Co-President’s Message Seeking to do good in a cold place 2 NEARLY EVERY SPRING we bid farewell to our RAPS office manager. Managers usually spend one year in the job before moving on to begin their professional careers or to pursue an advanced degree. This year’s office manager, Ilana Tarasyuk, is an exception—in two ways. Most of our managers are graduate students, but Ilana is an undergraduate who is scheduled to receive her bachelor’s degree in finance in June. And if you think she’s using her shiny new degree to swim with the financial sharks or to go after an MBA, think again. children by cleaning houses. When Ilana was older, she helped her mom on the job. “Cleaning houses taught me everything I needed to know about how to work and how to be diplomatic,” she says. Ilana entered college at 19, a step that she acknowledges was “sort of rebellious,” especially when most of her peers were getting married and starting families. “Thankfully, my mom was always about education and knowledge, so she was OK with me doing it,” she says. She wanted to get away from Vancouver, but not too far away. Portland State was the obvious answer, and Ilana had heard PSU had a good business school. As she worked toward her degree, she also held several jobs, including stints in the Foundation, School of Business, and Alumni Association. Ilana’s also a peer mentor for the SBA, helping new students get their footing. “I’m there for them if they have questions, I teach them time management—it’s a lot of fun,” she says. Going to Alaska to teach money management is an outgrowth of her childhood. There wasn’t much money to manage, and what money there was sometimes wasn’t managed well. Ilana’s considering several nonprofit educational organizations that operate in Fairbanks, and she wants to concentrate on Native populations. “You have to approach it very carefully and gently,” Ilana says of teaching money management. “I think I’m ready for that challenge.” Best wishes, Ilana, and thank you for your contributions to RAPS! —Doug Swanson Ilana is heading to Alaska, where the only things taller than Wall Street’s glass towers are icebergs and mountains. There she hopes to teach financial literacy in impoverished communities. If that doesn’t sound like a typical postgraduate plan, it may be because Ilana’s background isn’t typical. Ilana was born in Russia and came to the United States with her family when she was three months old, part of a huge migration of Russians that followed the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Her family joined a conservative religious community in Vancouver, Washington. “I wasn’t allowed to do a lot,” she recalls of her childhood. “I didn’t watch TV, I didn’t have sleepovers.” Ilana also didn’t speak a word of English, and being fluent in Russian wasn’t much help in kindergarten. “It was awful,” she says of her first months in school. “I cried every single day.” Ilana’s father died when she was four years old, struck down by leukemia, leaving her mother to support herself and five Ilana Tarasyuk Upcoming Member Events MAY(Thursday, May 9) Annual President’s Luncheon for retired PSU faculty and staff hosted by President Rahmat Shoureshi at noon in the SMSU Ballroom. JUNE (Date to be determined) Wine tour for members and guests led by Scott Burns. AUGUST (Thursday, August 15) RAPS Summer Picnic, noon to 4 pm, Willamette Park, Portland
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