Alumnus of the Year

From Closet Gamer to Millionaire: How Kevin Chou Made It Big

The only child of Taiwanese immigrants, Kevin Chou grew up bored and lonely in Moorpark, a sleepy middle-class suburb of Los Angeles.

As he recalls it, he spent much of the ’80s in his parents’ dining room playing 8-bit floppy disk games on his father’s IBM XT.

“I had no friends. I had video games,” Chou says today with a wry laugh.

“It’s very surreal,” says Chou, “to go from being a closet gamer to watching a whole generation cheer on, and aspire to be, gamer-athletes—we’ve all won. And it hasn’t been that long.”

From the Summer 2019 issue of California.

Game Changer: Introducing Cal Alumnus of the Year, Kevin Chou

A lot of people talk about giving back. Kevin Chou did it.

Along with wife Connie Chen, Chou ’02, gave $25 million to his alma mater to help build Haas-Berkeley’s 80,000-square-foot Chou Hall, which is now hailed as a “state of the art learning laboratory” for the renowned business school, and one of the greenest buildings in America.

Posted on May 22, 2019 - 10:10am

A Life And Career By Design: Qualcomm Exec Paul Jacobs

At an age when most boys are learning to throw a curveball and struggling with elementary algebra, Paul Jacobs was writing code. Simple code, to be sure, but code good enough to let him play the video game Adventure with his dad on a clunky, early laptop.

It’s no surprise that Jacobs, who was in sixth or seventh grade when he wrote his first programs, grew up to be an engineer.

From the Summer 2017 Adaptation issue of California.
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