Jonathan Wise ’25
Data Science major with Leadership Sequence
One of the biggest reasons Jonathan “Jonny” Wise ’25 chose Claremont McKenna College was the community. He thought it would be easy to connect with professors and peers. Now, as the senior Data Science major looks back on his experience, he finds he was right.
“The personal and professional relationships have been the highlight of my time at CMC, for sure,” he said. “Over the past four years, I have met so many wonderful people here. I very much enjoy being in a community of hardworking, talented people.”
Wise said it’s hard to single out a favorite professor. “I feel very fortunate that I have too many good options to pick from.”
But he gave a special shout out to Ran Libeskind-Hadas, Kravis Professor of Integrated Sciences: Computational Biology and Founding Chair of the Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences. “He has been instrumental in my development and growth here at CMC—always enabling me to explore my curiosities and passions. And he is just a wonderful person and an exceptional professor. He rocks!”
Wise, who is following a Leadership Sequence with his major, said he appreciates CMC’s emphasis on constructive dialogue—“a foundational tool of teamwork.”
“I think one of the responsibilities of leaders is to enable those around them to achieve and grow,” he said. “So, to me, responsible leadership is the awareness of these responsibilities and the willingness to accept your role in supporting those around you.”
Most of Wise’s work at CMC has been in the startup space, and he plans to continue on that trajectory in San Francisco after graduation. In addition to attending numerous startup events on campus—organized by the Claremont Accelerator, Randall Lewis Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (RLCIE), and the Hive—he has pursued internships and other programs that have furthered his knowledge and experience in programming and entrepreneurship.
During his gap year and part of his first year at CMC, Wise worked virtually on the AI and automation team of a Filipino tech company, PointWest Technologies.
The following year, he joined RLCIE and participated in their pitch competition. “I placed third for a business I was working on, providing automated website creation and deployment for creatives looking to sell products and bookings online.”
As a junior, he worked on an open-source AI DJ through a program called Buildspace, while he attended CMC’s Silicon Valley Program through the Center for Global Education.
Incidentally, Wise is a DJ who provided music for some of the event’s groups on campus this past fall. He’s also a big fan of intramural sports and was part of CMC’s three-time championship Intramural Volleyball team.
Wise attended the Computer Science program AIT in Budapest, Hungary for the second semester of junior year. “The program was co-founded by a Hungarian software entrepreneur Gábor Bojár, and one of the other co-founders is Professor Libeskind-Hadas from KDIS,” he said. “Gábor taught an entrepreneurship class where I had the opportunity to meet a lot of other software engineers and entrepreneurs, as well as visit local startups and VCs.”
This past summer, he further developed his software engineering skills during an internship at Goldman Sachs in New York.
And this past fall, he started working on a project with the Integrated Sciences department to implement an AI system to increase student learning, retention, and engagement. The project was accepted into the Claremont Accelerator program. “We’ve had the opportunity to work with some really cool people, including Robert Gentleman, one of the co-creators of the programming language R.”
“I’m also in an entrepreneurship workshop at Harvey Mudd College taught by two alumni, Benson Tsai and Josh Jones,” he added. “That has also been a super awesome experience, and they have done a great job fostering an entrepreneurship community there.”
While continuing his work on AI and mobile app development, Wise is looking at future career options. “I’m looking at continuing to work in the AI/Full stack development space and possibly attending grad school to study Large Language Models (LLM),” he said.