This position is where I have become a full manager, I am responsible for the opening and closing team and have many more animal related responsibilities compared to as a guest advisor. I am directly responsible for reducing animal shrink in my store by examining our animal care standards and how we are following policies and procedures. I have successfully reduced our animal shrink by being more aggressive with animal care adherence. This position also puts me in charge of ordering the animals each week, so I am responsible for looking at sales velocity and ordering the appropriate animals to keep our cages stocked but to keep animals moving to increase sales. It is also my responsibility to ensure animals receive timely treatment if they become sick in the store. As the companion animal leader it is also my prerogative to teach all the other managers and associates about the animals and the correct care for them.

This position is a sort of intermediate position between regular store associate and manager. From this position one could be promoted to Merchandise Operations Leader(MOL) or Companion Animal Leader(CAL). Since I was the aquatics specialist my GM was pushing me to become the CAL so I began learning what I needed to become CAL. I was given keys to my store due to the trust my store manager had in me. This permitted me to open and close the store independently, involving counting money and locking up the store properly. It was also my first introduction to managing the team I was a part of, ensuring other tasks were being completed and our targets were being met. The main obstacle to me becoming CAL at this time was that I was in school, once I graduated and once the position opened my GM elected me to become CAL.

As the aquatics specialist, I had more responsibilities pertaining to the aquatics department in the store. I was tasked with cleaning the tanks via algae scrubs as well as performing the weekly water changes. It was also my responsibility to have a greater amount of aquatics knowledge due to my title and I quickly became the go-to "fish guy" on the staff. Time management was more important for this position as the tasks needed to be done in a timely manner, and if something was missed the aquariums would not look good or the fish could be jeopardized. I was proactive enough in my role for my store manager to take interest in training me to be a manager.

As a guest experience specialist I mastered the cash register as well as directed guests to products on the sales floor. This role helped develop my customer service skills with day-to-day customer interaction. It also allowed me to start absorbing product and animal knowledge. Furthermore it introduced me to teamwork and team building as I would always work with a minimum of 2 other people. I started showing strong interest in the aquatics department which my managers took notice of, which allowed me to move up to the next position in the hierarchy, the Aquatic specialist.

This was an internship based around a project that my team of 3 other chemical engineers would be receiving a grade on for San Jose State University. Our client was the advisor assigned to us, which was PreProcess, Inc.'s CEO. Our first task was to create a recipe card for a nutritional bar using a novel ingredient that had not been used before in the food and beverage industry. This was to ensure that we would have a marketable final product that tasted good and was shelf stable. This was done using a food safe substitute that had a similar taste and texture to the novel product. After completing the recipe card we were then responsible for scaling it up to an industrial process that could produce 5MM bars per campaign. This process was centered around a batch mixer with a continuous ingredient preparation process preceding and a continuous packaging process following. To create the ingredient preparation process we were tasked with sizing storage tanks, mixing tanks, and transport equipment such as augurs and conveyor belts. For the packaging process our main concern was how quickly the guillotine could cut the bars and how fast they could be wrapped. Creating this processes also entailed creating block flow, process flow, and piping and instrumentation diagrams. I was personally responsible for mocking up all of the diagrams in AutoCAD. Along with the diagrams we were also to create a mass and energy balance using Microsoft Excel.When the project reached a satisfactory level a PROFORMA and a Hazard and Operability study were conducted to examine the profitability and safety of our process, respectively. Once these were completed we were to create a 9 panel poster to be presented at San Jose State University's Graduate and Research Project day alongside 12 other teams of our classmates. At this event our team was presented with the "Best Undergraduate Poster" award.