Overview
Amish Harmeshkumar Patel — known on campus as Max — grew up fluent in four languages and conversant in four more, an early lesson that the same idea can be expressed a dozen different ways depending on who is listening. That instinct shows up everywhere in his work today: as a senior at Wichita State University's Barton School of Business, he has deliberately built a path that speaks two languages of its own — Information Technology & Management Information Systems, and Finance — rather than choosing to speak only one.
Max is, first and foremost, a builder. As a Student Tech at GoCreate, WSU's Innovation Campus makerspace, he has logged more than 2,000 hours helping close to 100 members, students, and industry professionals turn raw ideas into finished things — walking first-time entrepreneurs through their first logo cut on the laser, helping a student CNC a senior project, keeping the woodshop, metal shop, 3D printing, and electronics studios running smoothly. On his own time, he has plasma-cut aluminum wedding signage, CNC-carved a cherry-and-walnut chessboard, and run a small laser-engraving business — hands-on proof that he would always rather build the thing than just talk about it.
That same build-first instinct drives his professional work. As IT Intern at BG Products, Inc., he diagnosed a structural EDI mismatch between two enterprise systems and built the Crystal Reports to fix it, mapped a five-server ERP infrastructure into documentation the whole team could use, and caught a data-matching bug hiding across 2,600+ SKUs. As Chief Investment Officer of the Cummings Student Managed Investment Fund, he leads three specialized teams managing a $320K+ portfolio, authored an 11-part strategic vision for the fund's future, and helped guide CSMIF to a G.A.M.E. Forum investment competition win in New York. Whether the system in front of him is a fund or a supply chain, Max's approach stays the same: understand it completely, then make it better.
Outside the classroom and the trading floor, Max rides, spars — a boxer and judoka at heart — and shoots photography built around presence rather than faces. He is drawn to objects and plants that carry history, and to problems that reward patience over shortcuts. A campus strengths assessment once described him as a “Blueprint Spark”: precision and drive grounded by a spark of curiosity — a fair summary of how he moves through most rooms. As he finishes his degree in May 2027, Max is looking for exactly what he has built his path around: a place where technology and finance meet, and where craftsmanship still counts.