Helping the Family and Oneself – How an ERG Scholarship Benefited a Current PG&E Employee

By Tony Khing

The deadline to apply for PG&E Employee Resource Group scholarships is Feb. 12 (The PrideNetwork ERG scholarship deadline is Jan. 31.) More than 120 scholarships totaling nearly $300,000 are available. Scholarships are available to college-bound high school and current college and continuing education students living in Northern and Central California.

For Alyssa Piring, being awarded a college scholarship from PG&E’s Samahan Employee Resource Group had two benefits.

For starters, the scholarship helped fund her education at UCLA, where she graduated with a bachelor’s in sociology. In addition, Piring was exposed to how a big company like PG&E “celebrates employee diversity,” helps those “with faces like mine succeed in different careers” and “empowers the local community.”

PG&E employee Alyssa Piring with Daly City Mayor Juslyn Manalo at the 2019 Samahan ERG scholarship ceremony.

Piring, a Hayward native who attended Tennyson High School, found out about the scholarship through her school’s college resource center. “It was one of the few scholarships that was not only Filipino-based,” she said, “but was open to all high school seniors regardless of college major.”

There was also another benefit. “(The scholarship) was more than just funds for tuition,” said Piring, who now works at PG&E as a gas program manager. “I wanted to make sure my educational aspirations wouldn’t be a burden on my parents, who were simultaneously dealing with my mother’s cancer treatment.”

When Piring was awarded the scholarship in 2006, she appreciated one of PG&E’s core values.

“Being awarded the Samahan ERG scholarship was my first exposure to a large group of Filipino-American professionals outside the healthcare industry,” Piring said. “I met first generation Filipino-Americans like myself who were engineers, analysts and directors. It was refreshing to see faces like mine succeed in different careers.

“The Samahan ERG was the only organization who awarded me a scholarship that invited me and my family to a banquet to celebrate my achievements,” she added. “It meant a lot to me that I was able to talk to members of the organization, meet other leaders of the Filipino-American community and give a little speech to thank my family for their support.”

After Piring graduated from UCLA, she worked at various jobs for more than five years before returning to PG&E as a contractor for two years before she was hired full-time in Gas Operations.

Based on Piring’s comments, she made the right choice by getting that Samahan ERG scholarship and eventually returning to PG&E.

“Aside from the scholarship, my participation in Samahan has been a great networking tool for me,” she said. “I’ve reconnected with past PG&E employees I met as a high school senior who’ve offered me valuable career advice and met new folks who have become great friends.

“Not many companies have resource groups specific to Filipino-American employees,” Piring concluded. “I consider myself lucky to have found one at PG&E.”