Kelly Tanimura

Business Administration

“Understand what academic excellence means and fight like heck to achieve it.”

In elementary school, Dean’s Scholar Tanimura created fake business cards for herself and flyers for “pretend businesses” she planned on starting. When she ascertained that her brother “wasn’t spending his allowance wisely,” she founded a bank and offered to be his financial advisor. “He politely declined,” she reports. While still in junior high, Tanimura announced to her parents she’d decided to major in business and has carried through on that intention at SJSU. In business, she perceives a “world rich with complexities and nuances, an amazing interaction between quantitative and qualitative, analysis and intuition, local and global … a world where numbers speak a language and tell a story.” And there she’s made her place.

College: Lucas College and Graduate School of Business

Photo: Thomas Sanders, ’15 MFA Photography


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