SJSU Students Mentor and Support Small Business Owners at OpenAI Workshop

On August 27, OpenAI hosted an AI literacy and workforce development workshop for small business owners in San José. Six SJSU students served as AI mentors, working alongside the OpenAI team to provide hands-on support and guidance to nearly 100 business owners and other participants.

The California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development and the Silicon Valley Small Business Development Center also partnered with OpenAI on the event, which was designed to give business owners practical strategies for integrating AI workflows into their daily work.

Dean of the College of Information, Data and Society Mehrdad Aliasgari worked to identify and recommend students with strong AI experience to serve as mentors for the event. The opportunity gave students a space to apply their skills while helping the region's small-business community. SJSU President Cynthia Teniente-Matson visited the workshop to meet with SJSU student mentors, local business owners and OpenAI representatives, and to also observe the hands-on portion of the event.

For Shriansh Chari, '26 MS Applied Data Science, curiosity played a big role in his decision to become a mentor for the event.

"I really wanted to learn more about how OpenAI is helping people and businesses out here," says Chari. "Helping out local small businesses was something that got me interested, because they're really important to our community."

In addition to supporting small business owners throughout the workshop, Andreah Cruz, '26 MS Data Intelligence, enjoyed hearing representatives from OpenAI Academy give presentations on prompting, responsible-use practices, data analysis and customer communication throughout the morning.

"I learned a lot of new things about the application and how to prompt better," says Cruz.

After listening to a presentation on the foundations of ChatGPT, business owners had a chance to work on a hands-on project. During this portion, participants selected a recurring business task, developed an initial AI-assisted workflow and tested and refined it with support from OpenAI facilitators and SJSU student mentors.

Ethan Le, '26 Computer Science, enjoyed working with different business owners throughout the hands-on portion of the day.

"I got a chance to meet a lot of new people and to offer them support," says Le. "It also really helped me to practice articulating myself to others."

Jackson Chow is from Communication Academy, which offers public speaking and debate classes for elementary and middle schools students. His Cupertino-based business has been in operation for the past 25 years.

"I've been using large language models to automate our business processes. So this event has really given me a review of the foundation of OpenAI, along with what new features are on the way," says Chow. "It's a way for me to keep up with what's new and automate my processes, so that I can save time."

Harish Chander, Strategic Advisor to the Chief Information Officer in SJSU's Information Technology Services, helped coordinate SJSU's participation in the event and saw firsthand the enthusiasm of both the student mentors and local business owners.

"This is exactly the kind of experience we want to create for our students, an opportunity to take what they are learning and apply it to real-world challenges while working alongside industry leaders and helping our community," says Chander. "It demonstrates how SJSU can bring together student talent, emerging technology and regional economic development in a way that benefits everyone. "

Interim Vice President of Information Technology and CIO Chris Wessells is thrilled about SJSU's collaborative partnership with OpenAI.

"Our partnership with OpenAI to accelerate AI adoption among small businesses is a quadruple win. SJSU students gain hands-on experience solving real-world business challenges, while local businesses build the skills and knowledge needed to apply AI effectively," says Wessells. "In addition, the collaboration strengthens the partnership between OpenAI and San José State University, enhancing both organizations' visibility and demonstrating a shared commitment to advancing responsible, human-centered AI in service of innovation and knowledge creation."