In 2019, Luc Chanren was just finishing an internship at Charles Schwab when he decided to ask a crucial question. During an exit interview with his manager, he asked where she and the team thought his skillset and personality would best fit at Schwab and other companies. Without hesitation, his manager and the team agreed – he would make an excellent project manager.
With that validation and his inherent interest in that kind of work, Chanren took a project management course his senior year at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies, and the rest was history. He graduated in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in information management and technology.
Chanren is now an infrastructure project manager on the engineering process management team at Bloomberg in New York City, where he has worked since October. He previously worked as a project manager at AIG in New Jersey.
“I didn’t foresee my career going in the direction of infrastructure, but upon learning the nuances of it and the importance of infrastructures for any company, I quickly understood that I was in an area that is absolutely crucial to any business and is constantly evolving,” he said.
Chanren had his first taste of project management while interning at Charles Schwab. There, he was part of the technology services team that worked internally on the company’s tech stack, which is a set of technologies used to develop an application. He also learned how to keep a revolving door open for new innovative ideas in the department.
“I found myself shadowing quite a few different full-time employees at the office and found that I connected and enjoyed the project/product management sessions the most,” he said.
‘Camera Me!’
When he’s not busy being a project manager, Chanren loves being outdoors, especially skiing and surfing. He was featured on the iSchool’s website in 2018 with a picture of him skiing high in the air with a thick blanket of snow beneath him.
Then a sophomore at the iSchool, Chanren talked about his new business, Camera Me, a multimedia ski company he founded with a friend and how he took pictures and videos of tourists skiing at resorts.
He decided to name it “Camera Me” because when he was a child skiing bunny hills, he would ask his parents to take pictures of him by yelling, “Camera me! Camera me!”
Someday, Chanren hopes to return to the mountains and oceans that he loves.
“A buddy and I currently have ideas for each option in terms of what we can do to make the ski experience better, as well as what we can do to continue to keep our oceans blue,” he said. “Of course, those hopes and desires are more of a ‘would be nice’ scenario. My immediate goal is to really dig my heels into the Bloomberg company and culture to see how I can be the most effective version of myself continuing to drive change, automation and improvements.”
Chanren’s sense of adventure has served him well in his life and career, and he hopes other Syracuse students will seek similar experiences that open them up to new worlds.
“Use the coffee chats, the road trips, the immersion trips, the hackathons, MLB Challenge, KTP, resume sessions, speed networking sessions,” he said. “Everything that the iSchool offers us is offered for a reason. It’s just on us as students to leverage what’s in front of us to continue to learn and grow.”
Chanren also encourages students to stay in touch with each other, professors and alumni.
“I think this is something that is often overlooked when thinking about college classmates, or even colleagues at work,” he said. “It is a small world we live in and you never know who you may run into in the future, who you may have questions for, or even who may have questions for you.”