David Iberkleid

David Iberkleid is an entrepreneur and a recent graduate of the MSIS program at SILS. David says that while at SILS, the school provided four key ingredients he needed to start his own business:

1. The capacity to stay on top of future trends yet solve current usability problems;
2. The computer programming training under a CALA fellowship;
3. The opportunity to serve the community through Davis Library's Community Workshop Series; and
4. The eligibility to take courses at Kenan-Flagler School of Business.

"A couple months before graduating, I took a close look at all the skills, knowledge and experience I had gained the past two years, plus all the skills I had brought with me to SILS," said David. "Putting them all together, I finally felt I could walk down the aisle, graduate and start something great.

"To my advantage, my background is very diverse. I am bi-lingual and consider myself multi-cultural. But the experience at SILS gave me a powerful boost. Today I run WhyEquals, an information laboratory helping to inform communities. Among other things, we've adapted text messaging technology to engage the hard-to-reach Latino community -- with impressive results!  Being bi-lingual and focusing on usability helps, but the proximity to the Triangle's brain-power, know-how, and entrepreneurial events has proved essential. The networking in the Triangle is also great and we've been able to connect to well-established local and national Hispanic institutions and mediums.

"I picked SILS out of 12 other schools and will always be extremely glad I did."

For links to David's most recent news mentions, please go to: front page: http://www.whyequals.com/CH_News_20110713.pdf
continued: http://www.whyequals.com/CH_News_20110713_continued.pdf