2016 High Road Fellows

Photo: Hal Schwimmer

Hal Schwimmer

BSILR ‘18

Bak USA

Pleasantville, NY

Bak USA is a social enterprise that seeks to further universal education, employment, and connectivity through affordable tablets and smartphones. The company assembles high-tech tablet PC’s by hand in Buffalo for educational use all over the world. Bak USA products are made by people, for people. They hope to bridge educational gaps around the world by providing reliable, user-friendly instruments to learn at an affordable price. Bak USA sells tools, not gadgets.

Work Highlights

  • Member of the human resources team that worked to standardize employment procedures across all departments.
  • Created a series of flow charts that display the complete employment process starting from the creation of a job opening to the end of an employee’s tenure with the company.
  • Developed a professional presentation with detailed standardized hiring, onboarding, and recruitment procedures in order to understand and convey what makes the organization’s HR practices successful in the long run and readily replicable as the company expands.

In their own words

“I learned that Buffalo’s path to recovery is much more optimistic than I thought. It depends on competent politicians and a more educated public. For my career path, I now know I want to go into either consulting or HR consulting. While working for a social enterprise, I did not get the full scope of community-based organizations but I certainly saw their value. The other fellows brought up issues that I would not have thought about when carrying out my projects.”

Impact

"We very much enjoyed Hal’s input and hard work. He was a great team member and was integral in helping us improve and streamline our systems."

Eva Bak, Director of Administration
Bak USA