Student Whose Parent's Escaped From War-Torn Cambodia Joins Successful Silicon Valley Startup
(KPIX 5) -- Sumat Lam got his first job out of Stanford University at BOX, not long before it went public. Pretty lucky break for anyone, but particularly for someone like Sumat, who grew up in poverty. BOX is a cloud storage provider that helps companies "share, manage and collaborate" information. Sumat gives technical advice to customers.
"Sometimes I wonder how I ended up where I ended up," says Sumat, a bit surprised by his own success. But considering his intelligence and how hard he works, it's not really that surprising.
In some ways, it is a full circle journey from Pittsburg High, where we first met him back in 2010, when he was a 17-year-old senior. He was on the student I.T. team there, helping to run the school computers. His teacher, Andy Kaiser put it this way:
"Whenever there's a very difficult problem, one that maybe I don't even know how to solve, I'll put him on the case. He'll research it, and go online and figure it out, and teach me a thing or two."
Wow. I remember watching him confidently fix some problem on the school computer, using a technical language that I didn't understand.
"Sometimes I have to remind myself that he is a student because I think of him as another teacher," said Kaiser.
That maturity came from his own life experience and that of his family. His parents escaped the infamous killing fields there. Only after horrific pictures of piles of skulls and bones in mass gravesites became public, did Americans begin to understand the enormity of the genocide there. It is estimated the Communist Khmer Rouge killed about 1.7 million people between 1975 and 1978. What made genocide was unique in that Cambodians were killing Cambodians for ideological reasons.
They never talk about it but between them, Sumat's parents lost a father, a brother, an uncle, aunt, cousin, brother-in-law and sister-in-law- a list that is hard to imagine. "Just the emotion that they feel, that they're trying to hide. It's so strong, that I feel it," says Sumat. "You want to be able to ease their pain as you grow up, and I'm at a loss as to how to do that for them."
Even if Sumat didn't talk much about it, his high school teacher, Andy Kaiser told us, he could feel his history speaking: "He does have that sense, that he has gone through a lot of struggles and that's formed the person he is."
It was more than the war. As recent immigrants who spoke no English, Sumat's parents had little money. His father worked in landscaping, but after a spinal injury when Sumat was in seventh grade, they depended on Social Security and welfare.
But before the injury, his parents scraped and saved every penny and took their children to Cambodia. Sumat was just a little boy, but the images of poverty stuck in his mind forever: people picking through garbage looking for anything they could sell; families living in filth below bridges, wearing rags. "I was just shocked," he said. "There were no words to describe what I was seeing." He understood, "it could have been me."
His parents were farmers in Cambodia and even though his relatives there were eventually able to get some of their land back after the Khmer Rouge regime, they had to work very hard just to make enough to eat.
The trip gave Sumat a deep appreciation of the enormity of his parent's courage to journey to America- not just to stay alive, but to give him a better life. "That's what's driving me to work harder, because I have these opportunities… I shouldn't waste them," Sumat told us. "I want to show my parents gratitude for what they were able to do for me and I see that the ultimate way of showing gratitude is to excel in education."
He graduated high school with a 4.56 GPA. Yes, that is right- 4.56, better than perfect. Then it was on to Stanford University.
It was a culture shock for a kid who grew up poor to go to college with so many children of privilege, especially a "first generation student" whose parents had never been to college. Almost all the "Students Rising Above" are first generation kids, and its advisors understand this transition well and were there to help him navigate.
"I would have to say Stanford was a trial but rewarding all the same," says Sumat. "There's a huge discrepancy from where I came from and what I saw available at Stanford."
His Students Rising Above mentor Bob Morse helped him make the adjustment, checking in with him regularly, spending time with him and on one memorable trip, taking him to a Warriors game. "I live with one foot in two different cultures… my father is Cambodian. America is not his home, not his culture," explains Sumat. "For a first generation student like me, it was great being able to talk to someone who's like a father figure, and getting advice from someone who understands this culture. It is special."
In 2014 all of Sumat's hard work paid off, when he graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Anthropology.
"When I graduated last year, just seeing the emotion that overcame my family was made me feel like I'd accomplished the most wonderful thing in the world," he said, describing his parents on that day. "Just everything that they wanted for their children, everything they worked hard for, sort of this was the moment they've been waiting for. I was just I was glad that I could do that, if not for myself especially for them."
At the snappy BOX headquarters, I asked Sumat what he might be doing in the future. "Honestly," he sighed," I don't think anyone in my position can really say for certain where they're going to be in five years from now, let alone ten…"
How true but won't it be fun to see where someone of his talent and character ends up.