Volunteer of the Month - February 2016

Calvin Kwan - Operations Team

Calvin is the hardworking, caring, and spontaneous Manager of Information Technology on the Operations team. He is currently working as a Software Engineer at a marketing advertising company in Marina Del Rey. He mostly works on eCommerce web components, such as shopping carts, web services, and creating APIs. He is able to apply his technical background to his role at PbP, which was evident when he worked diligently to recover the Project by Project website when it was down for a couple of weeks.

Calvin is currently in his 2nd year with PbP and has really enjoyed his experience so far. To him, PbP is a family that supports each other and works together to tackle problems and accomplish tasks. He was motivated to take on a larger role beyond that of just a volunteer after he saw how PbP genuinely wanted to give back to the Asian American community. His experience with PbP has helped him become less shy and improved his leadership abilities. His fondest memories of PbP are those where everyone had fun interacting with each other: the lunches after meetings, the LA and SF Plate by Plate events, and all of the outdoor activities that he participated in.

Calvin is currently trying to explore more in life and participate in as many new activities as he can. PbP helped him step out of his comfort zone and gain new experiences that he would not have tried on his own, such as camping, rock climbing, and going to a shooting range. Calvin also enjoys playing piano and guitar in his spare time, and is working on posting his covers to YouTube. His favorite foods are Hong Kong style foods (such as egg waffles and HK style milk tea), cookies, ramen, and sushi. Speaking of food, if Calvin was a utensil, he would be chopsticks because using chopsticks requires patience and practice. Calvin is someone who can patiently focus on a task and practice until he gets it right.