San Francisco: Day 6

Today was our last day of the site visits. It was an earlier call than all the other days but I was very excited to go to Gilead Sciences in Foster City, CA. It was around a 30-minute drive. On our way there, we realized it was already Thursday. This week has flown by. Ami came up with a good idea to share our gratitude. We did this by telling someone in the group what we admire about that person. Since we have been together on this trip for a couple of days now, I feel like we have gotten to know each other better. So, sharing our gratitude was a real bonding moment. 

Once we arrived at the Gilead Sciences campus, I was surprised by the beautiful view of the water from the campus. We all signed in and went to the top floor of one of the buildings. There, we met Loyola alum Andrew Dickinson who is CFO at Gilead Sciences. He gave us an insightful presentation on the company and introduced us to some of the employees. Later on, we got the opportunity to talk to them which gave us a good idea of what it is really like to work at Gilead Sciences. Finally, we toured the wellness center. There was a big gym and several health services to ensure employees’ health.

For lunch, I walked to Joe and the Juice and had an amazing spicy tuna sandwich. After that, it was time to climb up the hill again to the hotel where we were going to meet with Loyola alum Raegan Allsbrook from Meta. She brought 3 of her colleagues and they shared a lot about their career path and their job at Meta. This was the last meeting of our trip. Since we had some free time, some of us went to the mall and walked around. For dinner, we decided to go to Delarosa, a good Italian restaurant close to the hotel. It was a very successful day and I learned a lot from Gilead sciences’ site visit and Meta’s meeting.