Zandinejad was immediately struck by how relevant his business courses were. He brought some of the financial management and marketing ideas he learned in class to his job at a local rug store, and the effect was dramatic. “Revenues doubled,” he says, “and my manager was very pleased.”

Zandinejad credits BIS for exposing him not only to specific skills but also to new ways of thinking about business. He particularly enjoyed his classes on “Critical Thinking” and “Qualitative Analysis,” and he

finds that the insights he gained in his “Qualitative Analysis” class enable him to think about routine business tasks, like conducting a job interview, in new ways. He also singles out the program’s emphasis on making presentations and working in teams as particularly helpful. “The BIS program attracts people from all walks of life,” he says. “During classroom discussion and while working on group assignments, you learn to relate to people with different perspectives.”  

While working on his bachelor’s degree, Zandinejad received a partial scholarship from the Sunshine Lady Foundation. “I learned about the scholarship through the program,” he says. “I don’t think I could have been able to go back to school without it.” He also was selected by the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Institute for an internship.  

Zandinejad completed the program in 2006, and currently works for CGI, a large consulting company in Northern Virginia. He specializes in a field called capacity maturity model integration, which helps organizations develop more effective processes. “It’s a really good company, and the work is challenging,” Zandinejad says. “Without my bachelor’s from U.Va., I wouldn’t have even been considered for the job.”