Weinberg in the World

In this episode of the Weinberg in the World podcast, Aimee Resnick '26 interviews Priscilla Vail-Caldwell '85, founder of Vail-Caldwell Projects. Priscilla shares her undergraduate experiences at Northwestern, including impactful classes and internships that shaped her career in the arts. She discusses her current role as an advisor and curator, helping clients build art collections with a focus on research and quality. Aimee: Welcome to the Weinberg in the World Podcast, where we bring you stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. My name is Aimee Resnick and I am your student host of the special podcast episode. I'm a senior studying social policy at Northwestern University who plans to pursue public administration in my home state of Colorado. Today, I'm very excited to be speaking with Priscilla Vail-Caldwell, who is the founder of the consulting firm, Vail-Caldwell Projects. Thank you, Priscilla for taking the time to speak with me today. Priscilla: Thank you, Aimee, for having me. Aimee: Of course. To start us off today, we were wondering if you can just tell us a little bit more about your time at Northwestern as an undergraduate in terms of what did you study and what were the impactful experiences you had at Northwestern that led you to your current career? Priscilla: I think one thing to note is that I came to Northwestern following a year of study abroad in France. As a senior, I studied in France, and then I came to Northwestern with an idea that I wanted to be at a big university near a city. Logistics had something to do with actually my choice of university, and I think it had to do with the fact that I had this experience that had really kind of opened my mind up about the world, essentially. There was that, and for some reason I declared an art history major very early on in my time at Northwestern. I think as a freshman, I had already decided that that was what I was going to do. You had asked what was one of the transformative experiences that I had at school, and I was thinking that ironically, in a way, I think it may have been a studio art class that I took because it was very rigorous and I enjoyed it, and I had a lot of respect for the other students in the class who I thought were gifted than I was. And I then realized that that wasn't really what I should be doing, but I still wanted to be involved in the arts, and I wanted to be involved in art history and working with objects. I always enjoyed those big introductory courses, sort of identifying paintings, and it seemed like a game to me, really. And I enjoyed that. And then frankly, learning about history through the lens of art. That was always something that kind of compelled me. I think another thing that I did while I was on campus, and I do think this is something that big universities offer, especially ones like Northwestern that are near a city like Chicago, are the opportunities to work in different situations outside of the university campus. I always worked, while I was at Northwestern, I waitressed, I did all sorts of things in order to earn extra money, and I found a job at a gallery downtown in Chicago called Frumkin & Struve. It's no longer in existence, but at the time, it was one of the big galleries downtown. And I worked there every Saturday. And then I had time in my schedule during the week, and I would work there usually one day during the week as well. And Bill and Debbie Struve were the principals of the gallery, and they gave me a lot... I mean, for a college student, they gave me a lot of responsibility, and they really brought me into the fold in a sense. So, I was included in all sorts of things, and the dinners for the artists, and I got to meet a lot of the artists that they were working with. And it was exciting and engaging, and I thought that that seemed like the kind of life I wanted to lead. I enjoyed the interaction with the artists primarily. Aimee: Oh, I totally empathize with your studio art experience, I'm taking painting right now, and there are some incredible painters in that class. But I also wanted to just say, I think that your experience having a really meaningful internship in Chicago is a good reminder to students to look outside the Northwestern bubble for opportunities as they're going through school. And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about what you do at Vail-Caldwell Projects now that you're in New York. Priscilla: Well, I'm an advisor and a curator, and I've had my own advisory business now for the last... I think it's been about eight years. I've always been in the professional... I've always been in the commercial art world, but in this iteration, I advise private people who are building collections on acquiring works of art for the collection. We're building things oftentimes from the ground up. Oftentimes, I will start working on a project with somebody and there will be nothing essentially, and we will work on that together and build something that is meaningful and very specific in every single case with every client that I work with. All my projects are very, very different. There are clients that I work with who buy only the work of one artist. There are clients that I work with who focus very specifically on certain kinds of movements in, for instance, the California Light and Space Movement. There are people who are interested in collecting works by female artists. It all ends up having very different kinds of focuses. Each one of the projects allows me to apply my research skills and learn a lot alongside whoever it is that I'm advising, oftentimes about different aspects of the art world. I see what I do, as always, very research-based and obviously sort of a search for quality and also to include different voices in any kind of project that I work on. I also have a very strong background in modern American painting. I have this kind of hybrid experience where I oftentimes advise people on the purchase of work by contemporary and emerging artists, but I have a strong background in historic American painting. Many of my curatorial projects have been focused on the works of some of the seminal painters of the 20th century. I've done a series of exhibitions at Paul Kasmin Gallery on the work of Stuart Davis. I worked with Kasmin on a number of projects. Another one was a exhibition of sculptures by Elie Nadelman, who is artist who came to the United States from Europe and is considered part of the canon of modern American painting or sculpture, really. He's not a painter, he is a sculptor. I've also done projects with smaller galleries where I've curated relevant shows of young, relatively unknown artists. And that's always fun. I enjoy doing that. That's really a wonderful way for me to dive in and learn about what's going on out there amongst a group of recent graduates. So that's always exciting and I enjoy that kind of work very, very much. And currently, I think one of the things that I've just started working on is a collaboration with a gallery in London called Pi Artworks and an artist who they represent, whose name is Jyll Bradley. So I also advise the estate of Stuart Davis. Aimee: Yes, it does. And I have a related question, which is that you mentioned having worked with a lot of different genres and periods and different artists in this realm of art history. And while you were going through your education in your early career, was there a certain artist or movement that was particularly influential or touching to you? Priscilla: I'm going to answer that question by giving you a little bit more of my background. I left Northwestern, I moved to New York, and I took a job at a small gallery. And that year of working there were like three people on staff. That was an experience that taught me that I wanted to go back to school and learn to become more expert on something. I wasn't sure exactly what that was going to be, but I needed more skills actually in order to have the sort of job in the art world that I envisioned. I was accepted at Williams, which a small... Everybody's always confused because it's a college, but it has two graduate programs, and one of them is an art history program that's associated with the Clark Art Institute. I was one of 12 students in that following year, entering in to a two-year program. I had the good fortune of... Linda Nochlin was the visiting professor at the time who, if you're not familiar with Linda Nochlin, she was, she died a few years ago, one of the great feminist revisionist art historians of her time. And so studying with Linda, I began to look into the histories of certain artists like Eva Hesse and Jackie Winsor. Eva Hesse, of course, has been dead for many, many years. Jackie Winsor just died recently. At that moment in time, and I'm still very moved by the work and very interested in it, but I was very much focused on the work of minimalist and post-minimalist female sculptors to be extremely specific. That experience studying with Linda and looking into the histories of these women and the difficulties that they faced in a world that discriminates against women was eye-opening for me. And it's informed everything that I've probably done since. Aimee: Well, that's very interesting. And I think it's fascinating how some of these formative pieces of art really brought your eye into the future and your current work. And I know at the Block Museum on campus, we've had several exhibits that kind of follow in line with the types of art that you've just described in terms of the revisionist view of art history, the modernism with their Arabic art exhibit not too long ago. And I'm going to transition us to that because you're currently a member of the Block Museum Advisory Committee, and I just want to hear more about the work that you do there and then how you use that as a way to bring volunteerism and philanthropy into your professional career. Priscilla: I have always felt that volunteering my time to certain organizations in the art world is as important as the work that I do professionally. The idea of giving back, which I think frankly is something that either is kind of... For me, it's something that was ingrained in me as a young person. I try to only align myself with organizations whose missions I agree with. And that kind of mission usually includes a sort of mentorship for young artists so that there's a teaching element, which I think is really important. And also this sense of inclusion and diversity in institutions at every level. It's not just the artists that you're showing, but also in integration into the organization itself so that it represents the world in a sense. I mean, that's kind of big, but I think you get the gist of what I'm saying. I sit on the advisory board, and I mean, I think that I help in a number of different ways, but I have a feeling that my experience in the commercial art world and my interaction with lots of different artists and different galleries helps the director and the curatorial department in different ways. I can shed some insight sometimes that is useful. And of course, there are other people on the advisory board, not just me, who have similar experiences. My colleague Steve Henry, who is a classmate of mine, is one of the directors, one of the partners, not directors at Paula Cooper Gallery here in New York, so he sits on the advisory board with me as well. I think Lisa has been very wise in the way that she's chosen the members of her board, where we all contribute important things in different ways. Aimee: Absolutely. And I'm curious, outside of the Block, what other organizations do you volunteer your time to? Priscilla: Right now, the Block is my focus, but I was for a long time on the board of an organization here in New York. It's actually on Long Island City called Sculpture Center, which is a Kunsthalle and a place that essentially acts as an exhibition space oftentimes for artists who live outside the United States to have their first museum exhibition here in the US. It's a place of discovery, I think for a lot of people. It's a place that is very research-based, and they have a very knowledgeable curatorial staff that is very involved in the international art world. They do that. And then they also do a very, what I think is a really important annual exhibition that is an open call to artists that is directed at younger emerging artists, again, who haven't exhibited in an institutional space. And there are funds provided and mentorship provided. And it's a kind of learning lab for a group of artists who then create a group show. There's also a curator who's hired from outside who comes up with a theme for the show, and then they work together to put on these annual exhibitions. And they're amazing shows, and they do great work, and it's a very rich environment. Aimee: Next time I'm in New York, I'd love to come see the gallery. That is so interesting. Priscilla: It's a beautiful space. It's a beautiful, beautiful space in Long Island City. I would be happy to take you there, so let's do that. Aimee: Thank you. Priscilla: Yeah. Aimee: I think we're going to pivot a little bit from your specific career more to the field of art history on the whole, and a big part of being in art history is curating relationships with your clients, which you mentioned previously. What is your advice for students who are looking to foster quick relationships with other people, be it interviewers, co-workers, anyone in the professional world that they need to have a really strong bond with? Priscilla: Well, I will say that when... I did a lot of research on people before I meet them, so that at least I understand what it is that they do, what some of their interests might be. I feel like... I mean, in any case, in any field, if you're going into an interview, if you're meeting somebody for the first time, if it's an important engagement of any sort, it's really good to know who it is, who you're talking to. I think first of all, I would say do your research and figure out, find some interesting things to talk about that will interest the person who you are meeting with. And also will give them a sense that you actually know who they are. I think that's always... That's just flattering for one thing, and it also makes you look like you've paid attention. I used to take every opportunity to go out and do things, and I mean, I go to a lot of openings. I get myself into situations where I will meet people. I think that it can be uncomfortable. You might not know anybody where you're going. You could feel sort of nervous and shy, but I think you have to push yourself to be in situations where you might not feel comfortable, but something will come out of it almost inevitably, and you'll walk away knowing somebody who you didn't know before, and you never know where that's going to lead you. I'm a big believer in that, and I sort of feel like I have two personas. I have the person who doesn't like to do those sorts of things, and then I have the person who has to get up in the morning and go to work and for whom it's a requirement. I think those are two bits of advice that I would have. I mean, for students at Northwestern, of course, if they're looking to create networks for themselves, I mean, they have one, right? I mean, you all have an amazing network through the university, and you have professors who want to support and help you. Again, even though I think sometimes it's difficult to push yourself to go in and talk to your professors, they are there for that reason and they want to support the student body and see them be successful and help you to find things outside of the university that will engage you and also perhaps end up being a path towards a career. I don't know if all of that necessarily answers your question, but you've got... I think sometimes you wake up in the morning and you think that you don't have the tools at your fingertips, but you do and you just have to press the button. Aimee: That's good advice. I think a lot of times students at Northwestern are too timid to take advantage of many of those resources. That's really good advice. I have a little bit of background for this last question, which is that I, myself, was an artist history major for two years, dropping the major because I realized I was never going to get a job in art history because I don't necessarily have a family background or the connections to leverage to get a job in art history. And I was just curious, understanding that art history enrollment is rapidly declining. The cover story of the Nation magazine in early April was about how art history enrollment is declining. What advice would you offer to people who might not traditionally undertake a career in art history who are interested in becoming art historians or people in the art world? Priscilla: I think that oftentimes when people approach the idea of being an art historian or being in the art world, that they don't think broadly enough about all of the different things that happen in the art world. Of course, the glamorous jobs are to be a curator at a museum and to be a director or a principal at a gallery. And frankly, not everybody... I mean, as far as gallery work is concerned, really... I mean, there's curation going on, but it's sales primarily. So that might not be for everybody for one thing. Sales is not exactly the job that everybody wants to have. But what I've been thinking about a lot recently, and certainly a lot of the people in the art world who I rely very, very heavily on and whose expertise is impressive are there are registrarial departments at galleries and museums. Those are people who work with the objects and who have to deal with whether it's insurance or packing or moving objects from one country to another. And all of these things, while it may sound less glamorous, are still very interesting and complicated. And so those are jobs, I think that certainly registrarial departments, we depend on them. They're extremely important. And they have their own networks as well, by the way. There's also art restoration and working directly with objects, which is an interesting kind of combination of the scientific and the art historical. Especially for people who are interested in the sciences, there's an application for that in the art world. And there's a lot of ways of... There's all sorts of things that happen like carbon dating and various different X-ray techniques and all sorts of things that help to say define an object isn't really what I mean. But you have to understand organic chemistry in order to be a painting conservator. I think that we should think maybe differently about the art world a little bit than we do sometimes. And art history will inform all of those things. I mean, all of those people who are working in those different departments need to understand art history. They probably wouldn't even be doing that work unless they did. But you can come at it from a different angle. And I think that that's something that should probably be more emphasized. We need more art conservators out there. We really do. And there are a lot of objects to work on. Aimee: Definitely. Definitely. And I have one more follow-up question on that, which is my worst job I ever worked was at the American Museum of Western Art. I love the museum. I think it's a beautiful museum. I love pictures of cowboys, my favorite genre, but at the same time, it was just scanning documents all day as an unpaid internship. And I think that finances are often a really big barrier to entry for people in art history, given the precedence of unpaid internships, years long fellowships where you're not compensated. I'm just going to narrow in on my question, which is what advice would you give to people from non-traditional backgrounds who want to pursue a job in art history at all? Priscilla: Well, a lot of graduate programs now are fully funded, so that might be something to explore a little bit. I know that for instance, Williams, there are a lot of... I don't know that every single one of them, but many of those students are fully funded and also receive help with living expenses, health insurance, all of their expenses are accounted for. That isn't exactly what you're asking me. But I do think that it's good to... If art history is something that you're serious about, and frankly, if something you're serious about an advanced degree is something to consider, there are programs that will essentially fully fund you to study. So that's one potential way. The art world's a little hard actually in terms of entry-level jobs, and people aren't really paid a living wage. And I would like to know a way around that, too. It's a funny thing. It does prevent a lot of people who are gifted and able and should have access to the field, it probably prevents them from entering the field and that's our loss really. Aimee: I totally agree. And hopefully, we'll see some change in that arena during our lifetimes. Priscilla: I hope so. Yeah. I wish I had a better answer to your question, but also I think that when people go in for interviews, sometimes you are hesitant to be realistic about what you need. And I do think that there's no harm in being forthright about that. That's just a practicality, and you should expect it. Aimee: Yes, self-advocacy is very important. And I think that leads us to our very last question. This is our closeout question we ask every interviewee, which is what advice would you give to a senior in college who is about to graduate? From any field, from any major, what advice do you have for young people in this transitional moment? Priscilla: Well, try not to be discouraged. The world is in upheaval right now, but it won't remain that way. Or I think that we hope that it won't, and we've got to believe that it won't. And that it's funny. This is a kind of big question right now, Aimee. Also, don't close yourself off to opportunities that may not fit exactly into the vision of what you have for yourself. I mean, we do meander sometimes, and I think that it's actually important to because you learn a lot about yourself when you sort of take a fork in the road that you didn't expect that you might. I guess proceed without fear if it's possible, and have confidence in yourself. I mean, anybody who's graduating from Northwestern has done an amazing... They're capable. You're able. You can go out there and get it done. So yeah, I guess we all just remain... I know it sounds sort of like trite, but be positive. Aimee: Absolutely. That's all we can do. All we can do is control our own- Priscilla: Yeah. And fight and stand up for the things that you believe in. Give me the opportunity. Say it, say it out loud. Say what you mean. Don't be scared that somebody might disagree with you. Aimee: Absolutely. It's tough to keep that in mind with the current challenges the university is facing, but that is very good advice. I just want to say in general, thank you so much for your great advice and for chatting with us today. I think this podcast will be so helpful to many students who are interested in either going into art history or just looking at the state of the world right now. So thank you for being with us. Priscilla: Aimee, thank you. You're a very impressive young woman, I appreciate the invitation and it was fun talking to you. Aimee: Thank you. So to all of our listeners, thank you for listening to this special episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast. We hope you have a great day and go Cats.

Preena: Welcome to the Weinberg in the World Podcast, where we bring stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. My name is Preena Shroff and I'm your student host of this special Weinberg in the World episode. I'm a third year student majoring in neuroscience and global health studies with a minor in data center. Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Natasha Phillips, who graduated from Weinberg College in 2000 with a Bachelor of Arts in sociology and biology. Natasha currently serves as chief marketing officer for GE Healthcare, leading teams that help healthcare providers design treatment plans for their patients. Natasha, thank you so much for being here with us today. Natasha: Thanks for having me, Preena. It's a pleasure. Preena: We are so excited to learn about your work in healthcare marketing, but would love to start out with how your career path was shaped by your time at Northwestern. Maybe you can tell us more about your undergraduate experience, what were some impactful classes, extracurriculars, or mentorships opportunities that you had which impacted your post-graduate career? Natasha: Yeah. You're making me think a little bit, because I got to go back in time. As an undergraduate, I was super lucky, having both a biology and a sociology major, it gave me the ability to see a very wide range of classes. I wasn't 100% sure actually what I wanted to do. I knew I was somewhat interested in the sciences. I didn't actually know I would be that interested in the social sciences, but I took a couple of classes. One in particular was the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity with Charlie Moskos, which actually made me decide to ... That was the reason I became a sociology major. I just got super lucky, I loved that class. It's funny, if I ever had a second life, I always say I would have loved to have gone back and been a sociology professor. But I didn't take that path, I went more with the actual biology side of things. I was weighing, do I want to do research? I actually was really interested in molecular biology, primarily because in the late '90s, which is a very long time ago to our students who are listening, but for me that was a time very formative because they were sequencing the human genome. There was a lot of promise in the space, not only of biology, but more specifically molecular biology and how it is linked to genetics and genomics as we think about the impact on healthcare. That really interested me to the point where I really was considering actually getting my PhD in molecular biology. Some of my favorite classes were the ones in which I had exposure to research, because I got to see the importance of just the impact that research can have. And the ability to be able to find a practical application, even if it's on a very specific question, to really contribute to the body of knowledge. Ultimately ended up being unsure what I wanted to do right after undergrad, so I went into healthcare consulting in which I wanted to be able to figure out, do I want to go towards the more business side of healthcare and thinking about commercializing healthcare and science from the industry side of things? Or to the academic side and actually get my PhD, and think about contributing to science and healthcare in that realm. I did have exposure, both in consulting as well as in research. I started in a research program at the University of Chicago in molecular biology after doing consulting so I could see both sides. And ultimately, actually, that was when I made the decision to focus much more so on the business side of it and to get my MBA, and to move into healthcare marketing. That led me into the career in which I've had today, in which I've been very lucky to have over 15 years working at very large multinational healthcare companies, primarily in sales and marketing roles, bringing innovation in healthcare to people all over the globe. Preena: Absolutely. Wow, yeah. I think your path is actually not only a common path that students seek out, but also something that students might end up finding themselves in, even if they do experience a career switch in their life. That's really interesting to hear about. I have another question for you, more specifically job-oriented. Healthcare is constantly evolving, so maybe you can tell us a little bit about how your marketing approach has changed since you began your career? Natasha: Yeah. I love that question, Preena, because what really is happening is healthcare is evolving and the function of marketing is evolving constantly. I am really lucky that, both in the subject matter that I basically have decided to focus in, which is healthcare and ultimately the innovation around healthcare, but also have a really cool and exciting function that continues to evolve. I was lucky enough during my ... Maybe I'll start with the functional part, I'll start with marketing first, and then I'll talk about healthcare. The basic function of marketing has changed significantly over the past 20 years as I've been a marketer, primarily with the advent of digital and social media. It continues now to evolve, as we think about personalized marketing and AI, and what that's going to do. I would say the main changes that I've seen over time has been from a very I would say structured, one size fits all, if you think about it like mass media type of marketing in which there was a time in which you had one singular message and one singular way of approaching individuals, and not a lot of channels to reach them. To now, moving to almost a fully personalized marketing experience, where you have the ability with technology today to be able to say, even if you have thousands of targets, how do you understand the fine differences. There's got to be some generalization amongst those targets, but there's also some fine differences in how people consume their information, care about interacting with your brand, and want to be able to either become loyal brand advocates or detractors. How do you understand what those insights are to create an ongoing personalized journey that evolves over time with the individual as their media consumption and interest in whatever product you're selling changes? That's been one of the coolest innovations to think about, as we think about the function. If I look at healthcare, I've been lucky enough to see innovation across a variety of different segments within healthcare. I'd seen the advent of biologics. If we think about innovation from a healthcare point of view, in basically the last 20 years or so, we've seen drugs like Humira, which started the biologic class and has now exploded into one of the largest categories or segments within healthcare. And the significant impact that that has had on millions of patients, and has changed diseases all the way from skin conditions to much more serious autoimmune type of conditions. I've been lucky enough to see innovation on the diagnostic side, in which I've seen the advent of brand new technologies, including things like multi-plexing. Of taking a single sample, and instead of wanting to get one answer, you can get anywhere from 25 to 30 answers of which virus of which disease somebody has. And the impact that that has had not only on just healthcare, but on infectious disease and vaccines in other parts. For me, what has actually kept me so motivated in healthcare for so long is it isn't just an idea. I get to be part of the teams, and it's a cross-functional team that includes everybody from scientists, research and developers, operations, medical affairs, clinical affairs, marketers, salespeople, finance people, and everybody, I'm sure I'm forgetting some functions. It is such a complex effort to bring innovation like this to market and sometimes can take 10 to 15 years, but when it happens you actually see significant change in healthcare. For me, that's the ability to think even 30, 40 years from now, some of the either diagnostics, devices, or drugs that I've helped to bring to market will really have an impact. Either because it continues to improve healthcare or it was the precursor of future innovation that's going to continue to come because we've paved the way for it, so it's really cool. Preena: Absolutely. That's really incredible. And the way you're able to work with people of many different fields and backgrounds, and then learn from them as well is a really incredible experience, and I hope defines a lot of students' careers in the future as well. Natasha: Yeah. I think just to add to that, the one thing to really keep in mind is I love the interdisciplinary approach that a really good college in arts and sciences like Weinberg does. Because for me, that kind of thinking, although I didn't understand it at the time because I was just a student and I had no clue what I was actually going to do, is something that to this day in my career I think back to and I leverage. It's helped to make me successful, especially in a very large matrix cross-functional organization. It's something that, as all of you who are students potentially listening to this and are thinking, "What might I do in the future?" Really leverage the opportunities that you have to do that kind of interdisciplinary type of work because it will make you much stronger in whatever field you decide to do. Preena: Yeah, absolutely. Going off of that, a bit in the other direction, but what is a common misconception about working in the healthcare marketing industry? Natasha: That is a great question. This is maybe a little controversial, but I'm going to say it. I think there is this perception of big, bad pharma and big, bad healthcare. I think it's something that is an understandable point of view and one which requires probably much more dialogue than what we can answer here. But I'll just leave people with this one thought. Which is if you think about most of the major innovations that have come to healthcare over the last 30 years, whether it's drugs to treat high blood pressure or hypertension, or innovations in diagnostics as I mentioned to be able to not just understand what's happening from blood count, but to be able to look at the molecular and cellular level to treat rare diseases and everything in the middle. Much of that innovation, while it is funded and founded in the basic research that happens at academic and other institutions, has really been driven by the industry. Whether it's the pharmaceutical industry, the med device industry, the diagnostic industry. That requires significant investment and significant time. It also requires a very high failure rate. In some cases, if you have 100 compounds or 100 ideas that you're bringing through, less than 1% of them will sometimes make it to market. There is a significant amount of investment that needs to happen. While there's always optimizations that could happen, I always implore people to think about the fact that the drug that your mother or father is taking today, or that your brother or sister is taking for asthma, didn't exist probably even 20 or 30 years ago because we didn't have the funding and innovation that was coming necessarily maybe from companies that has been pushing that forward. While there is a lot of discussion to be had about healthcare and the rights to healthcare, I think companies like mine, whether it's my current company or previous company, have played a very important role in really helping to improve overall health and healthcare as we think about the impact on people's lives. I just ask people to be open to the fact that there's always a variety of different vantage points and it's always a great healthy dialogue to have. Preena: Of course, yeah. From what you said, it sounds like it's a bit of a trade-off and it's really important to discover where you fit in within that sphere, and learn how to interpret your work and your path in that direction as well. Just realizing what impact you're making and picturing that longterm. Natasha: Yeah, exactly. Preena: Okay. Then, I was also going to ask you about the student perspective, thinking about students today. How would you recommend students cultivate a personal brand? A lot of times people say networking. How do students network authentically, both online and in-person so that they can find the right opportunities or even the right opportunities can find them? Natasha: Yeah, I think it's a really great question. I very much will reiterate the importance of networking because I think that's foundational and fundamental to everything that we do today. In fact, many of you who got into very competitive colleges probably had to figure that out as you were even thinking about how to get into the school that you're in today. That thought process needs to continue as you think about getting your first job, or maybe you're getting your next pre-professional school that you're focused on. I would take that networking to the next step to say I think some of the most effective networking has two really good components. I find this, because I have a lot of people who maybe reach out to me, either through my network or because they're looking for learning about marketing or healthcare, or other topics that maybe I've had some experience with. The first of those two things is really having a genuine brand, and one in which you really own and feel passionate about. The most interesting and coolest networking that I do, even with students today, are the ones in which people are very purposeful about what they are interested in, what they care about, what their brand is. It's probably hard to even think about me as a college student, what is my brand? But you have a brand. You may not know it yet, but you definitely have and can develop a brand. That brand should be whatever you feel truly passionate and genuinely interested in, because that will only I would say help you have much more successful networking and much more genuine connections with the people that you are trying to connect with. Even if that individual maybe doesn't understand or isn't that maybe close to the topic, you'd be shocked how just that genuine authenticity is going to help drive really stronger connections in networking that are going to help both you, as well as the network that you're creating, as you think about the fact that one day you're going to have a network and you're going to want to be able to pay it forward to students the way maybe people are helping you with your decisions and career today. The second one as you think about networking is a lot of times, networking and finding a good fit, whether it's a company or your next pre-professional program, or what you even want to do, is based on having a shared purpose with whoever you're networking with or whatever that institution is. I find the people who come and are most prepared for interviews, in addition to feeling very genuine and knowing what their brand is, are the people who are very clear on what my purpose, either as an institution is, or whatever group I'm part of. They understand that and it is very much akin to who they are, what they're looking for, what makes them passionate. That sense of shared purpose in networking I think is another way in which you can more successfully think about how do you take your decisions or whatever you're going to do next in your career path and be more successful in terms of what you want to do. Then the last thing I would say is don't feel super ... I know everybody's pressured to feel like they know exactly what they want to do and I understand that. I'm sure many of the people who are listening to this are very high performing, have always been very successful in life, have known exactly what they want to do. But there's a lot of benefit to maybe giving yourself the luxury of knowing you have a very long marathon ahead of you, as you think about the decision making in your career choices that you're going to make. If there's ever a time to be open to it, it's probably earlier in your career when you're maybe more willing to not only take some risks, but also be true to what you actually think will be interesting to you over a longterm career. Don't be afraid if it's not going to be a straight line. It might be a really curvy, cool path. At the time, it might feel a little discouraging, but don't be discouraged. Because I would argue, if I look back, some of my coolest decisions were the ones in which it wasn't this straight line, very clear path of what I wanted to do. But rather, I was either more open because of external circumstances or internal motivation to being a little bit more flexible and not so purposeful, and everything must be this in this timeframe. I think if you have some openness to that, it will really help you and probably put a lot less pressure on you as you're thinking about your career. Preena: Right. Yeah, that's really great advice. In terms of winding paths, switching over to your career and more of your day-to-day role, what would say is a challenge or challenges that you often find or encounter in your day-to-day role and how do you approach those? Natasha: That's a good question. My challenges in my day-to-day role. I'm fortunate in which I lead a functional team, so I have the benefit of having an amazing team that I work with every day across a variety of brands and products, across a very diverse portfolio. I've been lucky enough to do that at this current company, which is GE Healthcare, and the previous company I was at which is Abbott. Many times, if I think about the biggest challenges in my day-to-day, it really is around I would say three big areas. The first one is when you are such a large matrix company that is so dependent on your other functional teams, to ensure that you are all very clear on what the goal is, what you're all trying to accomplish, and that you're all rowing in the same direction, and have shared purpose and goals. Often times in our day-to-day, even in companies where you think everybody's on the same team, you can often find that there's actually sometimes a bit of misalignment or competing priorities. Sometimes that's because we're different functions or groups, sometimes it's because we're different segments. Sometimes it's just because we don't understand that shared goal. It's keeping everybody aligned to the mission, strategy, and vision. I would say as marketers actually, I feel like we are big drivers of that in an organization. It's something I always feel very responsible for and want to help my team feel very responsible for. That's the first one. The second one is we work in a very complex landscape. We're highly regulated here in healthcare. We want to do the right thing. Actually, I always tell people I'm so glad that we're highly regulated because the decisions we make actually impact life or death. It's actually for all the right reasons that we have very strict regulatory and approval processes, and then ongoing monitoring of all of our activities from our quality processes to our commercial processes and everything in between. But that can bring a lot of complexity. You've got to navigate a lot of sometimes tough legal and compliance discussions. But at the end of the day, the way we navigate them successfully as a team is really by reminding ourselves that the reason these regulations exist is to keep patients, our own family members who are consuming healthcare every day safe. We're able to do that. I feel we, despite sometimes difficult discussions, always get to the best answer in doing what's right for the patient and what's right for healthcare. Then the third thing, which is I think sometimes hard, is we all come to work every day because we actually care about healthcare and saving lives. That's sometimes really hard to remember when you get stuck in your day-to-day. You can be at a tough meeting, or a really hard strategy review, or a really hard finance review, or maybe you're missing your number in this sales goal. But at the end of the day, those hard days are really worth it because of what ultimately we're bringing to patients all over the globe. Again, there are these challenges, but over a long career I've been able to figure out how to successfully navigate them. So that I feel that even the challenges motivate me to come to work, and figure it out, and be better tomorrow. Better today and tomorrow than I was yesterday and in the past. I try to motivate my teams to think about that in the same way. Preena: Absolutely. Oh, yeah, that was very insightful. I think a lot of these can be applied to any fields, because a lot of times, in healthcare specifically, there is definitely life and death impacts. Then in other fields, people can have those same hard conversations and still need to have that resilience and build up that resilience to come back from that. Natasha: Very true. Very, very true. Probably very similar, just maybe different categories, but very similar discussions that would happen- Preena: Absolutely. Natasha: ... outside of healthcare, too. Preena: Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you very much for sharing this with us and thank you for joining us today. That is all the questions I have. We really value your time, and for coming on and speaking to all of our students. Thank you very much. Natasha: Thank you for having me. It was pleasure to talk to you.  

April: Welcome to the Weinberg in the World Podcast where we bring stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. My name is April and I'm your student host of this special episode of the podcast. I'm a second year student studying physics and integrated science, and I'm looking forward to learning more about our guest's career. Today, I'm excited to be speaking with Rachel Pike who graduated from Northwestern in 2006 and is now COO at Modern Treasury. Thank you, Rachel, for taking the time to speak with me today. Rachel: Nice to be here. Nice to meet you April. April: You too. To start us off today, I was wondering if you could tell us more about your time at Northwestern as an undergrad. What did you study? And how did you get to your current career path? Rachel: Oh, man, two different parts. The easy part is to say what I did at Northwestern, so I majored in chemistry, physical chemistry specifically. I had a minor in African studies through the center or program for African Studies. And I did my honors chemistry work with Franz Geiger, Professor Franz Geiger in the chemistry department. So that's sort of the what. My major extracurricular was Fusion Dance Company. That's where I spent a lot of my time. How I went from there to here is such a circuitous, crazy path. It is not direct. I left Northwestern and did a Gates scholarship, I did a PhD in chemistry at Cambridge. Loved it, but I was not meant to be a professor. You could ask John Pyle or Franz Geiger, both of whom advised me. It's just it takes a very certain wonderful mindset, but it's not me, to be a lifelong academic. So I left academics and got an amazing role in venture capital and got to learn all about startups from the investing side. Did that for just over four years. And in my last couple years, started getting really close to one of our companies and operating with them and ended up launching products for them and got the bug. Realized that that was a better calling, a better match for me, which we can talk more about what I mean by that. And moved into operating, so then I worked for a health tech healthcare software company and then I moved here into FinTech. So it sort of couldn't be more random, but also each step made sense only as one step. It's just as a sum, they lead you very far from where you were. Not normal in any sense, but in the end I just don't think anything is normal. All paths turn out to be good as you make these accumulation of small decisions. April: Yeah, okay. What are the most challenging and rewarding aspects of your current job then? Rachel: There's a lot. The hardest thing in a startup, there's so many things that are hard about startups, growing startups, but prioritization and focus is one of the hardest things. And you have to actually prioritize not doing things you want to do, which is very antithetical to what it's like to be a driven, hungry person and be in a company of 200 driven, hungry people. You want to do everything that you see that seems like a big opportunity and a challenge that we need to fix, but you can't. There just literally is not enough time in the day and there's opportunity cost to lack of focus. So I think the hardest thing is, the phrase I always use with my teams is you have to let that fire burn. You just have to pick things that you know are broken that you're not going to fix, that it's not the highest priority thing to fix or things you want to work on that you know we just can't go work on that thing right now, we have to work on this other thing. So it's very counterintuitive and I would say that's the hardest thing to learn when you enter startups, how to get through that kind of mindset. April: Yeah, prioritization is pretty hard when there's so many options. Rachel: Yeah. Yeah, when there's so many options and when you're hungry and you feel like a small startup is always up against big Goliaths, so there's a billion things you can do to go after companies that are bigger. So I would say that's the hardest in terms of not the content of what we do is the wrong word, but what Modern Treasury builds and how we bring it and sell it in the market and how we run the company. Letting fires burn and ruthless prioritization is the most unnatural part of working for a startup, I would say. On the interpersonal part, so not what we do, but how we do it, like in every stage of life and everywhere I've been, the hardest part of anything is getting really good at giving and receiving feedback. And that is a lifelong, you have to dedicate your life to it and using that to make decisions with people. April: Could you talk a little bit more about what your company does and what your role is? Rachel: Yeah, sure. So I'm chief operating officer of Modern Treasury. Modern Treasury is a payment operations software platform. So we help companies of all sizes, from other startups to huge big public companies, manage their money movement. And it sort of sounds like a back office thing, but really, we actually mostly get bought by product and engineering teams. And those product and engineering teams that are our customers want to do payment stuff. They want to build a digital wallet or embed payments in their application. Or we also serve non-tech companies, so you're buying a house and you need to pay the real estate agent or you're buying a house and you have to go through the title and escrow process on that home purchase. A lot of money moves around in those businesses. In fact, it's core to all of those products to move and manage and track money. So we build the software for that. Complex payment systems get built on top of us and complex payment products. We have an engineering database product called Ledgers, which is how you, with high performance and perfect fidelity, track balances, which is a really hard computer science problem, although it seems that it should be easy. It's a very hard computer science problem. And then you can imagine that as we grow and have more and more data and understanding, we're building more and more AI into our platform, so teams can run in a safe way with AI helping them. So anyway, yeah, it's a complicated thing that we do, but we help companies move and manage their money movement. April: Okay, cool. So how well did college prepare you for this career, do you think? Or what was the most important skill that you learned from college? Rachel: There's so many things that you learn in college as you sort of separate from home life and become your own person. I think there's soft skills and hard skills. I obviously don't use the traditional academic knowledge that I got in my undergrad and graduate experiences in chemistry, not a chemist anymore. But I don't think there's anything that can replace scientific training in how to think and pursue questions and how to separate how to go through a research process and understand and also understand the limits of your knowledge. That is a very profound experience the more advanced you get in science. I didn't even get that advanced. But in understanding the boundaries of what the community of scientists knows and what personally and how to ask questions, build a hypothesis, and go again. And I know that the hypothesis process is something you learn in like second grade or fourth grade or whatever, you go to school, but truly, that process is very hard, like holding yourself to a standard of making a rigorous, very thought out hypothesis and understanding what would prove or disprove that. In a scientific setting in a lab, sometimes it's a little easier to go through that process. Hey, if this experiment works, I'll see X. In a business environment, that's actually very hard. How do you measure? Is that metric actually counting that? What else is getting conflated into these signals and systems? And then almost everything, unless it's something like website clicks or latency or something that's directly measurable, almost all the signal that you get is mediated through people. So not only do you have to go through this process of trying to constantly get to truth, everything that you're trying to pursue is going through people. So I would say academically, that's the longest lasting impression for me. My team gets annoyed because I say things like rate-limiting step all the time, which is a chemistry phrase. So it taught me how to think. I think another very impactful part of my college, two other very impactful parts of my college experience, Fusion was just getting started, I was one of the people that helped get it started. And starting a club that is, very proud to say it's long-standing and I could never audition and get accepted today, is a lot like starting any organization. How do you run things? What is governance like? How do you navigate people? What are the expectations? How do you communicate that? How do you do things excellently? Starting and building a club is very similar to starting and building an organization, it's just we get a lot more complicated with time. So I learned a lot in that process and running rehearsals and putting on a show and what it's like to run an audition process. I have very fond memories of that. And lastly, I would say is I studied abroad for all of junior year. And I don't know if this is true, but someone along the way of me, because chemistry has so many sequential requirements, and it was very hard for me to figure out how to do those requirements and still be away for a year, someone along the way told me I was the only chemistry major who was ever away for a year then. It's probably not true now. I also don't know if that's true, speaking of rigorous hypotheses, so that's an aside. But the experience of being abroad, I was in Tanzania, was obviously profoundly eye-opening. And being in multiple cultural contexts, not just for travel, but for a long period of time with real life, day-to-day life, it just changed my whole perspective on the world. And then same thing, I lived abroad again for my PhD, so I was abroad on and off again for about like five out of six years. It really changed my perspective on the world, my perspective on people, and I only got that opportunity because of college. April: Yeah, college is a great time to study abroad and do those things. Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. April: [inaudible 00:09:31] possibilities, yeah. Also, it's so interesting to hear that you found Fusion or helped found it because it's such a big thing on campus now. Rachel: It's such a huge thing now. April: [inaudible 00:09:39]. Rachel: Yeah, no. We really grew it, but it was small when we started. We were just in parades and doing small shows, and then we finally started putting shows on in Tech my last two years there. It was very fun, really meaningful experience. April: That's great. Yeah. Rachel: Yeah. April: Then you kind of touched a little bit on this, but could you elaborate more on the biggest adjustment you had to make going from undergrad to industry? Rachel: I actually got this piece of advice when I went from my PhD to venture. I went and had coffee. One of the coolest things about Silicon Valley and the technology community is that it's very open and if you ask people for advice, they're really open to giving it and having conversations like this, but times 10. So one of the coffees I had was with someone who had also had a PhD and moved into venture. And he said something to me that has always stuck with me, which is the biggest adjustment you're going to have to make is the complete lack of rigor in business decisions, which is hysterical, and I don't think fully true, which I'll explain, but it is true, the standards of rigor in academic science are completely different than the standards of rigor in making a business decision. So I always think about that moment of you got to get used to the fact that they make decisions with less information. I think that's only partially true. I think one of the reasons is true is what we talked about, that data is often mediated through people, and so it doesn't feel as rigorous. But actually, the decisions you're making about and with people are just as important. It's just different, and that is a very big adjustment. There is not always right. It's not a test or a thesis or whatever, and that's a big change. There's just making a decision and then owning the consequences of the decision and upside of the decision. But that, it's a huge change. So that's what I would say one of the biggest adjustments that I had to make. On a more practical basis, specifically like Silicon Valley and startups, they're just opportunities, they are roles, sorry, environments with very little management structure. That's the whole point, you're doing something from scratch. There's not someone telling you what to do. That's not true if you go into industry and go to a very big technology company or a bunch of industries I've never been in that are managed in totally different ways. That obviously is like two hops from undergrad. I had a PhD and then I had time in investing. But yeah, working without a lot of oversight, also a big change. April: [inaudible 00:11:58]. The training you get from undergrad to grad school and then going to industry, it's a bit of an adjustment, but yeah. Rachel: Yeah. April: It's an interesting problem, how you would apply your scientific training to the business world. Rachel: Yeah. What do we know and what do we not know, is a question I often try and ask myself. In fact, I was thinking about it late last night about something we're trying to figure out in our business. And it's hard because you sometimes feel like you know things that you don't. It's a trick of the brain. April: Then sort of related, but what are some current trends that you're seeing in the industry or in the area that you work or some of the modern day challenges? Rachel: I would be remiss if I didn't say the most enormous trend in technology right now is AI. So there's sort of no other answer you can give them that, this unbelievable explosion in technical capability and then it's application into all kinds of industries. So I don't know, Modern Treasury has been such an interesting ride. One of the things that is interesting about startups is you really cannot predict the world around you. So this tiny company, we're not tiny anymore, but this company that was tiny, I was the first employee, it was just the four of us, just us chickens in a co-working space, trying to build this payment operations company. And in the interim, COVID happened and we could never work together again until many years later. And then Silicon Valley Bank crashed and there were multiple bank failures all over the country. If that had happened two years earlier, it would've taken our business down. As it happened, it accelerated our business like, oh my god, better lucky than good. Now we're going through an AI transformation. Crypto has gone up and down three times in those six and a half years. It's just wild what happens around you and how that affects the work you do day to day. So I don't know. One thing I would say is things are unpredictable. I have never learned that more than in this particular job I'm in now. April: For sure. Would you say that kind of unpredictability is characteristic of working at a startup versus a larger company or even in academia, for example? Rachel: It's a good question. I'm not sure I'm the right person to answer because I've never worked in a huge company. I've always worked in... Investing is also in the business of startups, so I don't think I'm the right person to answer. I think I have a hypothesis that it affects you less. If you're in a big established company where things don't go, the amplitude of the curve isn't quite the same level, I don't think you necessarily feel it as much. AI is happening to everyone no matter where you work, right? I assume you're all using it every day in your undergraduate environment. So that's universal. I think how it affects your job or what you're using it for is probably different. If you're a computer science undergrad, it's really affecting what your experience is like compared to five years ago. If you're a physical chemistry undergrad like I was, doing some frequency generations two floors below in the basement of Tech, I'm sure it's helping on the research side, but nothing changes the lasers but hands yet, until the AI robots come. So I just think it depends how much the volatility affects your certain area of pursuit. April: That makes sense, yeah. So with all this volatility, how do you approach work-life balance? Rachel: I don't think there is any, in all honesty. My mornings are totally insane between the 27 things I'm trying to do, and I'm always later than I want to be to my first meeting, and that just is what it is. I actually have a four-page document called Working with Rachel and for people to get to know what it's like to work with me when I hire and bring on new teams or new managers, et cetera. And one of the things that's in here is my mornings are insane and I'm always late and I'm totally frazzled and whatever, but I can almost always talk in the afternoons and nights almost any day. You just have to know your rhythm. Exercise is a huge part of my management of work-life balance. So probably started before Fusion, but definitely long, hard dance practices helped me get through undergrad. And at every phase of life I've sort of had a different exercise, deep exercise pursuit and crutch, I would say, to get through the craziness of life. So that's really important for me personally to focus and, I don't know, just get to a different level than the overly intellectual all the time, brainwave level into the body and into the breath. So that's huge. And then more tactically, I'm terrible about always having my phone around, but I do always have my laptop on do not disturb. So when I'm working in my environment, Slack and email are going constantly nonstop, especially Slack. So if I actually want to write or actually want to read or actually want to listen, the pings don't help. But to do my job, I need to be ever present with my teams. So just practically, it's always on do not disturb, and then I pick when I check. So I don't know, that goes from small to big of how I manage and cope with work-life balance, but it's the truth. April: There's some pretty good tips though. Sympathize. Rachel: Do people in Northwestern use Slack? Is that part of an undergrad life or no? April: Some of the clubs use it. I have a couple- Rachel: More texting? April: Yeah, they use GroupMe. Yeah. And then I know a lot of the research labs use Slack. Rachel: Oh, that makes sense. April: Yeah. Rachel: Yeah. But less of the all in every day, all encompassing, et cetera. April: Yeah. Rachel: Yeah. April: Do you think those work-life balance habits were developed during your graduate school years or in college or as you go into industry? Rachel: I don't know about do not disturb because technology has, not technology, but the physical hardware of communication has advanced so much. I'm so old compared to you guys. And when I was an undergrad, Facebook came out when I was a sophomore. So just think about how different of a world it was then. We had really kludgy Hermes email, Hermes email server at Northwestern. So the never ending notification encroach on our life, it existed then. And of course, we texted, but we texted T9. So it's just a different world. So we had it and obviously we all needed to learn how to focus, but not to the extent that it is a challenge for people in college and PhD programs now, I don't think. That's my guess as an outsider. But some things, like exercise, 100%. I think those things get developed earlier on. But once you're in university, it's your decision to continue to pursue them and how much you pursue them and how much they're a part of the rhythm of your life. So that, I would say for sure, I established for myself at Northwestern. April: Was there anything at Northwestern that you wish you had participated in that you didn't? Or the other way around, that you did but you wish you had opted out? Rachel: I wish I'd done dance marathon earlier. I only did it senior year and it was like what an incredible experience. Once you had the experience, then you realize, oh, I should have been doing this the whole time because it's like, I don't know, it's just something you could only do in an all encompassing environment like that. My major regret at Northwestern is actually academic, which is a silly small choice, but I studied French in elementary and high school and I really wanted to learn Spanish as a California person. So I took it in college, but that ate up a lot of quarters of getting my language credit because I was going from scratch. So my regret, and I'm not very good at languages anyway, so it's not like it stuck around, my regret is actually not that I took it, it came from good intentions, but that I used up six possibilities of taking classes in non-chemistry, non-African studies. Just you're spoiled for opportunity in undergrad of going to learn about everything. And it's one of the amazing parts about Northwestern and the way they do the core curriculum, that everyone has to learn a little bit of everything somehow. And that's my biggest regret. I regret not taking a philosophy class or a whatever. I took one world religion class, but should I have taken two. That breadth is the thing that I crave and miss. And by the time you get to PhD, and certainly in the British education system, you specialize earlier, so that opportunity's gone. You can obviously go to lectures and stuff, which I did, but it's not the same as being in a class. So yeah, my biggest I wish I had is I wish I hadn't taken Spanish in that environment and done it some other way and had six quarters to go just do dealer's choice of interesting things in departments I never would've gotten to know. April: Did you have the Weinberg language requirement? Rachel: Yes. April: But you got out of it with French? Rachel: I could have taken I think only one quarter or no, I can't remember how my testing was, sorry. But I could have taken either one quarter or zero quarters of French. But I instead put myself from scratch with Spanish because I've never taken it before. So I don't know, I just think that was good intentions, wrong decision. April: It happens. Rachel: Anyway, yeah, that's my biggest, I don't know, regret is too strong a word, but if I had a magic wand and could do it all over again, I would've taken more general humanities or other types of classes. April: Speaking of classes, what were some of your favorite classes at Northwestern? If you were to- Rachel: Oh my God, do I even remember? April: Yeah. Rachel: The physical chemistry. I don't remember if it's physical chemistry honors class or physical chemistry practicum. It's the last thing you take senior year with real world lab problems. And that class, there were six of us and we were in lab, I don't know, four or five hours twice a week. We were there all the time. It was so hard and so intellectually stimulating. I remember that class extremely well. I remember my world religions class. I don't remember who taught it, but it was the only time I ever studied anything like that. That was interesting. And I remember some of the seminar debates I had with other people. I don't know, those are the two that come to mind. April: Very cool. Now that we're getting towards the end of our time, the last question is if you were to look back on your undergrad, which I suppose we already did a little bit, but what advice would you give, I suppose, other people in your position? Rachel: I have one very specific piece of advice that I give to a lot of undergrads or people early in career, which I can share. And then the other is one that I give all the time now, but I don't know if it's relevant, but I'll share that one too. I'll start with the second one first because it might be less relevant. The one I give now, that is also can be very counterintuitive to people who are working on giving and getting feedback and what it takes to truly manage and motivate teens, is that clarity is more compassionate than kindness. And I don't mean don't be kind because the goal is, of course, to deliver clarity with extreme compassion and care. But it's nerve wracking to tell someone, "You're not meeting expectations for this role," or, "We did not hit our goal as a company and we have to make this really hard decision," or whatever the hard thing is that you have to say. It's harder to say it clearer than to say, "Well, I know you this and what about that, and I'm so sorry and this is hard, blah, blah, blah. But I think maybe the role," and then the person walks away and is like, "I don't know what I heard," and they don't know that they're not meeting expectations. So I would say that took me, it's a lifelong pursuit, I don't think I'm perfect at it yet. No one anywhere in my academic career, undergrad or grad, really taught me that. So that's one. I'm not sure if that's relevant for a sophomore undergrad, but maybe. April: I think so. Rachel: Could be. The advice that I often give to undergrads or very early in career folks, who are either looking for startups or end up whatever. I actually have a call with one this afternoon who's a woman who's a family friend who's thinking about a job change and she's like just wants my advice. I think that one of the unrealistic things that somehow culturally gets imbued in very driven and successful students, like all of the people who get accepted to Northwestern, is that you can have it all in your first job. And that is fucking bullshit. And I think it leads to a huge amount of heartache and angst because it's not true. Now, what you can have is one or two awesome things. So when you're, like you graduated at 21 or 22 or whatever age you are, you have usually no strings attached. You can make incredible broad decisions that you can't make later on and that affords you the opportunity to go do amazing things. But what you can't do is do it all at once in that one first job. So the specific example that I often give is you could pick where you work or what industry you work in or that you make a lot of money, but it is basically impossible to pick all of those things. So if you're a econ undergrad at Northwestern, of which there are many, it's probably pretty hard to work in a mission-driven company, make a 300,000 a year banker undergrad job, and move abroad for that first job as an American, blah, blah. That doesn't exist. If you want to make a lot of money, there are incredible programs with established firms where they really reward you for hard work really early on and that's the trade that that job encompasses. And if that's valuable to you, awesome. But you're probably going to be in one of their major locations and they're unlikely to ship you to Sydney for being 22. If you have the opportunity to go do something extremely mission driven that speaks to you, that's amazing, go do that. But you're probably not necessarily going to pick where or you're not going to be highly compensated. So I often talk to people who are in their early 20s who are like, "But I really want to be in New York, but I really want to work, I want to be in the arts and I want to do this, but I need a lot of money to support this thing." You're like, "You can't have it all." And that's not bad, it's just true. And it's much more compassionate for me to tell you, April, if you want to pursue physics, that's awesome. I was a PhD student. You're not going to make any money in your 20s. April: That's true. Rachel: But you might work at the cutting edge of science in something incredible that super motivates you. That's awesome. So if I could wave a magic wand for undergrads, I would get rid of that angst of that decision making. And the decision can have angst because it can be hard to choose a path, but the you can have it all, I think is a great lie. That's not fair to people in their late teens and early 20s in undergrad. I thought of another one, so I'm going to give you a third, even though you didn't solicit another one. Which is you at the beginning of this you asked about my career, which is kind of all over the place from a traditional perspective. I was in academics and then I went to investing, and then I went to startups. And then in startups, I was in healthcare and I went into payments in FinTech. It's all over the place. Every time I made the jump, everyone around me told me I shouldn't because I was leaving their path. And to be an amazing professor, you stay in academics. So people leaving academics is like, they don't want to give you the advice to do that. Or when you're in investing, the way you stay in it, and particularly in private investing, it's long feedback cycles. You got to stay and practice the craft. So I said, "Hey, I'm an operator at heart. I'm going to go do this thing." Some people encouraged me, but many people said, "Why would you ever do that? Why would you ever leave the job you have? Stay in practice." And then same when I left healthcare and picked a totally new thing. So that's more mid-career advice, which is like it's okay to leave that perfect tracked path and trust your gut. April: Yeah, that's actually really valuable advice, so thank you. Rachel: I hope so. April: Yeah. Thanks for taking the time out of your day to talk with me and to give all this advice to whoever's listening. Rachel: Yeah. It's awesome. Nice to meet you, April. April: Mm-hmm. And thank you for listening to this episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast. We hope you have a great day and go Cats.  

Dora Zhang interviews Shiven Shah, CFO at Libra Solutions, on the "Weinberg in the World" podcast. Shiven discusses his extensive career in finance, including roles at Merrill Lynch, Citi, Peak6, ABN AMRO Clearing Group, and OppFi, where he helped take the company public. He emphasizes the importance of flexibility and teamwork, and highlights the supportive community and lasting relationships he formed at Northwestern University. Transcript:  Dora: Welcome to the Weinberg in the World podcast, where we bring stories of interdisciplinary's thinking in today's complex world. My name is Dora Zhang and I'm your student host of the special episode of the podcast. I'm currently a junior studying economics, psychology with an IMC certificate. And today, I'm very excited to be speaking with Mr. Shiven Shah, who is a CFO at Libra Solutions, a PE-backed specialty finance company. Mr. Shiven, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. So to start off, do you mind introducing yourself? Shiven: Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you Dora, for having me on the podcast. My name, as you mentioned, is Shiven Shah. I graduated in Northwestern, the class of '99. So I've just had my 25th year reunion recently, which was great to see a lot of old faces and friends and colleagues from many years ago. So I have had a really tight connection with the Northwestern community. I'm a member of the NULC, helped with admissions committee, and also with some mentoring projects as well. Background wise, I grew up in the Chicago area, right outside of Oak Park, Illinois, which is a western suburb, very similar to Evanston in a lot of ways, a diverse community. And my first choice was Northwestern and I ended up being fortunate enough to be accepted in, and studied economics and minored in statistics. And then I ended up going into a career in finance, starting right after undergrad in New York City at Merrill Lynch in investment banking. I did that for a few years, and then went to business school. I ended up in a financial management program during the financial crisis, and it was really interesting times 2007, 2008, where we had to bail Citi out with the too big to fail and the credit derivatives and the swaps. So it was a very interesting time to be there. So I ended up staying at Citi in a variety of finance roles for about eight years. And then ended up coming back to Chicago, and then worked at a trading company called Peak6, which was a diversified company. They had several investments in small private equity type investments, private placements, and also had bought a couple other companies and sold a couple of companies while I was there. So really, really great experience. And then I ended up going into another CFO role at ABN AMRO Clearing Group running the Americas business for trading clients. And then I really, really found my footing in 2017 when I joined a company called OppFi, which is a mission-driven company to help the hundreds of millions of Americans that live paycheck to paycheck and with 70% of America having savings of less than a thousand dollars. We tried to provide an alternative to payday loans and other high interest rate products, with a fully amortizing product that really gave people an opportunity to withstand an emergency situation. We ended up building the company up over a five year period from startup and then we ended up taking the company public via the SPAC process in 2021. I stayed with the company one year post public and then I joined another company, similar space, similar mission to help those in an emergency situation. In this case, Libra Solution is responsible for consumer litigation funding, so mostly personal injury. So when people get into a car accident, a motor vehicle accident, we help them out by providing an advance against the case settlement. So while they wait on a case which can last anywhere from an average of a year and a half to sometimes more than five years, we provide... And also have relationships with providers and attorneys to help them get the right care. So that's my background. Really excited to be here, as I said. I'm looking forward to the questions. Dora: Yeah, thank you so much for sharing your background. Because you've previously talked about your recent reunion with the Northwestern community, do you want to talk a little bit about the Northwestern alumni network? How would you describe the network? And are you in touch with any of the alumni? Shiven: Yeah, I think some of my best friends are from Northwestern, who I still keep in touch with, talk to on a daily basis really, and spend a lot of time. I think the greatest thing from my experience at Northwestern, were definitely the relationships that I formed there. I think the friendships are long lasting, lifelong and genuine. And the best part about the Northwestern alumni network, is that people really are out there to help each other. And I think whether it's a more recent alum or somebody that's more seasoned, or that's been out of school for a longer period of time, I think the ability to leverage the network and leverage the relationships and the friendships, I think is one of the best things ever. So yeah, not just the reunion, but again, on an ongoing basis, having that connectivity with the school and the university is very important to me. Dora: Is there any other resources you remember taking advantage of at school? Shiven: Yeah, so I think there's a lot of resources at the school, the career network, I think the student clubs are great as well, to network into different companies. The relationships that the co-op program that I wasn't a part of, but a lot of friends were, is another great opportunity. And I think, just the number of organizations, I was in the Greek system, so I had joined a fraternity there and a lot of the relationships I had from there continue to last for years post Northwestern. So I had a really good experience there. I was involved with cultural groups and affinity groups, the South Asian Student Association. And was involved with some of the dances and the performances and the festivals that we celebrated. So I think that that diversity is also super important with so many people from so many different backgrounds. That's what makes Northwestern really unique. Dora: Yeah, absolutely. And going back to your career, were you thinking about doing a career or jobs in finance when you first came to Northwestern? Or how was that process of choosing what career? Shiven: Yeah, no, I came in thinking like a lot of the Asian and Indian parents want their kids to be doctors. So I came in being told that I should be a doctor. And unfortunately, after about a year and a half and struggling through organic chemistry, I realized that it wasn't my calling to do medicine. And to the disappointment of making that phone call, I'll never forget to my parents, they were very disappointed that I decided not to go. And I got a very long lecture about why my career and my life is going the wrong direction. And they thought I was just goofing around the whole time during Northwestern, which is partially true, but not fully. I ended up with Northwestern really realizing that math was my calling in life, and I like the business side and how using mathematics and data to solve business problems, I thought it was what I wanted to do. And so over the course of a couple of years really by my junior year I thought I wanted to do something more in financial services and where I can do something that I'm more passionate about. So yeah, I feel like it was the right decision and I feel good about where we are. Dora: Yeah, thank you for sharing that. Is there any particular skills or habits do you think is important for your career? Shiven: Yeah, I think the most important characteristic one can have, and my advice is to be flexible in a company and be versatile. Not just do something that this is your immediate job, but offer perspectives, offer out of the box thinking. And I think that the other piece is be a team player. There should be no job that's too menial. Whatever you're told to do, view it as a service to your company and try to do the best, not for yourself, but for the broader and the greater organization. Be a culture champion, make it a positive experience, help other people out. I think it's super important. I think the other piece is as a leader, is care about your people, really care about the individual, care about their development and make it an environment where people want to work. They're not just there to collect a paycheck, but they're having a fun time there and really making an impact and really fulfilling the mission of what that company is. So I think it's go for what you're interested in rather than trying to check boxes. Dora: Yeah. And another question I have, is that during your academic or professional journey, is there anything that you regret or wish you could do differently? Shiven: Yeah, I think what I would have said, is I would have been more honest with myself in what I really wanted, what my passions were. And I think the other piece of it, is be who you are, even who you spend time with. And I would say, early on in my college career I was trying to like fit in as opposed to being myself, both with my family at home and trying to be a doctor. And also with the people I associated with, I was trying to, adhere to what I thought what people liked. And then as you get older you're like, "You know what? You are who you are, be yourself, be a good human being, but don't try to be somebody you're not and be true to yourself." Dora: Yeah. And also I feel like as a college student sometimes we'll meet some obstacles in school and also in recruiting and stuff. So is there any advice you can give the students to keep them motivated? Shiven: Yeah, I think my biggest advice is I think there's no substitute for hard work. And whether that's in recruiting, whether that's in your schoolwork, whether that's in as you look for a job or decide on a career path in general, I think you got to spend the time, right? So for example, if you're looking for a job, people aren't going to reach out to you, and there's so many qualified individuals, so how do you differentiate yourself? One, is you make an effort. You go to these career fairs but also start to figure out who's in your network? Who's at Northwestern? Have introductory coffees together and try to learn from them and seek help. And you may reach out to a hundred people and only one or two people respond, but it's one or two more than you would've had if you didn't make any effort. And if you look at like how people get to where they are, a lot of it is really based on the people you know and the people that have helped you out. As a society we help each other out, but you have to seek that help. And so don't be afraid to ask for help and not do it all on your own, but get guidance of those that have done it in the past. Dora: And I think you've already touched a little bit about this, but is there any specific tips for networking for students in college or after graduation? Shiven: Yeah, I think it's important to be part of the student organizations that are connected to the field of study that you want to do or the career that you want to pursue. And also, I think using job networks like LinkedIn and the Northwestern alumni network, there are thousands of alum all over the world, tens of thousands of alum. It's just a question of finding them, right? And so I think using those resources, going through databases and reaching out, and just asking like, "I'm a Northwestern student seeking advice," you will get responses. And it's not going to be a hundred percent as I said, but find and make a point each week to meet at least two new people. That I would say, would be a goal. Have conversations with two new people each week in your field of study. Dora: And just for students who are interested in financial services or finance, do you have any general advice for the students to do in school or in recruiting? Shiven: Yeah, for finance in general, I think a lot of the skills with a liberal arts background are transferable. You don't need to have been in an undergraduate in business school to be successful. I think it's the way of thinking. Take classes that involve critical thinking, that involve data and numbers and analytics. So I think statistics, science courses are very helpful, math courses, computer science. The other thing in finance is that there are two ways to go about it. You're going to go into finance right out of undergrad, or you work in a company, like let's say, you're interested in science and you go work at a biotech company. Or you're interested in art or whatever it may be, or you're an engineer, develop skills that are problem solving skills and analytical. Then you can go back, get your MBA and then do more of a finance specialty. So there's a couple of paths to go on that. Dora: And I know a lot of students, they didn't know what to do for their career when they were in college. So do you think it's important for them to decide what to do before graduation? Or do you think it's okay for them to just navigate and figure it out through their journey in Northwestern? Shiven: I think it is important to have some idea prior to graduating in the first couple of years. I think it's important to explore, keep your options open. But by junior year, like having a path of where you want to go I think is important and having a focus, because you want to hit the ground running out of college. And I think the more you wait to figure that out, the bigger issues that you'll have. And use the time by speaking to others, that have been in different fields and getting a feel for what people do. Go to different companies, go to company visits, go to career fairs and that's how you learn and talk to people. But I think it is important to figure it out before you graduate. Dora: Perfect. Thank you so much for speaking with us today. I think that is all the questions I have. It was really wonderful getting to know you. And thank you again for joining us today. Shiven: Yeah, absolutely. It's a pleasure to be on here and I'm happy to speak to other individuals that have questions on their career. And as I said, use the network and use the opportunity that you have at Northwestern in a positive way. Dora: And thank you for listening to this special episode of Weinberg in the World podcast. We hope you have a great weekend, and go Cats.  

April Wang, a second-year student studying physics and integrated science, hosts the “Weinberg in the World” podcast and interviews Mike Forman, a 2012 Northwestern graduate and senior managing director at Blackstone. Mike shares how his studies in MMSS and economics, along with his involvement in a fraternity and the Kellogg Certificate Program, were formative experiences. He discusses how these experiences, along with internships and networking, led him to a career in finance and his current role at Blackstone. Transcript: April: Welcome to the Weinberg in the World Podcast, where we bring stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. My name is April and I am your student host of this special episode of the podcast. I'm a second-year student studying physics and integrated science, and I'm looking forward to learning more about our guest's career. Today I'm excited to be speaking with Mike Forman, who graduated from Northwestern in 2012 and is now senior managing director at Blackstone. Thank you, Mike, for taking the time to speak with me today. Mike Forman: Thank you so much for having me, April. Northwestern is a near-and-dear place to my heart, so I'm excited to chat with you. April: Excellent. To start us off today, I'm wondering if you could tell us more about your time at Northwestern as an undergrad. What did you study, and what were some impactful experiences for you that led to your current career path? Mike Forman: Yeah, yeah. Good question. I went to Northwestern from 2008 to 2012. I majored in MMSS and economics, and I also did the Kellogg Certificate Program. I was in a fraternity and made a bunch of lifelong friends who I'm still very close to today, so those were super impactful and formative. I would say MMSS definitely was the hardest academic experience I ever had. I think I learned a bunch of things from that. First of all, it was hard but it was also incredibly rewarding. I think maybe another reminder or one of the better lessons I've learned along the way of most things that were really difficult that I went through, I looked back on fondly and are pretty formative experiences that help you become who you are. That was definitely the case with MMSS. It gave me a really interesting framework to interpret the world. What else was impactful experiences? Well, hugely impactful in terms of how I ended up on my career path. I went to Northwestern, and I knew I wanted to work in business after school. But it was that vague, in terms of what I ... That was as crystallized as the idea was in my mind. I went to school, and some friends and friends of friends, I started to appreciate a number of the people who felt like were thoughtful and focused on the career they were going to have after school, started to see what they were interested in and what they were doing. A number of those people were going into either finance or consulting. That got me just interested in the finance world and investing, understanding what they did, they gave me a bunch of books to read, things like that. I ended up doing two internships my sophomore year for a prop trading firm in Chicago and also UBS. Then my junior year, I was planning on going into investment banking because that's what I think a lot of, I don't know, the people I respected and looked up, that's what they were going and doing after school. I think I was looking on it, it was called Career CAD at the time, which was Northwestern, where you used to find jobs, whatever. April: Okay. Mike Forman: I don't know what it's called today. I saw a posting for a job at Blackstone as an intern in their real estate group. I actually remembered one of my friends, he was a couple of years older than me who was also in the same fraternity as me, or had been, was working at Blackstone. Oh, I'll give him a call. I called my friend Dave Levine. I was like, "Hey, do you like your job? Do you think I would like your job?" He laughed and he was like, "Yeah, I think you would. You should apply." I had this vision in my mind of going and working in investment banking and this opportunity popped up with Blackstone, which is a real estate private equity role. I ended up interviewing, getting a job offer. I wasn't specifically interested in real estate, but I felt like everyone I had met really enjoyed what they were doing. They were super active, getting things done. They were good people. I decided to try it out. I was an intern in 2011. Then I ended up joining full-time since 2012. Actually, I've been here since I graduated, so I've been here for almost 13 years now. That was not exactly my plan coming out of school, but it's been a really fun adventure. It's changed a lot over time, too. April: Yeah. It's really tricky to figure out what you want to do, especially in college, but I'm glad it worked out. Mike Forman: Totally. April: Yeah. Mike Forman: Totally. April: Then you spoke a little bit about some of your biggest challenges turning out to be the most rewarding, which I think leads well into the next question. Which is what are the most challenging and rewarding aspects of your current job? Mike Forman: I'll start with maybe some of the most rewarding aspects, and maybe I'll tie it back to some of the challenging equals rewarding later. I would say the most fun part of my job, and this organization, and the people we get to work with both inside and outside of Blackstone are getting to work with really talented, smart, hard-working, but also kind and considerate people. That's why I'm still here I think and that's pretty special. That's the most rewarding aspect, call it the people element or the human element. Besides that, look, I think investing is super fun. It's a combination of, I don't know, treasure hunting and building things. It definitely scratches my curiosity itch. I love to learn, I love to read about new things, trying to understand and form a view around where the world is going. Investing definitely, definitely scratches that itch. I've always loved technology, so my career, what I focused on has evolved a little bit over time. I now oversee our digital infrastructure investing around the world on behalf of our real estate business. We're building a bunch of really large data center businesses. By getting to focus on technology and really understand it deeply is fascinating and super fun. It feels like we're building the future, building the brain if you will. Dynamics have changed a ton. Okay, let's tie it back to the challenging part. I think one thing I came to appreciate working here is to be excellent is hard. Even if you're smart and capable, and whatever, you also just have to try really hard. Not just for a year or two, for many years. That is, I don't know, just getting a little bit tougher almost. And actually embracing that and leaning into it, maybe that's the most challenging aspect is just the hard work it takes to do a good job. But it's also something I really love about this place. I feel like there's a lot of people around me, they're smart, kind people, like I said, but they also work super hard. It's invigorating but it's not easy. April: That's great. Yeah, I totally agree with that. Speaking of challenging aspects of your job, how well did college prepare you for those aspects and for your career in general? What would you say was the most important skill or lesson that you learned from undergrad? Mike Forman: I would say the most important lesson, it was the toolkit. It was learning how to learn. I guess I've come to appreciate why a liberal arts education is amazing more as time has gone on. It's funny. I told you I wanted to go into business. At a certain part I was like, "Oh, I should go to a business school," undergrad. I'm so glad I didn't because I've been in business school since I graduated in a way. I'm really happy that I had the opportunity during college to, yes, take some economics class. But also, classes like game theory and strategic interaction, a framework to think about strategic interactions. And also, classes like Russian literature that are philosophy and pull your brain in a different direction, and give you a totally different lens to look at and think about the world. I think really, just the skillset, the tools to learn, that was a really important one. Then the second one is, I would say when I first went to Northwestern ... I would say before I went to college, I had a bad habit of procrastinating. April: Me, too. Mike Forman: Which I'm sure everyone can relate to a bit. But I realized that if I wanted to do well in school, and have a social life, and be able to do a bunch of other things, I needed to get organized and not procrastinate, and make the best use of time. That was a really important skill that I learned in undergrad that I'm appreciative I got a little bit of a wake-up call there almost to really be efficient and figure out how to make the most of my minutes. April: Yeah, definitely. That Russian literature class you mentioned, it's actually still really popular here. I've heard a couple people that are in it and they really enjoy it still. Mike Forman: Oh, it's incredible. April: That's really interesting. Yeah. Mike Forman: It's incredible. It's one of my favorite classes I ever took in school. April: What was the biggest adjustment that you had to make going from college to industry? Mike Forman: It's funny. I guess I just said something similar, but I think time is probably the big one. Making the most of your time. It's funny. I say I went to school and I had to start getting a little bit more organized, not procrastinate, really get my work done, et cetera. At times, it feels like you're almost short on time, I guess especially during finals week or whatever, when you're cramming for whatever's coming up. When you start working, you have a lot less time. I guess with the benefit of hindsight you're like, "Oh wow, I actually had a lot of free time during college." You just have a little bit more time and space, et cetera. That I think really changes and it forces you to make even better use of your minutes. Become more efficient, become more focused. And also, just appreciate the time that you have. For example, I think you have more time just to have fun and go enjoy yourself during school. One thing I appreciate is okay, maybe I'll only go do things with my friends during the weekend or not as often during the week, but I actually really savor them. That's a little bit of, I guess a tweak mentally, that is definitely an adjustment going from college to industry afterwards. I'm trying to think what else? That's probably the biggest. That's probably the biggest. April: Just out of curiosity, what were some of the fun moments you had with your friends or some things that you look back at fondly now? Mike Forman: Oh my God, there's so many. It's funny, I have this video reel playing in my head right now. It was everything from literally first days at school, I made a handful of friends through whatever random adventures we were up to, and a number of those stuck for forever. I still work with some of this people, which is kind of cool. One of my best friends from school who I lived with for a couple years works at Blackstone nowadays, which is pretty cool. I would say everything from we checked out a ton of music, we explored Chicago. We ran all over Northwestern, I don't know, playing Frisbee in the great lawn, or whatever adventures around the lake we got up to. I don't know, there's almost too many to count. But I would say I got to meet and know a number of people, they were both smart and hard-working, but also really interesting and fun. I almost feel like previously in my life, I had to choose one or the other a little bit. I don't know, that was my favorite part of school, probably. April: Definitely. Friends are great. Mike Forman: Yeah, friends are good. April: Yeah. Mike Forman: A lot of good music and food in Chicago too, so that's always nice. April: Yeah. Well, how have you approached that worklife balance, like balancing friends and going out and having fun and then school work? Or now that you're in industry, how are you balancing worklife balance in your career? Mike Forman: Yeah. I guess it comes back to, I feel like I'm talking about time a lot, but just being focused and trying to make the best use of your minutes, that's key. Okay, if you're going to be working, be focused, get it done, do the things that you need to do. But also, I think you need to make space for fun in your life. Working hard is very fun, and also super rewarding and energizing. But also, making time for the other things that you love to do is super nourishing and makes it all really sustainable, and I don't know, ties it all together. For example, I love to surf. Even though I got lots of stuff going on, I've always been able to find a way to fit that into my life, go on cool trips, and get better over time. I love to do yoga and meditate. If you make sure you prioritize and make space for the things that you care about and make you happy, first of all, you can fit them in. But also, if you are happy and you are enjoying yourself, it's infectious. It's the point almost of everything we do. I think you need to prioritize it. By the way, also just spending quality time with family and friends. That's, I don't know, super important. Look, there's this tension. I guess I've come to appreciate hard work is actually pretty cool because as you keep at it, you get more knowledgeable, you get better at it. That's this feedback loop, it's a little bit of a flywheel that's rewarding. If you make no space for the other things that you enjoy and your family and friends, I don't know, what's the point of that? I think you do need to prioritize and make space for it, but then try to keep it all in balance and trying to squeeze the most juice you can out of the time you have I guess is what it all comes down to. I will say, I think that, as you have to make more of the time or as you feel more and more stretch, I do actually feel like you come to appreciate things a little bit more deeply, which is pretty cool. April: Yeah, definitely. Are there any things that you wish you had done more or, or maybe even less of in college? Mike Forman: That's a good question. What do I wish I did more of? I would say, look, what would I tell myself then? I would say this time in school and in academic setting with all these incredible intellectuals, it's like a wide menu of things that you can go to a bunch of subject matter experts to and really learning a ton about. And actually, more time to go be curious and see what interests you, or learn about this thing or that thing. I would say really push yourself and take the hard classes that stretch your brain or that intrigue you. I think sometimes there is a little bit of this tension where it's like, "Okay, I'm going to take these hard classes I have to, and then I have some space here, I'm going to take something that is a little easier." Maybe there's a couple cases I could point to for myself where I was like, "Shoot, I actually wish I took that really hard foundational science class," or whatever, because I'll never take it now. It's actually pretty cool if you have a good, good foundational understanding of some of these topics. By the way, I don't know, I guess personally I wish I took more classes on philosophy. Maybe that was one of the things I loved the most about the Russian literature classes. April: Yeah. Mike Forman: I think it's what interests you, and then really go for it. Don't try and take the easy path, I guess. April: Well, I guess we've talked a lot about your college time and things that you wish you had done differently. What's one specific piece of advice that you would give your past undergraduate self? Mike Forman: I would say ... What advice would I give myself? Look, I guess I've said this already, but really take advantage of a liberal arts education. Do not focus on one thing. By the way, it is such a good opportunity to get this broad understanding of the world, and again, a bunch of different ways to look at it. Really take advantage of that and don't get sucked into a vortex of being like, "Okay, I need to do exactly this thing." Then also, be a little bit flexible in terms of what it is you think you want to do after school. I had a little bit of a sense, but I let the exploration path of trying to find a job shape what it was that I wanted to do a bit. Just be receptive to, I don't know, friends. I don't know, just be receptive to where the process guides you a little bit. The most important thing is what you do and where you do it matters, but who you do it with is so important. Probably more important. Really being excited about the people that you get to work with is totally key longterm. By the way, keep in touch with your friends from Northwestern. I know it's easy, but they go on and do pretty cool things. They've got a lot of really smart people. By the way, it builds on itself over time as their careers go on. Stay in touch with people and understand what they're up to. And by the way, stay in touch with the school. I'm so grateful for the experiences I had at Northwestern and how it set me up for the rest of my life. It's super fun and rewarding to, A, go visit campus. B, spend time with students when I can, understand what's going on at the school. I don't know, I guess that's a couple pieces of advice, but it's what comes off ... April: Yeah, Northwestern has a great alumni network. We get to talk to people like, so that's pretty great. Mike Forman: Oh, it's awesome. Yeah. April: Yeah. Mike Forman: When I was looking for a job for example, Northwestern's alums, they were so helpful. They dropped whatever they were doing and be happy to help and provide advice, et cetera. Then afterwards, there's lots of cool things that I've been able to get involved with over the years. April: What's something that you are looking forward to going forward, now that you're working and out of college? Something exciting? Mike Forman: What's exciting that's coming up? I would say personal life, I got married- April: Congrats. Mike Forman: ... last January. April: Wow! Mike Forman: Thank you. Thank you. It was actually our one-year anniversary yesterday, which was pretty cool to celebrate. April: Oh, wow. That's so fun. Mike Forman: I think that's something that's exciting. Family life I guess, that'll be a fun adventure ahead. That's one area. Then in terms of work, I love getting to spend a ton of time in the technology world and the companies we're getting to build. We've got the largest and fastest-growing data center platform around the world, which is an awesome opportunity to learn, to build, and to get to work with some super fascinating people. I'm really excited for what's in store for this year, and getting to travel around the world and learn a ton about different markets, different cultures, all that good stuff. I've always loved to travel. Traveling in a work context, sometimes it can be a little intense and the timezone changes are tricky. What a cool way to understand other cultures and get a true experience. When you go and visit somewhere as a tourist, you check out the sights, try the restaurants, which is awesome. But that's not really what people who live there do every day. They go to work and do things. It's a pretty cool and authentic way to get a taste for different places around the world. April: What are some of your favorite places that you visited? Mike Forman: Last year, I got to spend a bunch of time in Tokyo and Australia, which were both incredible places. Totally different, but both pretty incredible and really fun to visit. Those were up there. I always love going to California. April: Yeah. Mike Forman: I'd say Europe as well, there's a bunch of pretty cool ... There's so much history and the cities are beautiful, and a little bit cleaner than New York which is nice, too. April: That's pretty exciting, getting to travel. That's fun. Mike Forman: Yeah, it's super fun. It's awesome. April: Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you so much for talking with us, and for sharing your advice and your experience in undergrad. Yeah, just thank you for joining us today. Mike Forman: Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me and be well. April: Of course. Okay, thank you for listening to this special episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast. We hope you have a great day, and go Cats! Mike Forman: Go Cats. Bye-bye.

Aimee Resnick, a senior at Northwestern University, interviews Steven Preston, CEO of Goodwill Industries International, on the “Weinberg in the World” podcast. Steven reflects on his time at Northwestern, highlighting his major in political science and his transformative junior year in Munich. He also shares how his unexpected passion for statistics influenced his career in investment banking and leadership roles.  Transcript: Aimee Resnick: Welcome to the Weinberg in the World podcast, where we bring stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. My name is Aimee Resnick and I'm your student host of the special podcast episode. I am a senior studying social policy at Northwestern University who plans to pursue public administration in my home state of Colorado. Today, I'm excited to be speaking with Steven Preston, who is the CEO at Goodwill Industries International. Thank you, Steven, for taking the time to speak with me today. Steven Preston: Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to it. Aimee Resnick: Me too. To start us off today, I was wondering if you can tell us a little bit more about your time at Northwestern as an undergraduate in terms of what did you study and what were the most impactful experiences for you that led you to your current career path? Steven Preston: Yeah, so I was a political science major. And Northwestern, it was kind of a big thing for me. I kind of grown up in a medium-sized town up in Wisconsin and going to Northwestern kind of introduced me to a whole new world that I didn't even know existed of people from different places and that type of thing. I'd say there are two things, a couple of things that were really important. Number one is I was actually a poli-sci major with an international politics focus. So number one, it gave me a perspective on the world and how the world operates, which is something I didn't have as an 18-year-old coming to college. Number two, I took that further and I actually did a junior year in Munich program, and this was before the wall had come down, so east, west. International relations were what really defined kind of the global dynamic. So it was just a remarkable opportunity to study with different people in a different language right on the border of what was kind of definitional for international politics. And that year, I felt like I kind just burgeoned intellectually and academically and personally. The other thing I would say, that may not be what most people would expect, but I took a statistics class and I loved it. And I took more and I took more and I took graduate statistics classes and I became kind of like a quant poli-sci major. And that really was valuable for me because it was a way through which I could marry a topic that we think of as not being very quantitative and do a lot of research within political science using statistics, whether it was voter trends or national expenditures and how that relates to different government structures. And that became really important to me when I went into investment banking. I got an MBA in finance and [inaudible 00:02:38] Wall Street, and the ability to connect data with what felt like qualitative issues was really definitional to my path forward. Later, I became a CFO and a CEO and for the rest of my life, I really connected those two concepts in a way that was really powerful for what I was able to do professionally. Aimee Resnick: Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing your response. And I think it's really fascinating how you were able to take a lot of the skills that you gained at Northwestern in your more non-traditional courses like statistics and apply them to a more impactful career pivot later in your life like we typically encourage at Weinberg. So thank you for sharing that experience. Steven Preston: Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, it's one of the requirements I have for my kids is they all have to have some proficiency in statistics now. So yeah, it's become multigenerational. Aimee Resnick: I'm sure they love that requirement. I say as someone who's not the biggest math person ever. But I'd love to hear a little bit more about your current career right now as well, as the CEO of Goodwill Industries. And I noted in your video introduction to the 2023 annual report for Goodwill, you mentioned that Goodwill is about possibilities of hope for the people who receive services. And in that same report, you described how over 140,000 people found new employment after receiving services through your organization in workforce development. So I was wondering if you could just tell us a little bit more about how Goodwill promotes economic opportunity across the United States and why that mission particularly resonates with you. Steven Preston: Yeah, so the people we serve are not the people that you're going to college with right now. 83% of the people we serve are people with a high school degree or less. In fact, about a third of the people never finished high school. And many of these people have other challenges in life. Some of them have gone down very difficult pathways, people coming out of incarceration, people who are experiencing poverty, even people who are experiencing homelessness. And what we often do in society is make assumptions about those people and make assumptions about what's possible. And we sort of relegate them, in many cases, into a category of, well, that's kind of who they are and that's what their life is going to be like. But the truth is that embedded in every one of those people is a massive amount of potential and talent. And in most cases, and I really say in most cases, those are people who, because of opportunities they've been given or not given, because of their circumstances in life, because of their pathways, have never been able to develop those capabilities. And in fact, have never really known how to, because they didn't have access to good education, they weren't surrounded by people who could give them advice. They didn't really know what the possibilities were. So what we do is we work with people to sit with them and say, "What are the possibilities for your life? And how do we help you get there?" So one of the most important things we do when somebody comes to us is really do an assessment of what their skills are, what their hopes are, but also what their challenges are. A lot of times, their challenges might be training or skills related, but they also may have challenges with behavioral issues. They may be, many of them don't have housing or have insecure housing. Many of them don't have core financial skills, so they know even how to get through life with a small amount of income. So if we can work with people to help them stabilize those sort of personal aspects of their life, at the same time that we can provide them with skills that are attractive to employers, we can help them move from a very difficult place to a place where they are flourishing and where they have a fundamentally different future, and a future that allows them to take care of themselves and grow and learn much more. What we often find is once we've supported somebody and they land that first job and they're successful and they see the people they work with and what the possibilities are, it's not just that their lives have changed to get to that job, it's that the trajectory of their life has changed because many of those people begin investing themselves, learning more, getting better jobs. And then the other great thing is it's often multi-generational because their kids benefit, or if they don't have kids and they had them later, they benefit. And it really breaks a cycle of poverty and brokenness that's very difficult to break. And that's why we talk about the possibilities and we talk about hope because that's really where we live. For me personally, I came from what I would call pretty humble background. So I think just in a couple of generations, I've seen what education and opportunity has done for me. But I think on a bigger scale, I've lived in a number of major cities early on, when I was in my 20s, I spent a lot of time in tough neighborhoods in New York working with kids in difficult situations and trying to help them move on. So I feel like I've seen it up front in what's possible. And then when I worked in the government, I was the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and that is really the federal agency that deals mostly with poverty issues. And seeing intergenerational poverty and seeing people unable to do something about it is a sort of a dispiriting situation, and I believe we can do something about it. And really, Goodwill I think is, well, I know Goodwill is the largest nonprofit that is trying to change the landscape for many of those people, and hundreds of thousands of people find a different opportunity because of us. Aimee Resnick: I think that's a really excellent transition because I actually do want to talk to you a little bit more about your experience with housing and urban development. So for context, in 2008, you were nominated by President George W. Bush to serve as the secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. And I'd just like to hear a little bit more about how you started this large career in public service, and then a little bit potentially about how your public sector experiences under George W. Bush have shaped your approach to private sector leadership in your current career. Steven Preston: Yeah. So I think one of the important things was I spent almost 25 years in the private sector before I went into the government. So I had been an investment banker, I had been a CFO, I had been a corporate leader. And I say that because many times, young people coming out of college will say, "I want to go into nonprofit, what do I do?" And one of the first things I say to people when they come to me is, "Think about the early part of your career especially as a time where you are learning and growing and developing and getting the skills you need to be effective later in your career." And many kids, many people will go in a nonprofit and have a wonderful career. But I had 25 years in the private sector to prepare before going into the government and later into nonprofit. And those skills, both as somebody with an MBA and somebody who grew up through the corporate world, have been incredibly valuable for me in my career. So I want to mention that. So the first thing I did when I went into the government is I ran the Small Business Administration and the Small Business Administration makes loans to people who've lost their homes in a national disaster. And I came in after Katrina and most people hadn't gotten their loans yet. So I applied those skills from the private sector to figure out how to fix the operational and technology and financial issues to accelerate loans to people who needed to rebuild after the disaster. So toward the end of my tenure at the SBA, the housing and financial crisis was mushrooming. And because of the experiences I had as a banker and a CFO and the experiences I had in working in a federal disaster, the president asked me to go to Housing and Urban Development to work on the housing crisis. I give you the background because that's how I got there. I got there because my experience and my background were sort of uniquely prepared me to be able to do that. I would not be a typical HUD secretary because I didn't have a poverty housing background, but I understood financial markets. I understood operational fixes. I understood national crises and media by that point because you do a lot of... You're on television a lot, you're dealing with Congress. So I was uniquely qualified to do this for that time in history, which was the financial crisis. So one of the greatest things about serving in these situations was the, and I really do, I think it was incredible blessing to be able to serve in a crisis because when you're in the middle of a crisis, people need leadership, they need people who can pull them together to fix the problems. People want to be part of a team that's doing something great. And if you're successful, a ton of people have seen their lives improved, whether it's an ability to rebuild their home after Katrina, in the financial crisis, whether it's the ability to stay in your home if you're being foreclosed, or we were able to rebuild public housing in New Orleans, and sort of the two came together. The public housing had been destroyed in Katrina. And when I came to HUD, we worked on rebuilding it. So if you have that opportunity, even though it's extremely stressful to work in a crisis, you also have an opportunity to have a very big impact. And you have an opportunity to have sort of restorative or a kind of healing impact on an organization that's in stress. So it really hits on a number of different levels. It comes with stress, but it also comes with what I would say great blessing and great opportunity, both for the people you're serving with and the people who benefit from this service. So that was really what that felt like. And then the other part of that is it wasn't just about housing. Some people who know about that era of history will know what the acronym TARP stands for. TARP was a large allocation of capital that the federal government made to support housing and the financial system. That money ended up going into financial institutions to save them. And I was on the board of the TARP with Secretary Paulson and the head of the Fed, Ben Bernanke and two other people, which sort of put me right in the center of seeing what was happening across the financial sector around the world and how we were going to work to save it. And that was just, it was a remarkable time. I think it was terrifying for many people because we saw what could happen if the world financial system was going to break down. And thankfully, it was averted, although there was just a massive impact from the financial fallout, really from early to mid 2008 going into well into 2009 before things started to recover. Aimee Resnick: Absolutely. And that actually brings me to something I'm very curious about, bringing you back to your poli-sci roots. A lot of young people today kind of feel a large sense of distrust in the government, especially on campus at this time, which I've seen some people describe as a new type of political crisis, almost like that you experienced back in the Katrina era. And I'm curious, what steps did you concretely take to rebuild trust, and in particular with the Small Business Administration, because it was somewhat disoriented when you began? And how do you think that can be applied to the current context? Steven Preston: Well, so first of all, yeah, trust has been declining in federal government for a long time, and I think we're absolutely at a nadir right now. And for me, it's very distressing to see, because I think there are good reasons for people's concern. But it's also really important for people to believe that if they go into it, they can make a difference. What I did when I went to the SBA, I found... One of the biggest benefits I had is I'd never been in the government, I didn't really know how it worked. They brought me in because I knew finance and I knew operational change and they wanted things fixed. And I got brought in and sometimes I would say, "How do I do this?" Or, "We want to fix this and this is how we're going to do it." And people would say, "No, you can't because there's a regulation or a law and you got to do it this way." And I'd say, "That can't possibly be true." There's nothing logical about my having to do that to make this decision. But yeah, well, it's a law that's been on the books for a long time. So one of the benefits I had is I came in and I needed to know how it worked, but I didn't need to be overly shackled in how I did this. So when I first got nominated, so before I even got to Washington, I was in the George Bush administration and a lot of Republicans were kind of briefing me. And the Democrat head on my oversight committee was John Kerry at the time. He had just lost the election for president. And they were the committee that the Senate does the nomination, they were the ones who were going to approve my nomination. And I just said, "Well, nobody... I'm not talking to any Democrats. Why..." So I called up the people briefing me and I said, "I want to talk to John Kerry's chief of staff." And they're like, "Why?" I said, "Because I'm hearing what you guys are saying, but I don't..." I know I'm a Republican nominee, but I'm not like a super partisan guy and we're all trying to fix this problem. I want to hear what they're saying. And as a business person, the first thing I'm thinking is you hear from all your customers, you hear from all your stakeholders, you want to build the first... So I talked to her and she was really surprised, and she kind of gave me her thinking on it. Once I got to the administration, I said to my team, "We're all about transparency. I'm going to invite the Democrats to do briefings on how we're doing fixing this problem." And they said, "Well, no, you're going to give them fodder to come against you in the press," and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, "We all want to fix it, right?" So I started holding briefings at the SBA office on the measures we were taking to fix the problem, the data that we were seeing on how big the problem was, once we started fixing it, the improvements. And I actually became very friendly with the teams on both sides of the aisle. When I got nominated for the HUD job, I needed to get confirmed by the Senate. By that time, the Senate was Democrat and I was a Republican nominee. The two most important reasons I got through that nomination process quickly were John Kerry and Dick Durbin, who was the number two person in the Senate. He was head of my appropriations committee. And the reason was because we were completely transparent with their teams. We worked with them very closely. We had them over for briefings. And we developed those relationships because they trusted us. So what I would say is you can be somebody who works both sides of the aisle. And by the way, most of the time, as an agency head, most of the time, you're going to be working on issues that aren't necessarily big political issues. You're serving people, you're trying to improve something. You've got a program that you maybe want to tweak to make it better. And when we go into a situation assuming that people are going to attack us and be against us, sometimes there's a reason for that, right? It is pretty fiery. But I think we have to go into it saying, "Let's win them over." Let's help them understand that we're all trying to get to the same place. We might disagree on the best way to get there. And most of those people just want to do their jobs really well and be part of something good. So some of my fondest memories were working with people really on both sides of the aisle. And I'm very grateful I had the opportunity to do that. And we probably see less, it felt like it was really kind of fighting all the time back then, but oh my goodness, it's at a whole different level now. And I also think President Bush was very focused on bipartisanism. He did a lot of work with people on the other side of the aisle. The financial rescue package was very much negotiated with both sides. Believe it or not, back then, he had negotiated an immigration bill that was more heavily supported by Democrats and Republicans. But because of an impending election, a lot of people didn't feel comfortable supporting it because they were concerned about winning re-election. But many of those things were worked on with both sides of the aisle, even though there were plenty of partisan politics at the time as well. Aimee Resnick: Really, I like that idea of having optimistic view towards bipartisanship and hopefully seeing that expand into the future in the next decades as a way to build public trust. I absolutely agree, that's critical. And I think we'll move on to our last question because I recognize we're coming up on our time, but I want to ask you, what do you wish you could tell yourself when you were me, a senior who's interested in public service and policy, who's about to graduate? What do you wish you could say to that 22-year-old version of you? Steven Preston: So yeah, it's what I tell people. I've had a chance to talk to students at Northwestern a couple of times, not recently, but I've talked to a couple of classes with Diane Schanzenbach who's on the policy side there. And I've spoken at a couple of other schools. And I tell them, one of the pieces of advice I give is very consistent. You all are really smart. You are getting a great education. You are learning critical thinking skills. But our society is very much about groupthink. And when we see the political divide or the divide on policies, you don't hear a lot of talk about the deep research on one side of the policy or the other. And we see it actually in Congress. I think we've seen fewer deep policy thinkers than we did 10 years ago, or certainly 20 or 30 years ago. So my encouragement is, even if you have strong views on something, challenge them, look at the data. And in the area that we focus on is a perfect issue. Why do we have intergenerational poverty? What will change it? What really has to happen? And when you think about where that debate lies, it's pretty fiery, and you've got all sorts of people fighting about these issues. But we don't have nearly enough people saying, "Let's look at the data on what really helps somebody." You guys are in Chicago. What really helps somebody who's a little boy or girl who's born in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago or some other tough neighborhood? What are the factors that make it very difficult for them to have the kind of life that most of the people you go to college have? And what can we change in that person's life? Whether it's the kind of schooling they get, whether it is the kind of family support they have, whether it's the protections we give them. Whether it's when they come out of high school, if they do need a little bit of support to get on the right track, how do we do that? What kind of youth... What truly does it take to help a person flourish in society? Or in our world, somebody who's coming out of prison? We have all these big narratives. You guys are the ones, because you're super smart, you got a fantastic education, you're taking statistics, like I recommended, you can dig deep. And when you see something where you say, "I need to challenge my thinking. I know I've been telling myself this, but I actually don't see this. Or I think I need to understand it deeper." We need deep policy thinkers. And the other thing is, if you're going into business, everybody's going to say find the right solution and see the data. But in the policy world, a lot of times that stuff doesn't happen to the degree that it needs to. So use that great education and be rigorous, be tough thinkers, ask tough questions, even if it takes you to a place that maybe doesn't align with what you think is the case today, because that's what's going to help us have a better world. And you know what? Those are the conversations we need to be having across the table from each other. We can be having rigorous arguments about the right policy decision, but if we're going to do it, let's look at the facts and let's really pressure test those because that's what's going to help us all have a better world. Aimee Resnick: Thank you, I really appreciate that idea of having Northwestern graduates go out into the world and just make it a better place. That's very encouraging. Steven Preston: Well, I love Northwestern, and I don't live in Chicago anymore, so I'm sad that I can't go to those games and go to the concerts on campus and talk to students as easily as I used to. But I just think it's a terrific place, and thank you for giving me an opportunity to chat with students indirectly. Aimee Resnick: Oh, of course. I think with that, I will say thank you to our listeners for listening to this special episode of the Weinberg in the World podcast. We hope you have a good day. And as Steven just mentioned, go Cats. Steven Preston: Go Cats. Take care.  

Preena Shroff, a third-year student at Northwestern, hosts the “Weinberg in the World” podcast and interviews Joel Meek, a 2001 graduate. Joel, who recently served as VP of finance and operations at Reddit, discusses how his studies in economics and mathematical methods shaped his career. He emphasizes the value of a broad education, mentioning impactful classes in astronomy, psychology, and Japanese. Preena and Joel highlight how Northwestern's interdisciplinary approach teaches students to think critically and approach problems creatively. Transcript: Preena Shroff: Welcome to Weinberg in the World podcast where we bring stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. My name is Preena Shroff, and I'm your student host of this special Weinberg in the World episode. I'm a third year student majoring in neuroscience and global health with a minor in data science, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Joel Meek, who graduated from Weinberg College in 2001 with a bachelor of arts in economics and mathematical methods in the social sciences. Joel most recently was the VP of finance and operations at Reddit, a community platform where users submit content and share advice for other members. Throughout his technology career, Joel has led functions across sales, operations, business development and finance. Joel, thank you so much for being here with us today. Joel Meek: Very excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Preena Shroff: We are so excited to learn about your work in technology, but would love to start out with how your career path was shaped by your time at Northwestern. So maybe if you can tell us more about your undergraduate experience. What were some impactful classes, extracurriculars or maybe even mentorship experiences that you had, which impacted your postgraduate career? Joel Meek: Of course. Yeah, so I think as you mentioned, my major at Northwestern was economics and mathematical methods in the social sciences. I'll start with the economics. Actually, it was really helpful for me in studying both macro and microeconomics to just get a broad view of how the economy works. How does things like the money supply affect inflation, employment, GDP growth? Why are some industries more fragmented than others like the restaurant industry or why are some products more price sensitive than others? I can't say that I use sort of economic theory directly in my day-to-day career, but it definitely shaped my perspective when thinking about different business challenges in my business career. And then with mathematical methods in social sciences, this is really a very data centric major where you're looking to apply your knowledge of math to a social science. And so actually my senior year I did a thesis that was similar to the movie Moneyball with Brad Pitt and I looked at which baseball players yielded the best bang for the buck. So really bringing that sort of background to the business world and being able to break down problems was really helpful. And then I think last, just being part of the College of Arts and Sciences, it was awesome to really just get a broad exposure to a wide array of topics. I still remember taking my astronomy class and just learning about the universe and how it was formed or taking a psychology class, which has helped me better understand the inner workings of the mind and how people work. And I took Japanese, which eventually led me to go living in Japan for a year after college. So I think in total, when I really think back about Northwestern, it was building that curiosity and that love of learning that's really helped me take on new challenges once I graduated. Preena Shroff: Wow. Yeah. Thank you. And I think something that a lot of students here at Northwestern maybe aren't able to experience just yet but kind of have an idea is that these classes are teaching students how to think as opposed to exactly what you're going to require in your career. It's more about how to approach problems and how to develop from that. So thank you for sharing that. Joel Meek: Of course. Preena Shroff: So now moving forward a little bit beyond Northwestern, what led you on your career path? So which skills would that be, interactions or experiences that you were able to build up that have been critical in your field today? Joel Meek: Yeah, so when I graduated Northwestern, I honestly didn't really know. I knew I wanted to do business, but I didn't really know what type of business I wanted to do. So I ended up choosing banking and consulting as my first two jobs out of college. And it was actually a really good first couple jobs to do out of college because you really get a 30,000-foot view of the business world. I got to work across a ton of different industries and work on a ton of different problems, and I learned a lot about myself. I learned that I really liked numbers and finance, but I wasn't really into the 80-hour weeks of the finance world. In consulting I loved the business problem solving of consulting, but I really wanted to be the decision maker actually owning the decisions. And so I ended up transitioning into technology, which was really exciting because all the innovation that was happening, and I moved into more of an operator role, which I ended up doing for the past 16, 17 years in technology. I think the skill that was probably most important that I got from Northwestern that I was able to apply to my career was really just, I mean you mentioned it, just problem solving. In the technology space in particular, things are moving very quickly and often there is not a blueprint for how to solve a problem because it maybe hasn't been solved before. I can think of a time when I was at Pinterest and we had millions of users on the site and we had a challenge with a lot of spammy content on the site, people that were trying to get click baited into clicking through the links and then trying to take advantage of people. And so we only had a small team because Pinterest was, when I joined, was still less than a hundred people, and we had to figure out how to clean up this site that had millions of users so that they didn't have a bad experience. So there was really no playbook for how to do that, and you just had to really approach the problem from first principles and break it down. And I think that building that skill set through really helped me later on in my career. Preena Shroff: Yeah, absolutely. And I think actually I wanted to ask you for a follow-up on your discussion about that pivot point from investment banking into the tech industry. I know students nowadays go in with a mindset of whichever career they're looking to get into, they want to make sure they're very well-prepared beforehand. And sometimes I guess a pivot isn't something you can always plan for. My question is, do you think a student today who might encounter this sort of pivot or maybe is trying to plan one thing and ends up might changing? Do you think it's still possible to have that kind of career switch today? Or what advice would you give to a student who's maybe unsure about that decision? Joel Meek: You can definitely make career switches. I probably made four or five career switches in my career from right out of college. I was in banking, then I went to consulting. I ended up jumping to work for Google where I worked in their Google cloud division when cloud computing was taking hold in an operational role. And then my boss gave me an opportunity to move into sales, and then I jumped into some startups. I went to Pinterest, I went to Reddit, eventually ended up running finance at Reddit, was my last job. I would say that if I think about just my path, I would do a lot of moonlighting. I would do a lot of just researching the place where I wanted to go or the new function I wanted to go into. I would meet with people, I would just try to be a sponge and soak things up as much as possible. And what I learned was that it can be difficult to make a career switch, because people will look at your background and say, "Well, how are you relevant for this job?" But what I learned is it only takes one. You only need one person to be willing to give you a chance. And I was fortunate to have a few moments in my career where someone was willing to take a chance on me, and then it's up to you to prove that you can do it. So I definitely would not hesitate if you're interested in making a career change. Just go for it. Just start learning as much as you can about that path that you want to go. Eventually, if you keep trying, you'll get there. Preena Shroff: Yeah, thank you. That's great advice. And I know you brought up Pinterest and Google. I actually wanted to ask you, having been closely involved with building up a developing company or at least a department within each of these last three companies, Google, Pinterest, and Reddit, how do you manage conflicting priorities between growth and sustainability? So by that I mean just company growth and also making sure it's economically stable, everything's on track. Joel Meek: Yeah, it's a great question. I think it's really going to be very company dependent, and it's also probably going to be dependent upon the stage of the industry in which the company operates in. I can start off with Google. I joined in 2007, and this is when cloud computing was the buzzword. Before that everyone was using Microsoft Office, Windows, Excel, PowerPoint on a desktop, and we were providing that all in the cloud at a much more affordable price. And we knew we had a critical window where we could get market share. And so really the focus was really on, at that point, growth. We had our eye on profitability and sustainability always, but really we felt like this was important enough for Google as a company that we wanted to grab market share. When I was at Pinterest, I joined in 2012. Again, it was about less than a hundred people at the time, the giants were Facebook and Twitter, and they had many more users, a lot more employees, a lot more capital. And we knew, again, we had a short window to get market share. And so our focus was really on growing our users and growing our revenue. We had our eye on the unit economics and we wanted to make sure that we could get there and we knew we did, but we were willing to pull forward some investment and be less profitable in the short term to get growth in the longer term. And I'd say the same thing was true at my experience at Reddit as well. So in all three of my experiences, it was really around growth in the short term and then flipping the profitability in the long term. Preena Shroff: Okay. Yeah, for sure. And thinking about how would you make that kind of decision? What about a company and where it is in development lets you decide between profit and making that shift? Joel Meek: Yeah, I think it's going to be a function of the industry that you're in. What is the competitive landscape look like and how important is scale? And we knew that it was only going to be a handful of players in this cloud computing space really serving these wholesale applications like email, docs and calendar. And so it was our moment to really sort be that option that people went to, and then if we didn't, someone else was going to go there first. So I think in other industries, maybe it's more fragmented, maybe there's less competition. Maybe you have a competitive advantage over the competition where you're able to charge more and you can focus a little bit more on profitability. But it's just going to be, I think, specific to each company and industry that they're in. Preena Shroff: Is there any job that you've felt gave you a full circle moment back to your time at Northwestern? Maybe any experiences like that? Joel Meek: Yeah. When I was at Google, one of the first things I was asked to do is to help bring Gmail calendar, Google Docs to the universities throughout the United States. Preena Shroff: Oh, wow. Joel Meek: And so we were looking for a few brave souls to be some of our initial customers. And actually Northwestern was one, I think maybe the first university, if not one of the first five universities to use Gmail calendar and Docs. I remember we had a whole campaign to get the students motivated to switch over. We called it Kid on the Bus and we painted a school bus and we drove it to Evanston and I sat, I think in front of the Rock, it was handing out flyers to tell people all about Gmail calendar and docs. Credit to Northwestern. They were pioneers in adopting new technology. And that was a really cool full circle moment to bring that stuff that I was passionate about back to the campus. Preena Shroff: That's a great memory. And I know you mentioned earlier that you wanted to get or be more of the decision maker in your role. And so I was wondering, since Northwestern from graduating from Northwestern to all the way to today, how has your leadership style evolved over time, whether it be decision making or just working in a group setting? Joel Meek: So directly out of college, I think I was much more of an informal leader. I was an individual contributor. So it was more about leading through example, working hard, being a part of a team, prioritizing integrity in everything that I did. It wasn't really until I entered the tech industry that I became more of a formal leader. I was actually quite fortunate. The division in Google I joined was led by Sheryl Sandberg, who later became the chief operating officer at Facebook. And she placed a really high premium on attracting talented leaders as well as investing in leadership training for junior managers like myself. So it was really valuable. I got frameworks around how do you hire A players, how do you organize and structure your team? How do you set strategy and goals? How do you execute? How do you run one-on-ones, deliver feedback, how do you promote, how do you fire people? I didn't know any of that. And I got a really good education in my first job in technology at Google. And then through that, I over time learned what kind of leader I was. I learned about what I was good at, and actually I learned about what I was not good at. And from there I learned to play to my strengths and then build a team around me where I was weaker. For example, I was always really good at structuring problems and creating process for us to scale things to really, really large numbers. But I wasn't the most creative person in the world, so I'd always make sure there was people on my team that would be able to bring new ideas. I think it's really when I understood who I was as a leader and what I was good at, that's when I was actually most successful in my career. Preena Shroff: And I think it's really incredible that you've been able to find so many mentors along the way. And even within Northwestern, I know students are always seeking mentorship, whether that be from alumni, their professors, anyone in the industry they're interested in. Do you have any advice for finding mentorship or is it something you seek out or something that can just develop over time? Joel Meek: Whenever I was choosing a new job, whether it was in banking or in technology at Google, Pinterest or Reddit, I was not just looking at the job I was going to be taking, but I was looking at who I'd be working for because your boss is someone you're going to spend a lot of time with. And I was very fortunate to have a few really great bosses across my time at specifically Google, Pinterest, and Reddit. And I learned a ton from them, and it really shaped who I was as a leader. So I would just say as you're jumping into the working world, have a really focused eye for who your boss is going to be. Make sure that you gel with that person. Make sure you think about, "Okay, what can I learn from this person? How can I grow with that person?" That will be almost as important as the job that you pick. Preena Shroff: Okay. Yeah, for sure. And then taking a pivot here, I guess for those of our listeners who are interested in working in the tech industry, what is the common misconception about working in the industry that you would like to debunk? Joel Meek: Maybe a common misperception is that either it's like everyone's working on the next big thing or everyone's going to get rich quick. The reality is that even for the next big thing, there is a lot of very routine day-to-day mundane stuff that's required to make that happen. And it ends up adding up to something amazing, but it's just like every other job, there's going to be that methodical day-to-day work that you got to do. And then in getting rich quick, most companies, most startups don't succeed just statistically speaking. And so I think it's an amazing experience. It's where I've pursued most of my career, but I think if you're doing it just for the money alone, it's probably not going to work out. You got to really just love technology and love being a part of that startup culture. I think that's going to probably breed more success than just going there to try to make money. Preena Shroff: Yes, for sure. That's great advice. And then I actually have one more question and then I might do some follow-ups based on everything. But I guess in terms of career overall, are there any obstacles or challenges that you've overcome? I remember you mentioned in Pinterest there was difficulty dealing with scammers or something like that. So anything like that, like a challenge, an obstacle, and then did your time at Northwestern impact your approach to solving this problem? Joel Meek: Yeah, honestly, I would speak to my career. I think the biggest obstacle really was just getting doors opened. And I still remember at Northwestern, applying for those, for example, banking and consulting jobs. Thankfully there was an amazing career center at Northwestern, but I think I ended up doing 30 to 40 interviews. And I can't say that my success rate was good, but it only takes one. And thankfully I was able to get the job that I eventually took and had a good experience from that. So I would just say be very entrepreneurial and opportunistic about going for the thing that you really want. And I think building up an ability to take rejection is actually a really important skill because I probably was rejected way more times than I was accepted to things. But what I found was whatever the next thing I wanted to do in my career is that as long as I kept swinging, eventually a door would open and I'd be able to jump through it and have success. Preena Shroff: Yeah, it seems like a theme. Only one door, only one person, and then you can get to where you are. Joel Meek: Exactly. Preena Shroff: Yeah. No, that's really great, and this is really insightful and super helpful I'm sure to all the students who are a little bit nervous about starting their careers as I am in my third year, just kind of looking towards the future. It's very daunting just to be like, "It's about to happen now." So it was really nice speaking with you about that. Joel Meek: Thank you. It was really nice talking with you as well. Preena Shroff: Thanks so much for joining us today. Have a wonderful day, everyone. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Weinberg in the World.  

In this episode of the “Weinberg in the World” podcast, student host Smera Dwivedi interviews Katrina Gentile, VP and head of global strategy at Wella Company. Katrina, a Northwestern alum, shares her career journey from consulting at BCG to various roles in the beauty industry, including a long tenure at Estée Lauder and her current role at Wella. She discusses her passion for problem-solving, her transition from consulting to corporate strategy, and her interest in the emotionally driven beauty industry.  Transcript: Smera: Okay. Welcome to the Weinberg in the World Podcast, where we bring stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. My name is Smera Dwivedi, and I'm your student host of this special episode of the podcast. I'm a second-year student studying chemistry on the pre-medical path, and today I'm excited to be speaking with Ms. Katrina Gentile who is the VP and head of global strategy at Wella Company. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. Katrina: Oh, it's my pleasure. Happy to be here. Smera: To start off with today, I would just like you to go ahead and introduce yourself. Katrina: So, hi. I'm Katrina Gentile. I am a proud Northwestern alum. I graduated class of 2008. I have spent my career in various business fields. I was an econ and math double major at Northwestern, and I started my career in consulting at BCG right out of undergrad. After that, I've spent the rest of my career in the beauty industry, so from consulting, went to Estée Lauder in a corporate strategy role for two years, and then after that, spent about eight years operating at Estée Lauder. In between, I got my MBA. And after Estée Lauder, spent a couple of years in startup land at a couple of indie brands in the beauty space before joining Wella at the beginning of this year as the head of strategy. So really thrilled to be a part of the Wella Company journey. It's a long history, a 140-year company, but only four years as an independent company so we're trying to figure out not just, we're grown up, but we're still trying to figure out what we want to be when we grow up, and that's a large part of my role. That's me personally. I have a mom, I have two little kids, six and three, and most of my free time is with them on whatever it is they want to do. Smera: That's adorable. So how did you end up picking Wella or end up being where you are now? Katrina: Well, where I am now is a bigger question than Wella. Maybe I'll start with the bigger question and then get to Wella. I ended up where I am now for two reasons. One, I've always loved solving problems. I remember doing word searches as a kid, math books, and it sounds corny, but it was always something like puzzles and games and crosswords and things like that was just always something that kept my mind busy. And that's actually what really led me to consulting because consulting is all about solving problems for companies. And I truly believe BCG is the best job, first job for any person. And not just BCG, but consulting in general. I had a really incredible formative experience there. I use those skills every day, not just in this role, but in every role I've had. And I ended up using that BCG platform to go to Estée Lauder and start in corporate strategy and then ultimately operate. Beauty has always been something I've been interested in personally as a consumer, but more because I find beauty to be a very emotionally driven category, and it's about making someone feel good, and I love that. I love that about what I do. And so when the opportunity arose to go to Estée Lauder, I jumped at it and I had a very long career at Estée Lauder that really brought me to Wella. And I think doing my detour in startup land, Wella is a happy medium, and that's why I joined the company. I'm excited about this role and continue to be excited about this role. We are a mid-sized, I would say, company. We're not as big as Estée Lauder, but we're not as small as a startup. We're somewhere in the middle and we're trying to establish what the future looks like for our company. Right now we're owned by a private equity firm called KKR. And KKR doesn't want to own us forever. No private equity wants to own any asset forever. So it's a really exciting journey to say, "Okay, what does our company look like in a post-KKR world? What do we want to be? How do we want to establish ourselves? What capabilities do we need to build to get there?" And from a strategy perspective, for someone like me who likes solving problems, there's a lot of them to solve. So that's been the common thread in my career, and that's ultimately what brought me to Wella company. Smera: Got you. Okay, that makes sense solving problems. How did you end up deciding on Wella, or how did you find BCG or Estée Lauder as a position or a company that you could be a part of? Katrina: So look, it was very different in my day when I went to Northwestern. I understand now that people apply for summer internships a long time before the internship happened. When I was in college, that was not a thing. So I remember going through recruiting for my BCG summer internship through campus recruiting. I think I went through it in January and my summer started in June. It was not a long gap, and I found it just by knowing that consulting was of interest and going to the campus recruiting sessions and signing up for the campus interviews and then doing a campus interview. So it was a very straightforward path for me at BCG. And from BCG, again, I am going to date myself here, but finding my first job at Estée Lauder was just a, it was a very similar process. Lauder posted a job on BCG's job board. I applied for it, and I interviewed for it. But in a lot of ways, I think things are more difficult today. I mean, I watch people going through consulting interview processes, and I hear people talking about how much farther in advance it is and how fewer spots there are, or I guess more people applying for more spots so the take rate is lower. So I fully recognize that my journey is a little bit different, but that was my path, at least to BCG and Lauder. From Lauder, it's been much more about my network. And that's one piece of advice that I really give to everybody is this concept of a network seems so theoretical, I think, and it did to me too, until you have to use it. And when I left Estée Lauder and was looking for what I wanted to do next, I was senior enough in my career that it was no longer like a job gets posted, you apply for it and you get interview and you get it. A lot of these, especially in beauty and especially in some of these industries that are a little more tight-knit, a lot of positions aren't posted. A lot of positions are done through someone who knows someone who knows someone or private equity companies who have this network of executives that they place in roles. And what I found actually is that when I left Estée Lauder, both of the startups I worked for were people I'd worked for at Estée Lauder or worked with at Estée Lauder, worked alongside at Estée Lauder who were looking for someone, and neither of the jobs I had were posted publicly. They were both word of mouth through my network that I ended up working there. And Wella was similar. So my old boss at Lauder is now at KKR who owns Wella Company, and she introduced me to my now boss at Wella. So all of that to say, I think I can't stress enough how every person you interact with may come back somewhere. Just today I was talking to our new head of HR, and it turns out she's also a Northwestern alum and we overlapped when we were there. And it's really crazy how we didn't know each other at Northwestern, but it's really crazy how small the world is and so my best advice to people is it's never too soon to start making genuine connections. It's never too soon to start engaging with people and asking them what they're interested in and talking to them about what you're interested in because you never know when it'll come back and when you'll be looking for something or someone that they might have something or someone for. Smera: Right. Okay, this makes sense. So you said your advice is to expand your network, make sure you are networking. What's the best way you can ensure you're doing that because it's nice to say, but that putting it into- Katrina: You know what? I don't actually actively network. I don't go to networking events. Well, I guess sometimes I do, but always because I'm genuinely interested in the event, not because I want to broaden my network. My network has been built by genuinely engaging with people that I meet and I work with. So I didn't go to a networking event and meet people, though I know that that is a viable way. I'm a little bit of an introvert in some ways, and I'm not very good in those situations where I don't know anyone and I'm like, it's hard for me to find my way. I actually find I do best just by talking to people in confined settings that I know. So every job, every internship I've had, I've really stayed in touch with people, even if it's just quick emails or texts or following them on Instagram and DM-ing them sometimes. And to me, that feels much more authentic. It's something that I do because I choose to, not because I have any sort of motive. And what I realized when I was looking to leave Lauder and then when I was looking for this new role at Wella about a year ago, is that even people that I hadn't done that or spoken to or texted with in the last three or four years, because I had genuinely invested them in them at the time that I worked with them, when I reached back out of the blue, they were always willing to help, always willing to answer an email, always willing to answer a call. And a couple of those people ended up helping me find really meaningful opportunities. And I had an advisory role at a company that came to me through someone that I worked with at BCG who I haven't spoken to probably since 2012, 2013. But because I reached out to her with a question on something else, she was like, "Oh, hey, actually there's something that maybe you could be interested in," and she followed up. So it's about figuring out what works for you. Somebody who's really outgoing and has no social anxiety or anything might like going to networking events. For me personally, I prefer the one-on-one connections, and I just encourage people to do what feels genuine to them because other people can tell when it's not authentic, right? Smera: Got it, understood. It's good advice that I will have to take part of. So with all your roles and your career, what's something you wish you did differently or regret or wish you took a different approach in? Katrina: That's a great question. I think everybody needs to trust their gut and not what somebody else defines for you as you should do for your career or should be a path for your career. For me personally, I went and worked in a couple of startups, and I think I knew to be honest with you in my gut that startup life wasn't necessarily for me. I think I knew that I preferred the security and the safety of a big company, but everybody in my business school class was going to startups and so I was like, yeah, I should do that too. I learned a ton. I mean, it was probably the biggest two-year learning experience in my life, but it wasn't for me and I think I knew that at the beginning, but I felt like that's what an HBS grad should do so that's what I did. And at the end, it ended up being two years that it could have been better served somewhere else for me, if I'm honest. So I think trusting your gut is a big thing, knowing what works for you personally and not being swayed is a big thing. And I would say the other thing is, at least when I graduated, and I don't know how it is today, there was a lot of pressure to have a very linear path. Like you did two years in consulting, then you went to HBS, then you did this, then you did that, then you did this, and I had that mindset for myself to be a CEO someday that this is what I had to do and it was very linear. And I realized, somebody said to me a couple years ago when I was not super happy in startups that if you look at people with linear career paths, they're usually pretty boring careers, and that has stuck with me since someone that advice was given to me because at the end of the day, I want to do work that I feel happy doing and that has meaning. Smera: Right. Katrina: And yeah, I don't think that doing something linearly always gets you there. Smera: Understood. I think in undergrad especially, it's easier to think of your future career as being pretty linear, but it's usually not going to be like that, so that's great to hear. That's very reassuring. Okay, so you said you started BCG with a career fair of some sort at Northwestern? Katrina: Yeah, they did a campus recruiting event. Smera: Okay, okay. Did you ever look into anything else other than BCG? Katrina: Well, I applied to all the consulting firms. Smera: [inaudible 00:13:07]. Katrina: BCG, Bain, McKinsey, there were some others I applied to at the time. But I had done a summer in investment banking my sophomore year summer, and then I applied to BCG in consulting for my junior year summer. Smera: Okay. Katrina: I was super fortunate that I hadn't offered to go back to Citigroup my junior year summer, so I worked there as a sophomore. They had a sophomore program at that time, and they made me an offer to come back as an IB intern my junior summer. So I was very lucky in the sense that I had a fallback that was very, very good, and I didn't do a lot of summer recruiting, but I was very lucky to get an internship at BCG. And then I came back to BCG full-time after I graduated. Smera: Got you. And so then when you started college, did you know you wanted to go into consulting or investment banking of some sort? Katrina: Yes and no. I knew I was interested in business, so I knew that I wanted to study economics. I tested that hypothesis a little bit, but I thought that's what I wanted to study. I didn't know what that would mean. And I think a lot of eighteen-year-olds don't, quite honestly. Other than people who say with confidence that they want to be pre-med or that they want to be a very specialized field, I think a lot of people, at least in my experience, were exploring at that time. So I think that there was, I sort of knew, but not really. I didn't know what it would look like. That really was crystallized for me when I did my summer in banking, which I took it as I have this cool opportunity, let me just try it out. And the summer prior, I had worked in city government in Boston where I'm from in the Economic Development Council Office. And so I knew a little bit about what public service could look like or government could look like, and then I figured I'd go the extreme other direction in banking and consulting actually was somewhere in the middle. Smera: Understood. Actually just speaking of your time in undergrad, do you remember what was probably the hardest thing to understand as an undergrad or hardest class or something social that was just difficult to overcome or to deal with? Katrina: Say it one more time. I'm not sure I followed the question. Smera: Well, when you were in undergrad, what would be the hardest thing you faced that was aside from just academics? Katrina: Oh, in undergrad, that's a great question. I think, and look, I acknowledge that this is a very privileged thing to be able to say, but I don't think I struggled with too much in undergrad only in the sense that I found my group at Northwestern, my people really early, and I think that that is something that I don't undervalue. I was very fortunate. I lived in Allison Hall and my freshman year roommate is still my best friend to this day. My kids call her Auntie Janelle. She is fantastic. And I lived down the hall from a group of individuals, four or five guys, and Janelle and I just became super close, and they're still, all of them are still in my life today. And that group really got me through Northwestern. So no matter what I was struggling with, no matter what I faced, I had this close group of six or seven people that I leaned on. And it wasn't to say that I had a easy-breezy ride. There were definitely drama moments and things that I didn't do as well as I wanted to do, but if I really take a step back and look at it, I don't feel like there was something where I would say, "Yeah, I really had a tough time with that particular thing," right? Smera: Right. Katrina: It was more just there was the initial adjustment to college and then making sure I stayed on top of my grades and stayed on top of the extracurriculars and all of those sorts of things. But truly for me, the people that came out of Northwestern really helped me through a lot of it. So, yeah. Smera: That's good to know. And it's good to know that you're still friends with her. That's- Katrina: Oh yeah, and not just her. I mean, all of them are still in my life. One of my friends has three children, two of them are about the same age as two of my kids, and they come once a year and spend a weekend with us in New York. We go and see them in Massachusetts a lot. These are lifelong people for me, and I can't stress enough how grateful I am to Northwestern for giving me that community. Smera: That makes sense. Then speaking of your friends, how often do you, you just mentioned you ran into a Northwestern alum in your company and you guys actually overlapped. How often does that happen? Katrina: Somewhat frequently, I would say. As much as you'd think. I think the community of Northwestern and New York community is maybe a little bit less concentrated, and then Northwestern and New York and beauty community is maybe a little less concentrated. There were definitely a couple of us in my class at business school and every so often there's so-and-so who knows so-and-so who knows so-and-so. But I think that the people that I've stayed in touch with from Northwestern are the ones, and that are in my life from Northwestern, are the ones that I knew in college. There have been a couple new ones, but maybe not as often as you'd think, at least in my particular city industry combo. Smera: That's wonderful to know. You said not very much in New York. Would you ever consider going back to Boston? Katrina: That's a loaded question. If my parents are watching this, absolutely because they still live there. No, honestly, the answer is probably no, unless there was some real reason for it. I love New York City. I live in Brooklyn and Park Slope. I love Park Slope. My kids love it here. My husband's very happy here. I don't see any world that we leave before our kids go to college, and then when I leave, I'm not going somewhere cold. Smera: Makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. Do you think the alumni community is bigger in Boston or in New York? Katrina: Probably in New York, but I think in Chicago is where it's probably most prominent. Smera: Right, it's going to be the most concentrated. Katrina: The other thing I would say is just for me also because I did go to graduate school, I have two alumni communities. And the HBS community is very, very strong here in New York so that might be a part of it too for me is just having those two different elements. Smera: That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. So what kind of skills or habits did you pick up on, or talents did you pick up on that have helped you in your career? Like stuff you learned at whether it was BCG that's helped you now, at Wella or even other types of skills or talents or abilities? Katrina: I would say that the biggest capability build I had was at BCG. And I'll tell you that the couple of things that I still carry with me from my BCG days because I believe that they are the reason I've been able to make it this far. Number one is a really robust analytical toolkit, so being able to work quickly in Excel. Some of that is just I am a mathematical person by nature, I was a math major, but I can build models, I can use Excel. I'm not the best, but I can do well enough to get me through, and that I think if number one. Number two is the ability to learn quickly. It's something that when you're a consultant is really important because you're not on a client project for two years. You're on a client project sometimes as short as six weeks, and you need to be able to learn that client's business and speak about it with confidence really, really fast. So the first week of any client engagement, you are really learning that client's business. And if on week two you're expected to know at least the industry and the category and the dynamics. And so the ability to learn and digest information quickly is something that in every job I've had since BCG has been called out as one of my strengths, and I really attribute that to BCG. The third thing is the ability to see both big and small. And it's another thing that when I look at folks, especially in beauty who have grown up in beauty, a lot of times it's really hard for them to step back and see the bigger picture. And that's something that consulting really teaches you from a very, very junior age or a junior tenure that I think has helped me tremendously. The ability to take a step back and say, okay, what is the actual story here? What is actually going on? Distill a complex problem, make it seem simple, and then really walk through the action items that could get us to where we need to be. I would say the last thing is the confidence to work with senior people, even when you're junior, to speak up to express your mind in a way that is not arrogant, that's not seen as overstepping, but that's additive and that shows it really is inquisitive and adds value. So those are the things I would say I learned at BCG. Smera: Okay, and then similarly, I'm not as familiar with the field of consulting. I've always been in the medical path. What's a big misconception people have about the field or the people or the work? Katrina: I mean, I think all those consulting movies are actually a misconception. There is some element of you come in, you tell people what to do and you leave. That is sort of true. You don't actually do it yourself. There is a little bit of truth to it, but I think that consultants really can be thought partners if business leaders let them be. And I do believe that people who have a couple of years of consulting experience can go and do, not everything, we can't go be a doctor, but learning how to tackle a problem and learning how to learn quickly can allow you to be successful in a range of jobs beyond being a consultant. Smera: Right. And so similarly, it feels like you have a lot of skills and abilities that you were able to pick up through this career, but how does that help you balance between your personal interests? Like you said, you're a mother, you have two kids. How are you balancing that with your lifestyle? Katrina: There is no balance. There is no balance. There's only trying, right? Smera: Okay. Katrina: And I think that I tell myself all the time that there will be a day that my kids don't want to sit down and have dinner with me, but right now they do and I need to take advantage of that. And I think 80% of balance is mental. 80% of it is acknowledging that you won't be able to do something for work because you're going to do something for your kids and making that choice and being okay with making that choice and letting it go. And that's taken me a long time to figure that out. My daughter is almost seven, and I think I'm just now figuring it out. And I'll probably keep figuring it out as she gets older, my older one. But I think if we strive for balance, we'll never get there. We just have to strive for doing our best and acknowledge that our best will never be good enough on everything and that's okay, as long as it's good enough on some things at the right times. Smera: Exactly. And then when it's not good enough, how do you stay motivated? How do you [inaudible 00:24:15]? Katrina: I had a boss once who whenever she would see someone starting a spiral, she'd start singing, "Let it Go" from Frozen, just break out in song and just start singing it. And I hear her singing in my head sometimes when I start to get myself down a path like that and I just let it go. I have to force myself to let it go. You have to because otherwise the anxiety will drive you crazy. No one person can do it all. This concept of having it all, you can have it all at the right times and different times, but I have yet, at least anyway, to meet anyone who has it all in that very traditional excels in all areas at all times in all ways concept. You can excel in some areas. I can excel at work this year, and maybe next year I'll excel at my family life and do okay at work, but it's hard to keep every ball equally high in the air at all times. I personally haven't found the solution. If you do, you let me know. Smera: Oh, no. Especially I feel like going to Northwestern, it seems like everybody's at there all at all times and that's just not true, so it's definitely good advice. And then speaking up, how do you determine whether you take a risk or you play it safe in something like your career? Katrina: I don't think you can determine each. You got to trust your gut. Smera: Right, okay. Katrina: You got to trust your gut. You got to know. I always ask myself what's the worst thing that can happen? I get fired and I find another job. What's the worst thing that happen if the company goes under? I find another job. What's the worst thing that can happen? I've been sharing a lot of past boss anecdotes. Another one, I had a past boss who used to say, "It's just lipstick. We just sell lipstick. We don't cure cancer." And I think the perspective is important. What is truly the worst thing that could happen? If this decision that I'm making fails, we sell a little less lipstick, we'll probably still be okay. So I think that it's just about, it's not easy. I'm making light of what is a very difficult thing because I too can second guess every decision I make all the time, but I think over time I've just had to force myself to just make a call and trust my gut. Smera: Well, that's really good advice. And then speaking of what's a time where you might've not done as well as you'd liked or you failed at something and how did you grow from it if it was something like that? Katrina: I mean, look, there are tons of times I can point to where I haven't done as well as I'd hoped, and I said it, nobody's perfect. Nobody excels all the time. I think one that comes to mind is I can't, obviously confidentiality I can't go into too many details, but the startups I worked at, neither one of them flew off the shelves. There were times where we had launches that didn't work. There were times where the business was struggling. There were times, and I think that's part of being a startup. That's part of working at a small company that doesn't do billions of dollars or even hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. There are things that you do that don't work. I think what I have to remind myself in those moments is this is how companies are built. This is how people are built. This is how people learn. This is how people grow. No company, no person, no project hits it out of the park every time. And it's about what you do with the learning rather than being perfect at all times. Because if you're perfect at all times, you never learn. You just keep doing the same thing. So I think that's the mindset you have to have. To me it's all mental and it's all what you make of it, and it's all how you take that learning and don't do it again and use it to do something else that's even better that's important. Smera: For sure. So to close us off because I don't want the Zoom to cut me off, but just to close us off, what is the best piece of general advice you could give to somebody in your position? Katrina: In my position or at Northwestern? Smera: I mean, both. Let's say both. Katrina: Okay. So if I were talking to current students, my best advice is don't do the thing that you think you're supposed to do. Do the thing that you think you'll be good at. Smera: Okay. Katrina: And I think I see too many people saying, "Well, I'm supposed to do X. I should do Y. My parents think I should do Z. I always wanted to do X, so I'm going to do it." That's a recipe in my opinion, for being unhappy in whatever it is you choose to do. You spend more time at work than you do with your family. You spend more years working than you do in school. Pick the thing that's really you're going to enjoy and that makes you happy and do it. And if you don't want to do X, Y, and Z, don't do it just because your parents think you should, or your friends or your career counselor or your teacher or your brother or whomever. It's not just parents. It's any number of people. So that's my best advice to students. I would say to people in my position or who are looking to do what I do or who are mid to later in their careers, the advice I give is the advice I gave earlier, which is don't underestimate the power of talking to people and building genuine relationships with people because you never know when someone's going to need someone like you. And if they don't think of you or they think of you in a negative light, that won't be you. So that's the advice that I would give to people. Smera: Definitely heavy on the first one. My parents pushed me towards a medical path. I wasn't sure if I wanted to so we'll see how that ends up being. Katrina: Look, it's a long life. It's a long life. Whatever you choose, you're going to keep doing it and you got to love it, especially medicine. My sister and brother-in-law are both doctors, and I see it firsthand. You've really got to love it. Smera: You have to love it, for sure. And the second one, for sure. Just don't burn bridges, I guess. Katrina: It's not just that. It's not just don't burn bridges. It's really truly invest in people because you want to. Smera: That makes sense. Okay, thank you so much for speaking with us. Katrina: My pleasure. It was lovely getting to know you. Smera: It was wonderful getting to know you too. Thank you for listening to this special episode of Weinberg in the World Podcast. We hope you have a great day, and go Cats.  

Mirabella Johnson: Welcome to the Weinberg in the World podcast, where we bring stories of interdisciplinary thinking into today's complex world. My name is Mirabella Johnson, and I am your student host of this special episode of the podcast. I recently graduated from Northwestern's undergraduate Cognitive Science and Global Health Studies programs housed in Weinberg. And I'm currently continuing my education at Northwestern in the Accelerated Public Health Program to obtain a Master of Public Health degree through Feinberg School of Medicine's program in public health. Today, I am very excited to be speaking with Shruti Mehta, who is a Dr. Charles Armstrong Chair in epidemiology, and professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Thank you so much, Shruti, for taking the time to speak with me today. Shruti Mehta: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Mirabella Johnson: Likewise. All right. So to start us off today, I'm wondering if you could tell us a bit more about your time at Northwestern as an undergraduate, what you studied, and what were the impactful experiences for you that kind of led you to your current career path? Shruti Mehta: Yeah, so first, I guess I would start by saying that I absolutely loved my time at Northwestern. They were some of the best years of my life, from not just the training that I got, but to the friends that I made, to spending time on that beautiful campus that I still miss. So when I started at Northwestern, I think the only thing that I really knew or I thought was that I was going to go into medicine. So I started with the pre-med curriculum. My father was a physician, and so I had this really strong desire, I think, instilled in me by him to serve. And honestly, other than that, I didn't know very much. I liked biology, I liked math, and so I got kind of started in the pre-med curriculum. I started in chemistry and a really advanced calculus class. And interestingly, my RA my freshman year was also pre-med. But one day I remember going to see her in her room to ask her a question, and she was painting. And she was actually an Art Theory & Practice major. And I had loved art in high school. I was always painting or drawing or creating, but I never thought of it as a major option for me. But it was really meeting her and so many others that were doing really diverse things at the time that I was at Northwestern, that led me to declare Art Theory & Practice as my major in my sophomore year. And I would just say that I'm forever grateful for that. It definitely changed my life. I didn't end up being a physician, and I'm not a practicing artist, but I would say that both of those things play a huge role in how I approach my work. Other things at Northwestern that were impactful. I think one of the great things was just the diversity that I was surrounded by, and it's not just the diversity and who people were or where they came from, but it was what they were doing and what they were interested in. I had friends that were in the engineering school. I spent a lot of time in the Tech building, but I also had my pre-med friends. I had a lot of friends who were artists from my major, and then I had friends in Radio/TV/Film in Communications. And it just exposed me to so many different perspectives, and I think also made me realize that anything was possible. Mirabella Johnson: I love that. Yeah, that is so interesting. I have some similar experiences where there was a time where I really thought I was going to pursue medicine, and then everything gets really stressful at Northwestern as I'm sure you're familiar. Shruti Mehta: Yes, yes. Mirabella Johnson: And there are so many other ways to be involved in the field, and art is something I'm also passionate about. I loved painting, loved drawing, grew up performing. So that's not what I did for my majors, but I stayed involved with it through activities. And Northwestern is just such a great place, in my opinion, for exploring so many different paths. So thank you so much for sharing that. That's awesome. Kind of going off of that, with that all in mind, can you share a bit more on how you ended up landing in public health, and knew eventually that this was the field for you? Shruti Mehta: Yeah, no, and I think you said it well, right? There are so many different ways to be engaged in the field of health and medicine. And I think when I was an undergrad, there wasn't really public health as a major. Well, there certainly wasn't at Northwestern. There wasn't the major that you were, that the minor that you have. And most schools, I think it was probably very rare. I think many people found their way to public health much like I did, going through the medicine route. I don't think I knew what public health was. In undergrad, I don't think I knew what epidemiology was. Like I said, I chose pre-med because that's what I knew, and many people in my generation chose that if you were kind of interested in science and math, and you had that desire, you were medical school bound. So when I graduated, I did apply to medical school. I didn't get into the schools that I wanted to go to, and honestly I wasn't sure because I had this art side. I found myself applying to medical school, but also looking at advertising jobs. And I was a first-generation Indian American, and kids didn't take time off after undergraduate, you went straight into a serious career or you went into a graduate school program, but I really just needed some time. And the way for me to get that time was to find a job and live in Chicago. And so I was pretty scrappy, knocked on doors, the medical school, because I wanted to stay in Chicago. And I thought that the way to do that and the way to kind of figure out if medical school was for me was to do research. And so I didn't find a posted physician, so I literally knocked on doors. I knocked on doors, and I made phone calls because that's what you did at that time. And I met this assistant professor named Mary McDermott, who took a chance on me. She didn't have a job, she didn't really have an opportunity listed, but I think she saw some potential in me, and she hired me to be her research assistant. And I eventually became her research coordinator, I worked for her for two years. I think I started making 850 an hour. And she was doing studies in congestive heart failure and peripheral vascular disease. And I started off just seeing study participants and conducting assessments on them. But I was just hungry to learn and to go beyond just kind of recruiting and seeing participants. So I found myself looking at the data, asking questions. She kind of taught me how to ask those questions, how to answer those questions. I started learning how to do analyses, design research protocols, and then I just wanted to be better at my job. So I asked her about courses, and I found a clinical epidemiology course at the School of Medicine, and I took it. And at the same time as I took that class, another faculty member that I worked for, Joe Feinglass lent me his copy of And the Band Played On. And that is a book that chronicles essentially the early days of the AIDS pandemic, the HIV pandemic. And I'd say it was those two things that kind of together led me to public health and epidemiology. So the clinical EPI course, it just bit. You know when you take a class, and you're just like, "Oh, this makes sense. I get this." It kind of brought together everything that I liked and everything that I was good at, elements of problem-solving, asking questions and answering them. It still had that quantitative side, but in many ways, EPIs, we live in the gray. So it's a little bit of an art as well as a science. And then I was working cardiovascular disease research with Mary, but the And the Band Played On kind of got me interested in HIV. And it was really that it was not just the biology of the virus and all the questions that were unknown at that time, but it was the social issues, the structural issues, and the kind of interplay between those different factors. And so with that, I found myself applying to master's in public health programs, and that's landed where I am today. Mirabella Johnson: That is amazing. And I will say Dr. Feinglass is actually one of my professors. Shruti Mehta: [inaudible 00:07:48] Mirabella Johnson: So him and I are working together on some research potentially for the impact of reforming policing and gun violence prevention, since that's my past. And I also work in behavioral health as a behavioral support specialist. So talking about trauma-informed approaches rather than this tactical approach that really can blow things out of proportion when you're doing mental health and wellness visits. Or even just intervening in a crisis. Shruti Mehta: Absolutely. Mirabella Johnson: Which is awesome. Shruti Mehta: Oh, I love that. Yeah. Mirabella Johnson: Yeah, he's really, he's great. Shruti Mehta: Small world. Mirabella Johnson: Yeah, it is a small world. And I was going to say, I also just worked on a project for one of my classes on congestive heart failure and the low-sodium diet. Because there's surprisingly a small amount of research for how effective the low-sodium diet actually is for congestive heart failure management in terms of symptoms, and morbidity, and mortality. So we were working on that paper literally last quarter. Shruti Mehta: Oh, that's great. Were you collaborating with folks at the School of Medicine as well? Mirabella Johnson: Yeah, yeah. Actually, the majority of my professors in that class were through Feinberg, but then they- Shruti Mehta: Feinberg, okay. Mirabella Johnson: ... in ISGMH, so the Sexual and Gender Minority Institute. Shruti Mehta: Okay, okay. Mirabella Johnson: And they were a wealth of knowledge as well. They were awesome. But I definitely resonate with that, especially as an individual starting out in the field. And I'm sure also it will resonate for so many other students as the interest in Global Health Studies and the related concepts of public health have really, I've seen continue to grow amongst our undergrads, myself included. So with that being said, as someone currently getting an MPH, what encouraged you to then pursue a PhD? Shruti Mehta: Yeah, I think it just wanted more. The expression, sort of, "The more you learn, the more you realize you don't know." I still think I sometimes feel that same way. But I will say, and I say this often that, "When I came to Hopkins, I was going to get my 11-month MPH, and I was headed back to Chicago." I loved Chicago, and that was my plan. But I think that I realized that I wanted to lead work, right? I think there's a lot of things that you could do with an MPH, and you can be a part of incredible work, and people lead programs, but I wanted to lead my own research. I wanted to build my own program, and I wanted to be able to ask my own questions and figure out how to answer them. And I just realized that I had kind of only scratched the surface of what I needed to know to do that with my MPH. And so that was the reason why I stayed to do my PhD. Mirabella Johnson: Yeah, that's awesome. Super helpful. Thank you for going more in-depth about that. So I'm actually from the Chicago and suburbs myself, so I'm kind of in the same boat where I'm very much so on that track, right? Shruti Mehta: Yeah. Mirabella Johnson: I want to stay in the city, and there's so much work to do here. But I also like the idea of potentially doing research. So I'm very grateful to be getting my MPH right now. I knew this is what I want to do, but I've also thought about potentially going for a PhD as well. So that just provides me a lot of food for thought personally. Shruti Mehta: And I think it's great to get that experience in between. I think it can be really just being on the other side now and mentoring PhD students, we see a lot more, and we actually require work experience and see that people who come in with that work experience, that helps to really inform their questions, right? Mirabella Johnson: Yeah. Shruti Mehta: So they come in with a lot of questions, and we help to give them those tools to help to teach them how to answer those questions. Mirabella Johnson: Exactly. Yeah, that's awesome. So tell me a bit more, if you don't mind, about your current projects as well as any future aspirations or goals for your career personally, or for public health as a whole, which is a very- Shruti Mehta: Big question. Mirabella Johnson: ... big question. But I'll let you take it away. Shruti Mehta: So there are a lot of research projects that I'm involved right now. I would say that one of the things when I became chair, so I started as chair in June. And I kept getting asked at that time, and I continually get asked now, "What are you going to give up? What things are you going to stop doing?" But I still find my research really fulfilling and an important part of what I do. And I'd say my whole career, I feel like you answer one question, and then that question leads to the next question. And that's kind of how my career has really developed. I trained as an observational epidemiologist like many do. It was about following people over time, understanding the burden of disease, why some people had morbidity and mortality rates that were higher than others. What were the risk factors for those things? All with an eye of how we intervene, but really the focus was on those observational studies. And my work is always centered in populations that have particular barriers to engaging in services, that we have to prevent and treat predominantly infectious diseases. So a lot of my work is focused on people who inject drugs, men who have sex with men, transgender persons, again, groups that bear a really high burden of infectious diseases, but have these challenges to accessing care. So I spent my early years trying to understand why this is, why were there these barriers to care, what were the challenges people were facing? And then honestly, the past 15 years, we just couldn't observe anymore, we had to actually do something. And so we've learned how to design, implement, evaluate interventions to really support engagement in treatment and prevention services for HIV, for hepatitis C that I also studied. We have incredible tools to prevent and treat infection, but people don't necessarily access them the way that they should because there are challenges with both in their own lives, but also with the systems that deliver them. So I do a lot of work in Baltimore, I also do work in India. And really it's been about exploring different creative interventions to improve engagement. Everything from giving people actually incentives to engage in HIV treatment, right? To say, okay, we know that a person loses daily wages to actually go to the clinic to get treatment in India. So can we actually compensate for that and then improve outcomes? Another project that I'm involved in is actually trying to change the way we deliver services. So in many of the countries where there are large HIV programs, free treatment is delivered through government centers. But they're government centers, so some of the populations that I mentioned don't necessarily feel comfortable going to those government centers. They want to get their care in the community, and they have other needs beyond HIV. So it's about thinking about how do we combine the services that a person needs in a person-centered way, not a disease-centered way, and deliver them from a center that they want to go to and that supports all of their needs? And so we lead a lot of large-scale trials to evaluate how those different types of interventions work in communities. I think you also asked about future aspirations. So for me, it's really about leaving something better than when I came to it. So I'd say that's true for the department that I now lead, as well as the research that I do. I just hope that someday something that I do leads to a big change and impact, and changes people's lives. And so for me, everything that I do, whether it's about the research that I do, or it's, again, my administrative work, it's about people first. That's kind of the place that I want to have impact. And then for public health, that's a bigger question. I think that I look for us to have the courage to ask the big questions, the hard questions, and find the innovative ways that we need to, to answer them. To collaborate across other disciplines and other fields, kind of reach outside our comfort zone, and then hopefully speed up the pace of what we do. I think one of the challenges is the world is moving really quickly, technology is changing, but the pace at which we're able to do things is challenged. So again, just trying to find ways to overcome some of those barriers in our own field, and being able to think big. Mirabella Johnson: That is truly amazing and inspiring. And I think you've already made a huge impact. I am really, really in awe. That's amazing. Yeah. Wow, I'm kind of blown away [inaudible 00:16:06] you. Which I expected, but I just- Shruti Mehta: [inaudible 00:16:09], yeah. Mirabella Johnson: Really happy to hear that. And I also follow a very similar mantra where that's kind of why I decided on public health was, I care about people. I want to make the world or the place that I'm in somehow a little bit better than when I got there. That was how my parents raised me to be as a person. And I think that drew me to public health. And for anyone listening, I just took a course last summer in the public health program at Feinberg for LGBTQ+ Health. And even as an ally and someone very familiar with the intersectional challenges that that community deals with in public health, I really learned so much from that course. And Dr. Lauren Beach, who is truly amazing, they're a wealth of knowledge as well. And a little plug there, but it was such a great course, and you got to work with a community partner. So it really helped solidify what I already knew, which is I love public health. But when you're working with people and like you said, with their challenges, understanding their challenges and meeting them where they're at, to get them to a place that's either better or good for them. A lot of times, that's not happening. So congratulations on all of your accomplishments and contributions to the field really. Going off of that, you had a great transition. So I'd like to ask you to think about everything you know now and what you've done, and kind of bring it back to the undergraduates who may be listening, be thinking about their future directions. So at NU, like we talked about, Global Health Studies offered as an adjunct major or minor in Weinberg now, which is wonderful. We just celebrated, I think 20 years, the program. And that's what drew me to Northwestern. I knew after going to community college to save money during COVID, that I loved Northwestern, I'm from the area, and also I loved public health. I got to take an EPI course at my community college. So thinking about your own work on US public health issues, but also internationally, which is amazing. Do you think Global Health Studies would've been of interest to you in undergrad if it was available? And can you also speak a little bit to the value that you think Global Health broadly has brought into your efforts and your insights as a professional in the field? Shruti Mehta: Yeah, I would say 5000%. If it was offered, it absolutely would've been of interest. And I think it's really special for me that the major's there and that you're going through the MPH program. When I was leaving Northwestern for Hopkins, they were just starting to think about the MPH program. At that point, it was going to be a four-year program, and that was part of the reason I didn't stay because I needed to finish quickly. It was in its early stages. So just the idea that that program is so vibrant, and now there's an undergraduate program is so special to me. So I would've definitely been interested in that. I think it's exactly the kind of thing that I would've been looking for. Again, like I said, it didn't exist when I was there, but I think that we see that so many of the people that come into the field now, people that come into the MPH program or come into the PhD program, are coming from that public health undergraduate background or Global Health Studies major. And I think it's great because they've got this additional preparation for the field that they're eventually going to be in. So I think it's fantastic. In terms of global exposure, I would say that I, even before I started working, it's something that's been a part of my life since I was a child. My parents were immigrants. They lived between two worlds. I was a first-generation kid. We went back to India, their entire family was there. We went back to India every two to three years for my entire childhood. And so for me, that was critical to my upbringing because I was exposed to two cultures my entire life. And it gives you this perspective, not just the challenges of this society that you live in, but the challenges around the world that other people face. And that really shaped me, broadened my worldview. And I think it's important for everyone because we are a global society. I think COVID taught us that, right? We already knew that, but COVID amplified it, we are interconnected. What happens around the world affects us here at home, so we have to care. And I think global problems and challenges are our challenges, right? Obviously that exposure to India as a child has been instrumental even to shaping my career. I chose India to work in very deliberately. But having these experiences working both locally in Baltimore and then globally in India, I've been asking similar questions in different places for many years. And what's kind of fascinating is there's huge differences, obviously between the two setting. But I'm always struck by how many things are similar for the populations that I work with and the questions that I answer, and some of the lessons that can be translated from one setting to another. I think we often say local to global, and try to take lessons from the US and apply them elsewhere. But I'd say it's as much global to local as well, right? So my work in Baltimore informs my work in India, but equally, my work in India informs my work in Baltimore. And so I think just, again, having that broad perspective is critical for all of us. Mirabella Johnson: Yeah, I agree a hundred percent. That is so helpful and insightful. Thank you, Shruti. To quickly close this out today since you have spent so much time with us, and I really appreciate it. I have one more quick question for you. What do you wish you could tell yourself when you were either in my shoes or in a current undergraduate shoes? What do you wish you could tell yourself? Shruti Mehta: Take advantage of opportunities. Be creative. Be curious. Don't worry so much about what the end is going to be, right? Take advantage of the... I think we oftentimes, we get so focused on what am I going to be? And we obviously ask those questions. What do you want to be in five years? What do you want to be in 10 years? But I think sometimes we kind of feel the weight of that, and that may paralyze us a little bit. And so I think thinking about things a little bit more organically, and again, if something comes at you, don't be afraid to take advantage of that opportunity, even if it wasn't a part of your plan, because something amazing could come of that. Mirabella Johnson: Yeah, that's also incredibly helpful to consider. And I would echo that as a recent alumna, and I hope for undergrads, for recent alums and other graduate students too, that they're able to think about that because I really do think that applies to our education, but also to life and what you pursue. So with that being said, thank you so much for this great advice and for taking the time to join us today. Shruti Mehta: Thank you for having me and for sharing your perspective. And I really look forward to also seeing how your career develops. Mirabella Johnson: Thank you. I definitely will be following what you do. What you do is amazing. Thank you everyone for listening to this special episode of the Weinberg in the World podcast. We hope you have a great day. And as always, Go 'Cats. Shruti Mehta: Go 'Cats.  

In this episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast, host Preena Shroff, a third-year student at Northwestern University, interviews Peter Waitzman, the CEO of Expedition Money and a 1999 graduate of Weinberg College with a degree in Economics.   Transcript: Preena: Welcome to Weinberg in the World Podcast, where we bring stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. My name is Preena Shroff and I'm your student host of this special Weinberg in the World episode. I'm a third-year student majoring in neuroscience and global health with a minor in data science, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Peter Waitzman, who graduated from Weinberg College in 1999 with a Bachelor of Arts and Economics. Peter is now the CEO of Expedition Money, a financial wellness program aiming to provide educational content and coaching to help individuals and families achieve financial independence. Peter, thank you so much for being here with us today. Peter: Well, thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be here. Preena: Yeah. We are so excited to learn about your work in finance, but would love to start out with maybe how your career path was shaped by your time at Northwestern. So if you can tell us more about your undergraduate experience, what were some impactful classes, extracurriculars or mentorship experiences that you had which impacted your postgraduate career? Peter: Yeah. So as you mentioned, I came to Northwestern for economics and got immersed in that student body. So a lot of my friends were economics majors. And something similar that you and I share is that I lived in Ayers CCI at the time, which also had a lot of economics people, especially with its commerce theme. So from classwork to just the living experience on campus and even my social life were really surrounding me with people that were like-minded. And economics encompasses a lot of different things, but one of the things that I really liked that is a little bit outside the coursework right now is that it connected me with some of my really good friends who are really good friends today, but we were able to do stuff together, whether it was in classes or starting businesses on campus or doing projects together or researching or just sitting around in the lobby and kicking around ideas or reading the Harvard Business Review or whatever, just having people that share some of the same ideas. And a lot of that was some entrepreneurship. I think it was a little too early to think about that at the time. We didn't really think about starting businesses kind of that freshman, sophomore year, but it was just nice to be in that culture. And then when I started taking classes, people would turn you on to certain things. So one of the classes that I surprisingly liked, it wasn't necessarily in economics, but was the public speaking class. And I remember one of the exercises there was to take a controversial topic and take one side of it and defend it. And I really liked that because what it made you realize is that not everything is going to be a win-win-win situation for everyone. So sometimes you're going to have to take something and you're going to have to do some convincing with it. And it really impressed upon me that you're going to have to be, one, a good communicator when you get out into the real world, make the case for what you're doing, be succinct, get your point across, those types of things, and that's going to be really helpful. And then all of the economics classes that came on top of that, just to help you understand how the world works and incentives and the market dynamics and all of those types of things really was a nice way to put that puzzle together so that when you came out of school, you had a good perspective, a good base for developing what you wanted to work on or go into your career. And obviously, ultimately, I went that entrepreneurial route. Preena: Absolutely. Yeah. It's pretty cool that the residential college system was where you found a lot of those connections right off the bat starting in college. So go Ayers. My unbiased opinion is Ayers is the best residential college. Peter: One thing, it's funny you call it Ayers, because Ayers wasn't added on until I was there. So at that time, Mr. Ayers was getting involved and so we put the name on there. So to me, and for people of my vintage, it's still CCI, but I like how some people now know it as Ayers, so very cool. Preena: Yeah. So let's talk more about beyond Northwestern and what led you on the career path. So I know you talked about different econ classes that kind shaped your experience. What skills were you able to build upon that have been critical in your field today? Peter: Yeah. So one of the things that Northwestern directly led to was going in the economics world, a lot of people come out of college and go into consulting and it can kind of be a natural transition into the real world for people. And I did that for a couple years. So I did two years in consulting before I went into banking and then investment management, and then financial planning. And so the dots, the path there is actually not super uncommon. I don't know that it's a super common path, but it makes a lot of sense, I think, being naturally born out of the economics seed from Northwestern, and a lot of people who go into consulting maybe kind of branch off into different things. But I kind of still follow that financial path. And what that did for me at the time was just give me a lot of exposure to how things work. So one of the things that I realized from economics is that you get a lot of macro picture, kind of big picture, even if you're doing microeconomics, it's kind of very generalized. But when you get out into the workforce and you start working as a consultant, you kind of understand how business works and the business requirements and those things that go into big projects. But then when I went to the bank as an analyst, you really start seeing real-world stuff. You're looking at data that is moving the needle on the products or services that you provide. And then when I went into financial planning and investment management, you're starting to paint that side of the picture as well. How does this impact individuals and what are the motivations there and the incentives and what are people using, and how does the top level of banking and financial services providers fit into what the consumer needs on the front lines? And so having that broader picture really helped me then continue to move forward, and that's when I started moving away from the products and services side of things into what is generally more financial wellness. So how do we make people healthier, happier, more fulfilled, maybe chase retirement early, balance life and work better, raise a family, kind of have your cake and eat it too. Just generally be able to live and exist in life, which is very difficult. I've even said the game is kind of rigged these days. It's really hard to make the amount of money, and you may not feel it now, but we kind of live in a high inflation environment, and there's so many challenges for people. It's either earning enough money or finding a place that's cheap enough to live or having a job that's secure. The myriad of things that really plague people and things that people struggle with. And so that's why then I started to step back and actually worked... I was working for a large financial services company at the time and they wanted to launch a financial wellness project, something a little bit more encompassing, a little more general. And so I went into the home office and then we started building that and I spent a few years doing that. And then I continued the path of financial wellness and building financial wellness programs for a couple other companies after that. So ended up helping develop financial wellness companies or financial wellness programs for three companies following that, and then went off on my own and built the financial wellness program that I really wanted to build. So that's how I ended up getting there. So kind of a lot of different steps. It's not necessarily A, B, C, D, but it didn't really deviate as far away as I think a lot of career paths can or they can really pivot. And I certainly embrace that too. And for the people that kind of want to go off and do something that's very different from what they got trained in, there's never maybe the perfect opportunity to do that, so you just want to do it. Preena: Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense that you said you had a couple different jobs working in the industry before building upon your own program. So I guess I kind of wanted to ask, maybe the mentorship aspect of that, do you know if there's anyone who specifically provided a particular mentorship experience for you? Or what advice do you have for students who are looking for support along their career paths? Peter: Yeah. Mentorship has been one of those things that I think has really evolved over the last couple of years. Not even the last couple of years, but over the last couple of decades. And so when I was a student and then even when I went and left school and actually participated in the mentorship program to Northwestern students at the time, so at that time I was meeting a couple students, and this was fairly early on in my career, there's a lot of value to that. I feel a little bit like mentorship has changed in a way that on one hand, people who can be and should be mentors and have that life experience and maybe are an expert in their industry or subject matter experts are almost gun-shy about becoming mentors because they're worried about the time commitment, they're worried about, hey, the imposter syndrome of it, even though maybe they shouldn't be. And so it's harder these days I think to have formal mentorship relationships than it ever has been in the past, especially when there isn't structure. It's not part of a company, and sometimes in a company they'll have a mentorship program and they will take this person and pair them up with this person. And so one of the things that I've talked about is not necessarily putting that pressure on you, because the benefit of having a mentor is awesome, or the benefit of even just having the opportunity to do a Q&A or to pick the brain of someone who maybe has gone the path that you want to go is super valuable. In just a short conversation, you might get some insights of, "Hey, this works, this doesn't," or, "Based on your personality, I think you should try this," or, "Here's a person I want you to meet." And they can be so valuable, so important. Just that short amount of time can save you so much trial and error or so many headaches on your own. And so without putting that pressure on people, what I say is that you should just feel free to reach out. I know that we have some directories of Northwestern alumni or people that you just meet on LinkedIn or maybe even a connection somewhere else, but, hey, can you make this introduction? Can you sit down with me for 30 minutes? Can I buy you a cup of coffee? Can I just have a Zoom meeting? Can we just talk about some things because I have some questions? And even if you don't establish a formal mentorship relationship, I think just having that connection is really valuable and it opens the door later to having another one. And you actually might have a formal-like mentor relationship that doesn't fall under the category or get the label. And, actually, to be honest, even now, it's easier than ever, I think, because let's say there is someone in your industry that you want to talk to, you slide into their DMs or send them a message, or social media can make some of these connections sometimes. So just being able to pick their brain, like I said, is really valuable. And if you can have a formal mentor, someone who will stick with you over longer periods of time, awesome too. Awesome too. But sometimes it just helps to take away that pressure of that commitment over a long period of time and just start with that conversation and then see where it goes. Because honestly, sometimes you might move away from that industry or that path or whatever it might be, and there's someone else is going to help you, and not having that formal relationship allows you to feel less commitment to try to just hold onto a relationship and not go somewhere else that might get you some better information too, so kind of my thoughts. Preena: Absolutely. Peter: And just likewise, people had questions for me. I'm always happy to respond to emails or to set up a meeting or grab a cup of coffee or whatever it might be, because I really want people to get the right information. I want to be an open book. I want people to not make the same mistakes I did and have better efficiency and more fulfillment and all these other things. And obviously that's why I put together my program. But trying to get people to short circuit that, find that wormhole to their delta quadrant as fast as possible, I think that's really meaningful to people when life can be so chaotic anyway. Preena: Yeah, I think what I'm gathering from what you're saying is communication is really important, and just getting better, getting practice, talking with people, getting to know the background of other people and take from that what advice they can provide for you. Peter: And you never know what short conversation... I totally agree with you because even for you and me, we just had a short in the line conversation once, and you never know where those relationships are going to go and those connections and the conversation that you have that you might find you have a similar thread in life or whatever that might be, sometimes those things can be really meaningful and last a lifetime. So for sure. Yeah. Don't underestimate any moment. Preena: Yeah. So speaking of communication route, I know you started out as a content creator. How would you say your experiences as in the content creator back when you were starting off your career, how can that be applied to students navigating social media today? And then what challenges might you anticipate if you had started your career, for example, next year? Peter: Yeah. Man, this could be a huge all encompassing conversation. I think what I want to boil it down to today is the common denominator of the value of attention, the value of having a platform and the value of having visibility. Because it's not just about, say, marketing a product. Honestly, when a business is trying to use social media, they're usually trying to get their products and services out there, build their reputation, expand their brand, all these other things. But I think one of the things that we undervalue as an individual, and we talked a little bit about communication, that social media can be such a powerful way to expand the reach of our communication. So if we have that communication. And whether it's finding a job or raising your visibility in the industry, or making a connection for other people, or trying to make an impact on your community or your movement or whatever it is, you can have a great message, great skills, but if no one's there to hear you, it's like, does a tree make a sound if it falls in the forest? But if you can figure out how to leverage social media to expand your reach, that can be so powerful. I'll tell you what. Right now, economy's a little slow, people are trying to find jobs. A few years ago there were graduates, wonderful, talented students looking for jobs, and an advantage was to have some of your content already out there, some of the things that you wrote about, opinion pieces, papers that you wrote for school, whatever it might be, just things you were passionate about. Even if it wasn't expansive and Mr. Beast level of type of content, just having some of that could be a differentiator when you're out looking for a job or reaching out to someone to be a mentor or to get a volunteer position. And it doesn't have to just be social media. It can be a book. I've written some books in the past. Those have helped get my message out. It can be doing workshops or presentations or online webinars or whatever you want to do, but don't underestimate the power of the technology and especially these free platforms where I think because they're free, a lot of people are already using them, we say, "Hey, I want to be known for what I do," but sometimes you have to be your best advocate. You're the person advocating for yourself and putting that out there and leveraging the platform. So when I think about content creating, it's not just about trying to get attention for no reason, but what's the purpose? And then for a lot of people, I think that can be your own satisfaction. So like a charity or a cause you're committed to, but it can also be just for your professional advancement or improvement or the next position or speaking engagement or whatever it might be. Preena: Right. So for you, it was your passion for finance and helping others achieve financial wellness and also sort of helping you build your platform to engage with others. Peter: Yeah. And so I actually have a number of YouTube channels, and one of them is called Expedition Money Snacks, where it's just one-minute-long videos, very short kind of TikTok format, but here's a concept, here's an idea, maybe you haven't heard of this, or maybe it's a quick bit of news. I try to make things that are very bite-sized. And then I have my Expedition Money. That's more long-form. And those can be 20, 30 minute videos where I deep dive into a topic. So what you want to do is not necessarily put everyone into the same box. People are going to consume in different ways, and which you want not necessarily is put yourself center, but you want to put their consumption desires front and center, and you want to try to serve to them because if you're not getting the attention, if you're not getting that content in front of people, then it doesn't really matter. I can create a lot of content and no one wants to consume it, and so then it's not really having an impact. But if I can craft it in such a way that, hey, it's fun or it's interesting or it's bite-sized, whatever it is, then at least we have a chance at maybe having that deeper conversation. We might have a chance at talking about more developed or nuanced or complex financial topics later. So just trying to keep that door open and keep the information top of mind for people front and center. Preena: Right. Yeah. For sure. Okay. I think we can kind of turn or pivot a little bit to more so the expedition money side of things. I guess a couple of questions I had regarding your program is why did you decide to make your own program instead of continuing to partner with financial service organizations? Peter: Yeah, it's a really good question. It's actually a pretty easy one for me to answer, and that's because every time I was at a company, there are usually some guidelines that the company has for some reason. Maybe it's company policy, maybe it's the type of products and services that they're in, and they don't want to necessarily create content or tools that maybe aren't in their wheelhouse. And I've done it for financial services companies, I've done it for HR benefits companies, and the reasons are different. And so in many ways, every time I was building a program, there was just something out of bounds in that program. And I really felt like a true comprehensive effective financial wellness program would embrace everything. So, for example, one of the big topics and one of the topics I've talked about for years is side hustles. So if you're familiar with the term side hustle, it's kind of like moonlighting, maybe doing something part-time, something as a hobby, as a passion project in addition to your day job. But a lot of people in the industry don't like talking about side hustles because, hey, they think, well, as an employer, I don't want to believe that my people have side hustles. I want to believe that they're fully fulfilled here. Or as a financial services company, we don't want people becoming entrepreneurs because that muddies their taxes or whatever it might be. And so side hustles have been kind of a third rail topic in a lot of ways. And for the last couple of years I actually was on the speaking circuit a lot doing a presentation called Go from Getting By to Getting Ahead: Why Side Hustles Must Be Part of the Financial Conversation and trying to get financial services companies to embrace the topic of side hustles. Because for a lot of people, they're 9:00 to 5:00. The math does not necessarily equal everything that they need out of life. It doesn't equal taking care of their living expenses today. It doesn't put their kids through college, it doesn't put enough money away for savings and retirement and fun and all these things. So there's this gap, this delta that we need to address, and sometimes side hustles can do it. And so one of the things that I wanted to do was build that program that didn't have anything that was off of a reservation, per se. We could talk about anything that would help people get ahead financially, find financial independence, whether it's money hacks or rethinking, like the tiny house movement or minimalism or create a budget or whatever it might be. And so that's really why I did the program, so that I could have creative control over it and put in all these topics. And so that's the genesis of what I did. Now, not to say that any of those programs that I helped build or any of the other programs out there aren't good, because they're wonderful. And if you can find what you need in any of those programs, absolutely use them. But that's what I wanted is just something even more comprehensive and more encompassing than the programs I'd seen out there before. Preena: For sure. Peter: With that, there are a number of drawbacks. You're owning everything from A to Z. For a lot of people that are involved in, say, The Garage or trying to figure out entrepreneurial problems at school or in business, there's a lot of other things that you have to take into account when starting a business that are above and beyond just building the business. So it makes it more complex, but I think there can be a lot of reward on the back end too. Preena: Yeah. Yeah. It's really incredible that you were able to build a platform that addresses all those concerns that you kind of had when you were coming out of college and maybe starting to build your finances as well. Peter: And the reason I did was because when I came out of college, I came out of college with student debt. I know that different schools have different policies around that now, but I came out with student loans. I started working right away because I had to. I didn't come out with a lot of money and I was kind of chasing my tail, especially the first few years out of school. I was working to just have my lifestyle. And it was really at that moment that I was like, "How do I get out of debt?" So I think I had in many ways a typical story. And from that, I found these tools, and that's where one of my first books comes from, Get Rid of Debt Fast, and that was my journey on that. And then getting stability, investing in your career, figuring out how to get promoted, getting to the next level and building that career and side hustles and all these other things. So all of this is really based on my journey of what I found worked. So it's not necessarily just theoretical. I wasn't an ivory tower kind of guy, silver spoon, "Oh, here's what the masses need and I'm blessing you with my knowledge." This is really kind of lessons that I took that helped me get from the bottom rung to the middle rung. Preena: Yeah. So what are some key financial tips that you give to students like us today? Peter: Oh, it really probably depends on where students are, but one of the things that I would say is that it's, I think, really important... In some ways, you're not going to be able to avoid debt. Some students are going to come out with some credit card debt or student loans or a car loan. Some students are going to come out of school and they're not going to have any money. So if you want to get an apartment and put furniture in it and all these other things, you're going to have some debt. What I would say is that tackle the debt relentlessly because it's kind of like wading in the ocean. If you've ever been to the ocean and there's kind of even calm waves, there's always this wave action. And if you've ever been in the water and been okay and then gotten splashed with the water and breathed in at the wrong moment, all of a sudden you're kind of choking on water a little bit, and it's really hard to recover from that, even though it's not like a life-threatening thing. But all you want to do is take a pause, you want to kind of have a timeout. And the problem is if you get behind on that debt, the bills keep coming, the wave action keeps coming, and it's really hard to reset and refocus, and it can easily get away from you. So one of the things that I really work with people right now on is, all right, what do we have, and then what creative strategies can we use to get you out of these a lot faster? And in many ways, many normal debt programs say, "All right, it's going to take five, six years to get rid of this." Well, with some of these new tools, you can get out of that debt in three months or four months or 60 days or a few weeks. And so what can we do to do those things? Because those can make a really meaningful difference and get people into some breathing space so that you can focus on your career, so that you can focus on doing a good job, expanding your skills, getting out there, finding a mentor, and start getting ahead. Preena: Okay. Yeah. So would you say it's about putting money in the right places? So when you have some sort of income, just knowing where to allocate that accordingly? Or is it more of like a spending saving balance? Peter: Yeah, I'd say it's all of the above because you're absolutely right. What it comes down to is, I think for a lot of us in the typical model is I get paid, I take some of this money, I cover my living expenses, I put some of this money in savings, I allocate some of this to debt, and that can be fine. That strategy in its simplicity can work. But there are also ways to say, "Hey, mathematically, what is the best thing for me to do? Is it to allocate this money here or is it better to put a bigger slice of that over here so that I can get rid of my debt faster or slower?" I mean, it depends on interest rates and all these other things, but the idea is what is the most optimal thing I can do with every dollar that I'm bringing in? Like you said, where can I put that? As opposed to just doing things out of habit that are general rules that we've learned. And so those can make a big difference. In some cases, people have average life and kind of the typical rules work just fine, but for a lot of people, there's something unique, there's a certain way we're earning money. Maybe we have a fluctuating income or you're in sales or whatever it might be, and so how do we take what is unique to your life and then use that as an advantage to get you closer to where you want to be? And so usually you have to take a look at that, and that can be through financial coaching, you can find a professional to do that, but a little bit of help there can make a big, big difference. So a big, big difference in either paying off your house or paying off your car or putting money away. A lot of people want to travel. One of the things I've been talking a lot about is how to take a gap year. How do you take a year off from work? Maybe you work a couple years and maybe you want to take a year off, do a little travel, see the sights, have a social life, kind of get away from it all, reset, write your book, whatever it might be, Instagram 365 days of beautiful living. And so how can we practically do those things? And it can be done. But it has to have some intention. It has to have a little bit of a plan to make that happen. You can't just want it to happen and then expect, oh, look, fortunately everything I did the last year is going to make this happen, because that rarely ever works. Preena: Right. Yeah. For sure. Well, it was really great talking with you and learning about your career path and all the advice you have for students who are going through it right now. So thank you so much for joining us today. Peter: Thank you, Preena. It has been a pleasure doing this. And to all of the current students out there like you, keep pushing forward. I am super excited to see what you guys are going to do for the Northwestern community and the world in general. So keep on keeping on. Preena: Yeah. Thank you. Have a great day, everyone. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Weinberg in the World.

In this special student-hosted episode of the “Weinberg in the World” podcast, student host Ashley Guo interviews JJ, a 1997 Northwestern graduate in psychology who now works at Microsoft. JJ shares his journey from initially pursuing a pre-med path to discovering his passion for psychology through an Intro to Psych class with Professor David Uttal. He discusses his struggles with organic chemistry and how psychology felt more natural to him. JJ also talks about his diverse coursework, including Russian and Eastern literature, history, and art classes, which enriched his undergraduate experience and allowed him to explore various interests. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jjguajardo/ Transcript: Ashley: Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with JJ who graduated from Northwestern in 1997 with a major in psychology. He is currently at Microsoft. Thank you so much for being here with us today. JJ: Well, I'm happy to be here. Thanks. Ashley: We're excited to hear that about your work at Microsoft. Before we do that, we'd love to hear more about your time at Northwestern and what drew you to study psychology initially. JJ: Yeah, good question. I kind of have a funny journey through Northwestern, although probably not super atypical given what I've heard. When I got to Northwestern as a bright-eyed freshman, I was pre-med. I was going to be a medical doctor. That was my path, so I was very excited about going that way. I was trying to figure out what major that I would want to take on it because I didn't think I wanted to do a straight biology major, physics, or something like that, so I was just playing around a little bit. One of my friends, upperclassmen, suggested... He was pre-med, and he was taking psychology classes. He's like, "It's actually a pretty cool major for pre-meds." That's interesting. So I took an Intro to Psych class with David Uttal, and I loved it. I was fascinated by the subject matter. It was one of those moments in time when you're like, "I'm actually kind of okay at this." I was definitely struggling in the pre-med classes, especially when I got to organic chemistry, which absolutely crushed me. I just couldn't quite grasp that kind of subject matter. Whereas, the psychology classes I was taking, between Intro, I took a developmental psychology class with David Uttal as well, and then other ones, it just sort of clicked. It just worked well, and it felt like I didn't have to try super hard. It sounds weird, but I didn't have to try super hard to do well. That's not because it's easy. It's just because it was kind of coming easy to me, which is weird. So I thought that was a good sign. As I continued to struggle in organic chemistry and continued to really fall in love with the subject matter in the psychology courses I was taking, it just felt like a natural thing to stop doing the pre-med track and pursue psychology from there. Then, yeah, I just jumped in head first and took a bunch of different courses. Obviously majored in it. I worked in a lab with Dr. Uttal for a couple years doing hands-on research with the kiddos in the lab in developmental psychology. Yes, that's how I got into it, and was very, very happy to do so. Ashley: Wow, that's amazing to hear. I also took Intro to Psych and really loved the class because I'm a cognitive science major, so that resonates a lot. JJ: That's awesome. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. It just felt natural, and it just worked. Ashley: Is there any other classes that you took or extracurriculars that you felt like gave you even more chance to explore psychology? JJ: Oh, interesting. It was funny. I actually took a bunch of, this is kind of weird, Russian, Eastern lit classes- Ashley: Cool. JJ: ... and history, sort of random because one of my friends was taking one, and I'm like, "Yeah, that sounds like fun." I had a couple different professors, I can't remember the one's name, but they were just absolutely fascinating. It's one of those kind of situations where, while the subject matter is interesting in and of itself, when somebody is passionate about teaching it and they have so much more to add, it just makes you more excited and interested. So I took way more classes in that subject than I thought I would've normally, which is kind of cool. Then I was also able to take a few art classes, which was really cool. I took some drawing classes later on in my time at Northwestern. That was really fun, and it let me explore the more creative side. I just loved taking a wide variety of things at Northwestern. I think the way that our curriculum was set up and the opportunities that it afforded were awesome, just to be able to explore various topics that I might not have done otherwise. Ashley: Oh, I see. I noticed that you also continued to pursue PhD. Can you share with us what led you to that decision? JJ: Yeah, yeah. Like I said before, I was doing research in the lab, so I was doing hands-on work, and I really found it fascinating. Then one summer, the summer between my junior and senior year, I got some grant to continue doing research over the summer, which was great, as part of this program and had a really great time doing that. I could run my own research and stuff. Ashley: Wow. JJ: Really, again, it just felt like a natural fit. I was already okay at it, and I liked it. So going into my senior year, I was not sure what I was going to do, to be honest with you. I figured I'd go get a job somewhere and not knowing what I was going to. But talking to Dr. Uttal, he was very encouraging of looking at grad schools. At the time, I was pretty ignorant about them. I didn't know what that would entail. I didn't know how much it would cost and if it was feasible for me and everything. But he reassured me that there were certainly grants and fellowships available and that maybe I was a pretty good candidate for some schools. So I went ahead and applied to various programs that were doing some really interesting developmental work, developmental psychology work, a few around the Midwest. Then eventually the University of Chicago, I got into there and just fell in love with the school and the program. It looked awesome. They gave me a full fellowship to go there with a stipend, so it was a no-brainer. So I just jumped straight in from undergrad to grad school. I studied there for five years and got my PhD in developmental psych, studying small children and infants. My eventual thesis was on nine-month old babies, so a very different subject matter than I'm dealing with now. But it was a great time. I'm really happy to have pursued that and finish the degree. Ashley: Wow. I see. How did you found your first job after PhD? JJ: That was kind lucky. It was probably my late third, early fourth year of grad school when I realized that I didn't want to pursue academia as a career. I really liked what I was doing, but I didn't think I would love it enough to do it for my life. In complete transparency, the University of Chicago is a great program, and there were some really amazing people coming out of the program. Folks who were older than me, were a couple years ahead of me, were on the job market with amazing CVs and really a great list of publications and just fantastic candidates, and they were having a hard time getting jobs. They were getting jobs, academic jobs, in places that I just couldn't ever see myself going to or being happy living in some of these places. I want to have a little more agency about where I ended up. I figured that academia was not going to let me have that agency. It was going to dictate where I go, so I decided it wasn't going to be the route I pursued. So I started thinking about non-academic jobs, but I again didn't have a whole lot of... not support, it's not fair, but just a lot of people around me didn't really know that world because they were all academics. At the time, the University of Chicago didn't have a very good system for helping people like me looking at non-academic stuff, although they've done a great job now, and that's a whole other subject. I was looking at jobs. I had something lined up through a friend in Chicago doing some market research. But then happened to look at a job on this old website called Monster.com. It's where you'd find jobs back in the day. I saw something about, "Do you like video games, and do you like working with kids?" I was like, "Yes, and yes. That's awesome." Love video games because I was playing a lot of PlayStation at the time. So I applied. It was with the group who I currently work with now, Xbox Research. I think back in the day we were called Games User Research. This was back in 2002, so a long time ago. I was very excited to get an interview, phone interviews, and I ended up getting the job. It was just a vendor role, which means that I was not working for Microsoft. I was a contractor contracting to Microsoft, but I was happy to do that. I figured I'd come out to Seattle for a year and try it out, and then maybe ended up back in Chicago where my family was. But on a personal note, I came to Seattle, and I met my future now-wife six months after being here, and I was never going back. So I've stayed 22 years now. So that's how I got that role back in the day. Ashley: Wow, wow. So you didn't really decide to, I guess, officially move to Seattle when you first left? JJ: Yeah, it was just on a whim. "Yeah, I'm going to go out there." I took a flight with a backpack and my golf clubs. Then my parents drove out in a van with a bunch of my stuff. Again, I figured it'd be about a year or so and had to move it back, but never went back. Ashley: Never went back, never went back. Oh, I see. I'm curious, your previous, I guess, time either in Northwestern or UChicago, how does what you learned in school or maybe outside of school apply or not apply to your current job? JJ: It's an interesting question. It's kind of funny. In psychology, I think about that major and why it worked well for me and everything and what I loved about it. I think at its core, it's like, as psychologists, we observe human behavior and try to make some sense of it. That's just kind of what we do. That translates perfectly to the work I do. So in my job as a games user researcher, we watch people and we talk to people as they play our games, as they use the systems, and try to make sense of it. That's our role. That's at the most basic level of stuff. But when I think about when we're in the lab, like a usability lab, for example, where we're literally watching somebody play through a game or through part of a system, and we're watching to see where they succeed or where they struggle, and we're talking to them and we're trying to get to the root cause of what's actually happening, why they're actually struggling, what is it that they're not seeing properly, or, to be more precise, what have we failed to convey as designers, we have to use those techniques that we learned in psychology to drill down to the root cause of an issue, to really question in the right way, in a non-leading way, don't be biased and lead people in the wrong direction. So we use all those kinds of tools that we learned in psych. Then on the other end, when we're doing the analysis, same kind of thing, like all the data that we look at, the way we're going to interpret it, the tools we use to analyze it, that's all from the psychological training, the methods, and experimental backgrounds that we have. So I got all that from school, which is great. That training that I got at Northwestern, and then certainly in my later program, created the foundation and the basis for me to be able to do my job successfully. So I use it quite a bit. Ashley: Wow. JJ: Now, I don't use the developmental psychology stuff a whole lot given that I don't work with babies, but I did for a while. There were some games and products that we were developing for kids that I actually was brought in to do work on because of my background, so I was able to use some of the developmental psychology knowledge and domain expertise there as well. Ashley: Wow, that's amazing. Because I know not everyone can get to use what they learned in school in their actual job- JJ: Yeah, [inaudible 00:13:52]. Ashley: ... so that's amazing to hear. Were there any challenges that you faced when you first came out of UChicago going into your job? JJ: I think probably the biggest challenge or biggest surprise, I'd say, was the speed at which you work in business. In grad school over the course of five years, I ran two big research projects, one for my master's and for my PhD, and each of those had sub-components, of course. Then I had ran a couple of side projects with my PI at the time as well. I probably had four or five things that I did over the course of my time there. So you just do the math, and it's, on average, about a year for a project. Then you go to industry. You're given a problem to try to solve or try to get some insight on it, and you got about a week to do it. It's a very different pace. So I think that was surprising but exciting as well. I think there was a moment when you realize that this is non-academic research. You're not going to try to publish in Nature or some other journal. This is to try to answer a business decision and give a team information to be able to make some changes to the product to improve it on a pretty quick timeframe, and that's all you need to do. I think once you realize that, the stakes are a little bit different. You can adjust accordingly and speed up your work and everything. So that was a big surprise, though, was the timelines and the speed at which we operate. Ashley: I see. I guess I know that the speed is definitely going to be different after school compared to during school, but a week compared to a year is very- JJ: It's different. But at the same time, the scope is much different, like I said, and the stakes are different. I do think that the training that I got at Northwestern and UChicago certainly gave me the ability to look at data and make sense of it relatively quickly and communicate that stuff, those insights back to the team with speed and accuracy as well. So I was well-trained to be able to do that. Ashley: I see. Gathering and then analyzing and then communicating that, those are really important parts. Were there any project that you've worked on that you really enjoyed? JJ: At Microsoft? Ashley: Mm-hmm. JJ: Yeah, I've got a bunch that I just loved doing. One of the best parts about my role, my job is that we do have freedom to... We have to answer questions and work with our partners and make sure we're fulfilling that need, but there's also a certain level of freedom within that. I kind of do it the way you need to do it or you want to do it, which is pretty cool. So a few projects I worked on, one was on the Forza Motorsport series, which is the racing games. That's part of Microsoft, part of Xbox Game Studios. They had been building this series of games for a decade or so. I think we were going into the sixth version of the game. I just took over working on the project, the product. I was talking to the creative director of the studio, and I was asking, what are his big questions? What does he want to know? One of the things he want to know was, who plays our game and why? Well, that's a big question, and I thought a pretty easy answer. It's like, "Well, people who play racing games play your game, or they like cars." But that wasn't going to satisfy him. So I went and did a bunch of research using data analytics, so the big, big numbers, as well as survey and interview, so kind of a combination of methods, to put together a set of gaming profiles, so the kinds of people that play the game, the motivations they have for playing the game. Someone might want to play the games just because they really enjoy playing by themselves and running through an entire single-player campaign in a game and play 60 hours of the game, win all these different championships. That might be a motivation to play. Someone else might be motivated just by playing against other people. They want to play with their friends online, and that's the motivation. Someone else might be motivated just because they've got 15 minutes to blow off some steam after work and before they need to do something else. They just jump into a race, and they want to just drive really fast for a little bit of time and drive some cool car. So we ended up finding these different groups with different motivations. That ended up informing the next versions of the game and how we actually built the game. So it was pretty cool. The design team, we built a lot of assets and resources around these kinds of profiles, these kinds of people, and then we build the game to meet those needs. So we're like, "We're going to build for this kind of person, this campaign kind of player. We're going to build for this multiplayer person, these various things." So you could really see our fingerprints all over the next versions of the game, which was really cool, really rewarding. You don't get to see that kind of impact at that level too often in your career. So that was a really fun project to take on, and I just really enjoyed the work. It was really fun diving deeply into millions and millions of data points and looking at these ginormous spreadsheets and making some kind of sense out of it. Ashley: I see. Just from hearing, I feel like there could be a lot of transferable skills a student could learn in school and also potentially use that in their future careers. JJ: Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. Ashley: Are there any advice or suggestions you would give to students who are interested in, let's say, pursuing a career in user research or a related field? JJ: Yeah. I think one thing I would offer to students is to try to get involved early, if you can. There are a lot of professional conferences that have discounts, for example, for students to join. So I would say get involved in the community as soon as you can or as soon as you want to, just because that's the whole game. I hate saying this, but so much of it's about networking. While I find that, I've always found that kind of cringey and annoying, it's incredibly necessary, and it's just something I've come to terms with. So I'd say, make sure that you start building your network early on. Because the more you're out there, the more your name is known, the more contacts that you have, the more likely you are to be able to land something or at least get an interview and talk to somebody about it. I think that's a big part. Again, these professional conferences, they're very, very welcoming of academics and students. Because we all come from that background, so we're all very much like, yes, we should absolutely bring the next generation of people in. There's a lot of freedom to interact at those conferences and to meet people. Me and my colleagues are all super happy to talk with students and give advice and try to make that connection, if we can. So I would say that's one big piece that I'd offer, for sure. Ashley: So networking and also just exposing ourselves to different scenarios or different events. JJ: I think so, yeah. Ashley: Okay. Thank you so much for sharing. It's really helpful to learn about your career trajectory and the advice that you share with students. This will really help students who are trying to figure out their careers in college. Really appreciate you being here today. JJ: Yeah, happy to do it, for sure.

In this special student-hosted episode of the “Weinberg in the World” podcast, student host Preena Shroff, a third-year neuroscience and global health major, interviews Carla Karijolich, a 2008 Weinberg College graduate in political science and history. Carla, now a senior manager in customer care training at a medical device and digital health company, shares her undergraduate experiences, including studying abroad in Paris, participating in Peer Health Exchange, and being a DJ at WNUR. She emphasizes the importance of trying new things and how her diverse experiences have shaped her career path and skills, particularly in public speaking and empathy. https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlakarijolich/ Transcript: Preena Shroff: Welcome to Weinberg in the World podcast where we bring stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. My name is Preena Shroff, and I'm your student host of this special episode of Weinberg in the World. I'm a third year student majoring in neuroscience and global health, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Carla Karijolich who graduated from Weinberg College in 2008 with a major in political science and a minor in history. Carla is working as a senior manager in customer care training at a medical device and digital health company. Carla, thank you so much for being here with us today. Carla Karijolich: Thank you for having me. Preena Shroff: We are so excited to learn about your managerial role in learning and development, but of course would love to start out with your time at Northwestern and how that shaped your path. So maybe you could tell us a little bit more about your undergraduate experience. What were some impactful classes, extracurriculars or conversations that you had which impacted your postgraduate career? Carla Karijolich: Thanks for asking that. Like you said, I majored in political science and minored in history, so I'm just very passionate about understanding what's going on in the world and why and what has happened prior to that to create the reality that we live in today. That was something that I just really enjoyed studying and it opened up my world so much. Some of the memorable things that I did in college was studying abroad in Paris, France. That was a really eye-opening and meaningful experience, very humbling to go to another country and learn a new language. That did a lot for me culturally and as a person. I also was involved with Peer Health Exchange, so that's a program where we would go to some local high schools and teach high school freshmen about health. My topic was rape and sexual assault. As you can imagine, getting up early on Fridays to get in front of high school freshmen and talk about a serious topic did a lot for me as a public speaker. I don't think I've ever had such a tough audience and such a difficult topic. I also was a DJ at WNUR and I was on the Rock show specifically, and that was just a tremendous amount of fun discovering new music, artists. Of course, when you're constantly thinking about music and what you want to play on your show, you're going to concerts. So just really great time, really expanded my world. All of those interests, I think still show up in my current life and career. Preena Shroff: Yeah, wow, that's actually so awesome. It's really cool that you're able to try your hand at a lot of different things that are so different from each other and probably building relationships within all those different communities as well. That's awesome. Carla Karijolich: Yeah, I definitely like to try new things. That is something that I encourage students, you can try something, you may not like it, and that's okay. That's giving you information about maybe the things that you want to move away from. Then sometimes you'll try something and you really like it and it can put you on a path. All of these skills absolutely add up and pay off. Preena Shroff: Yeah, for sure. Speaking of path, beyond Northwestern what do you think led you on your career path or what skills were you able to build up specifically that had been critical in your field today? Carla Karijolich: It's really interesting to me how when I look at my career path really starting from freshman year, it's paid off. The summer after my freshman year, I volunteered at a legal clinic for survivors of domestic violence, and I transcribed and translated survivor testimonies from Spanish to English to be used as legal evidence. That was very, very eye-opening, gave me a lot of empathy, a lot of appreciation for what attorneys do and what people go through when they suffer domestic violence. From there, with that experience, I actually was able to then get a work study job as a research assistant at a local hospital. Because I had that transcription experience and experience with sensitive topics, I worked with some researchers who were studying postpartum depression. Another very interesting rich topic, a tremendous amount of empathy that you get. Then eventually when I became a mother, I was able to really understand those experiences even more. That kind of got me on this research mindset. My first job out of college was in public policy research, so I was able to learn a lot. I was working in public finance research at the time of the 2008 recession, so that was a really interesting time to be in that field. I learned a lot about local government, state government, how it works. Totally tapped into my interest with political science and history. The economy was still in rough shape when that program was up, so I was really thinking about, do I want to continue in public policy? Should I go to grad school? Should I continue to work? I knew I wanted to continue my education, I just didn't know exactly when and how. I ended up in my first corporate job as an HR research analyst, and specifically I was working in corporate recruiting. All of those dots eventually connected and put me into the corporate world where I am today. Preena Shroff: I'm sure all those skills you gained through communicating with different types of people coming from all kinds of situations really helped with that too. Carla Karijolich: Yes. Just when you think about the different populations that I've worked with, yeah, I guess I've never shied away from tough topics. Now in the work that I do, I'm a training manager, so I have to be able to interact with people really from all over the world because in my current company, I work with people in different countries, from different cultures. We talk about sensitive topics and also very tactical topics. I absolutely love getting to know new people and new cultures. I'm sure that started even before Northwestern, but all my experiences at Northwestern really teed me up to be successful at that. Preena Shroff: Yeah, for sure. I know you mentioned a little bit about what you're doing now, which is primarily in learning and development. When did this interest in learning and development come up and how has it impacted your path? Carla Karijolich: I got into learning and development over 10 years ago. I was working in sales and customer service, and I wanted to move up into a managerial role. At the time in my mind, that was the next step. You go from an individual contributor to a manager. I thought about how do I do that? My supervisor, who was a really awesome mentor, suggested that I take on opportunities to train other employees because that's a really good way to demonstrate your leadership skills. As I was doing that, I really got to develop my public speaking, my writing skills, solving operational problems, implementing solutions, and change management. It really became my path. Instead of using training as a stepping stone into another career, it became my career. I applied to a master's program at Northwestern in Learning and Organizational Change, and I completed that, and so I have two degrees from Northwestern. I think that that says a lot about the university, that so many people go back. Preena Shroff: They're Wildcats. Carla Karijolich: Exactly. Double. Double Wildcat. I teach here too now, so we can talk about that later. Preena Shroff: Oh, cool. Carla Karijolich: But yes, I've been on that path ever since. Preena Shroff: Wow. Okay. Yeah. So I guess coming back to Northwestern a little bit, just looking in the past and looking towards the future, how did you seek mentorship at Northwestern? What advice do you have for students who are looking for support along their career paths today? Carla Karijolich: That's such a good question. I think that especially for students where they're the first in their family to go to a four-year college or university, it is really important to get mentorship because your family has a lot of love and support for you, but you're going to encounter things that maybe they haven't had to navigate in the same way. It is important to have those mentors. I did have a formal mentor through the Northwestern Public Interest Program. That was a part of the first job that I had out of college, and I was assigned a really awesome mentor who made such a big impact on my life. He teaches in the graduate school at CESB, and I'd say, "Oh yeah, tell me about your program," and we would talk about things that I was doing at work and the things that he teaches about, and he gave me so much insight into some of the things that I was working on. Then however many years later, I ended up applying to that program, and I took his class. I did get an A in his class, but it wasn't because of any inside advantage that I had. The advice and the takeaway from that is that if there's a program that offers formal mentorship, whether it's through school or something in the community, apply and take it. It's just an opportunity to meet someone that you otherwise are not going to meet who wants to help you. This person has signed up to help a student and to help them grow. Take those chances. Also, mentorship isn't really always a formal thing. You don't have to go somewhere and sign up for a mentor. Anyone can be a mentor. In the different jobs and internships that I had, I would really show interest and curiosity in the work my colleagues were doing. For example, when I was in the postpartum depression research program, I didn't know a single thing about postpartum depression, being a mother. I was taking classes on research at Northwestern and social science research, but that's very different from researching in a clinical setting. I would ask my colleagues about what they were doing and how they ended up with the degrees that they had and how they ended up doing this work. It's just enriching. You learn a lot. I also would go to office hours and just keep up with those professors who I really admired and whose work really resonated with me. I think that the professors, they appreciate that. People like to talk about their work, and when someone shows an interest in what you're doing, I think it means a lot to them. I would keep up with them, even if you just visit once a year or a couple of times in a year. They remember you and it gives you someone to talk to. Also, even just other students. The juniors and seniors, I would see them dressed up and, "Oh, did you go on an interview today?" "Yeah, I did." "How'd it go?" They're giving you advice without even knowing it. They're telling you about what they did and how it went and the questions they got. Just by them telling you, you're learning so much. I think it's just all about that curiosity. The last example I'll give is that when I was in my work study job in the postpartum depression program, there was a coworker who was a licensed clinical social worker that I enjoyed talking to. In getting to know her, she told me about how she had had a very successful career in business, and then after that pivoted into this. She was already on a different path doing something else very successfully, and then decided to do something completely different. That was so eye-opening for me. You're not locked into anything. You're always evolving, you're always growing. Your career is going to be decades long, so you have to be open and recognize that you are going to go through some evolutions and some transformation. Preena Shroff: Yeah, for sure. I think what you said about finding mentorship anywhere, there are so many programs at Northwestern, first of all, that give students opportunities to connect with past Wildcats or alumni. At the same time, just I think the students at Northwestern are very open to sharing their experiences and wanting to encourage other people to follow that path as well. Carla Karijolich: Yeah, I mean, that's how I met you. I think what's so funny, I don't know if I told you this, but I applied for some formal mentorship program to be a mentor for students, and they had so much interest in that first year that they didn't have a spot for me. That was a bummer. Then at some point a few weeks later, I got an email saying, "Do you want to attend this event at the Waldron Center?" I said, "Yes, absolutely," and that's how I met you, and that's how we ended up here. So sign up for things. You never know what will come out of it. Preena Shroff: For sure. Yeah. I mean, exactly. It's like the students at Northwestern, even regardless of where they go, where they end up, they're always looking to come back and share their experiences. Carla Karijolich: Isn't that the truth? Preena Shroff: Yeah. It's so amazing. Actually, you had mentioned finding your professors and connecting with them, and that reminded me that you teach at Northwestern School of Professional Studies. What do you teach and how'd you get into it? Carla Karijolich: Oh, thanks for asking. I teach an undergraduate class in organizational behavior, and it's about training and development, so right in my wheelhouse of what I do. At some point after I finished my master's degree, I thought that was so much fun. I don't necessarily want to do homework, but I would love to teach and give homework. Preena Shroff: Assign homework. Carla Karijolich: Right? There's just so much that I would do, and I would think, wow, I wish I could share this with people who are up-and-coming or who are interested in this field, because that's what the professors did in my graduate program. They did this all day, every day, and they would tell us about what they had done and what worked and what didn't work and so forth. I really just wanted to pay it forward. I told my mentor, the one I told you about through Northwestern Public Interest Program, I said, "Oh, you teach, I want to teach too. How do I do that?" He said, "Oh, you got to tell people. You have to make sure people know you're interested so that if it comes up, they have you in mind." One day, I don't know how much time had lapsed, could have been a year or more, but I remember seeing a post in a LinkedIn group for alumni of my graduate program, and they were looking for someone who could teach a class on training and development, who had a master's degree and had hands-on experience in that field. I could not apply fast enough. I was so excited, and it has been everything I wanted and more. I get to share my experiences and build up this just next generation of talent in the field. I have worked with students who are interested in the topic and interested in making a career change of some kind. I've seen students transition into new jobs after taking my class and taking classes at SPS, so not all attributed to me. I'm just so proud of them, to see somebody developing their skills and really making that effort and then succeeding. It's a huge point of pride for me. I'm so honored when people ask me to write them a letter of rec or be a reference, and then I see them in this new role and excelling. For me, ultimately, I would love to work with my former students because I want to work with other talented, hardworking, intelligent people. I feel like I'm helping put that out in the world, and someday they're going to recommend me or be my friends for something. Then my work is truly done. Preena Shroff: Yeah, Carla, your class sounds awesome. How can I sign up? Carla Karijolich: It is. Actually, you can take it as a student-at-large, or if you are an SPS student. It's an elective within organizational behavior, but I'm already thinking that I would love to teach other topics too. I don't know, maybe someone who's looking for a co-teacher... If anyone can make a PowerPoint deck, it's me. Preena Shroff: That's great. You mentioned that you were able to get connected with this role because of LinkedIn. I guess I was kind wondering how has social media shaped your path in other ways, just who you've been able to keep in touch with, or if you've used it to get closer with any other career choice or something like that? Carla Karijolich: Oh my goodness, this is such a good question. Social media, and particularly LinkedIn, have probably changed my life. I was looking for a new position, and I saw a job on LinkedIn and I applied. I was in the process, and I went through so many interviews. I thought I was interviewing to be an executive or something. It was just the scrutiny and the number of interviews. Then I got to the very end, I interviewed with the final boss, as it were, and that person looked at my LinkedIn profile probably while we were talking, and then shot a message over to a mutual connection. It was someone I had done a group project with grad school, and that was our relationship, was having been grad students on a project. He asked this person, "What do you know about Carla?" Basically asking to vet me, and he vouched for me, and I got the job and has worked out. It's been tremendous. Just one person that I connected with, I don't even remember if he requested me, I probably requested him to be honest, but because of that one connection, that person vouched for me. So you never know, but I would say take care of those connections. You never know who will speak up for you or vouch for you. You don't know the kind of impression that you leave on people too. You work with someone on a project and they see that you're organized and you have your little spreadsheet and that you do the things that you say you're going to do, that means a lot. Take care of those relationships. For anyone who is skeptical of group projects, look, a group project got me a job. Preena Shroff: I guess it's really cool how, first of all, you can build that connection and then maintain it online, and then someone else can look at that and just build off of that on their perception of your character. I guess every relationship you form really matters when you're applying. Carla Karijolich: Yes. It's so funny because when you're in class, you're wearing jeans and you're taking notes furiously, but you don't know that in that moment you're working with somebody who eventually could end up influencing you or helping you. That's a wonderful thing. I think as Northwestern alumni, the fact that we can count on each other like that is really special. Preena Shroff: For sure. Kind of taking a pivot here with another question I had for you in terms of obstacles or challenges that you've overcome throughout your career. What obstacles have you had and did your time at Northwestern impact your approach to solving the problem in any way? Carla Karijolich: Everyone has challenges in their career, and the biggest one for me that I can think of is making that transition to becoming a working mom. I had my first child, and when I had to go back to work, it was an uphill climb. There's so much you have to learn as a new mother. You have to learn how to take care of your baby, take care of yourself. If you are nursing that child, you will have to learn about how to do that, pumping. Hopefully, maybe there's a working mother listening to this now, kind of nodding her head. It is so, so challenging to get into a new routine. You have a new human being who depends on you in your life, and after making that transition, you have to go back to work. That was so hard. It is so different to walk into the office with those fresh new responsibilities in your personal life and then go back to work. You're not the same. On top of that, I kind of got shuffled around after having been gone for a few months. That can happen. When you go on leave, you come back into a new role, maybe that new role isn't a good fit for you. That was very challenging for me to have to be shuffled like that. I had to really reflect on that and think about how do I improve this situation? I think that Northwestern was actually a big part of me making that transition, because my experience as an undergrad was all about trying new things, being resilient, and really developing that self-belief. I'm also still close to my friends from undergrad. I still talk to them. Every day we have a group chat. I'm still talking to these people, and they were just so supportive of me. Some of them had been through the same transition, and that just bedrock of support on top of my family and my husband was so, so important. What I was able to really realize is that I had outgrown what I was doing. Even if the situation was difficult, it wasn't necessarily a bad thing because the situation was telling me, "You need to find a new path. You need to have the courage to make that change." So I took that risk of looking for a new job, really looking for something that I would enjoy doing, and that would give me the ability to grow and progress in my career. I was able to find that, and it's worked out really well. This is the job that my former classmate had vouched for me for. I think ultimately I had that foundation of support and confidence to move on into the next chapter, and I'm so glad that I did. Preena Shroff: Yeah. Wow. It's amazing that there's no challenge, and then there's no one pinpoint where you can be like, "Oh, this class, this moment taught me what I needed to know on how to approach this challenge." It's more of like, it's who you built or how you built upon yourself over your time at Northwestern that led you to survive or keep moving forward through the challenge. Carla Karijolich: Yes, absolutely. It's all of the experiences that come together to make you who you are. I had mentioned earlier when I was in the Peer Health Exchange program and I had to get up and talk in front of those high school freshmen about rape and sexual assault, that was tough. I was just trying to make sure that they were paying attention to me and not laughing at me. In one of the interviews that I did, I had to do a presentation. I had to create a presentation from scratch and present to this interview panel and basically do a training to show them how do I create content? How do I train? It went really well. I was able to blow them away because always in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, they're not high school freshmen. I got this right. We're not talking about anything scary. To this day, just so many of these different things that I learned or that I did as an undergrad payoff to give me that confidence that I need. Preena Shroff: Yeah. Wow. Well, thank you so much for sharing your experience and your path, and it was really amazing to hear about your time at Northwestern and how that's helped you find your way today. Thank you for joining us today. Carla Karijolich: Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Preena Shroff: Have a great day, everyone. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Weinberg in the World.

In this special student-hosted episode of the “Weinberg in the World” podcast, student host Seora Kim, a junior majoring in economics, interviews Keith Haan, the senior vice president at Roivant Sciences. Keith graduated with a major in Biological Studies. Keith shares his journey from studying biology and playing baseball at Northwestern University to working in a lab at the medical school, which influenced his career path. He discusses his research on B cell signaling and Epstein-Barr virus, and how his interest in biotechnology led him to the finance industry. Keith explains his transition from equity research to venture capital and portfolio management, highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of his career! https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-haan-9886a069/ Transcript: Seora Kim: Welcome to the Weinberg in the World podcast where we bring stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. My name is Seora Kim, and I am your student host of this special episode of the podcast. I am a junior majoring in economics and minoring in data science and global health studies. Today, I am excited to be speaking with Keith Haan, who is the senior vice president at Roivant Sciences. Thank you, Keith, for taking the time to speak with me today. Keith Haan: Thank you, Seora. I'm happy to be here. Seora Kim: Awesome. To start us off today, I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit more about your time at Northwestern as an undergraduate. What did you study? What were the impactful experiences for you that led to your current career path? Keith Haan: I was an undergraduate major in biology sort of focusing on cell and molecular biology, but my experience at Northwestern was also shaped a lot by the fact that I played baseball for Northwestern. And as part of trying to figure out what to do for the summers, the athletic department does have reach out, and certainly when I was going there, had reach out to sort of help place students with internships that would be interesting. And I ended up working doing research in a lab at the medical school a couple of summers. And I think that really influenced sort of where I wanted to go, and I ended up going and getting my PhD at the grad school down at the medical school campus. Seora Kim: Awesome. That is amazing. Can I ask a little bit more about what kind of research you did at the medical school that helped you pivot? Keith Haan: Yeah, so I worked in a lab that had two focuses. One was on B cell signaling and one was on the cellular factors that allowed Epstein-Barr virus to enter cells. So the two were sort of related. Epstein-Barr virus encodes some proteins that sort of co-opt B cell signaling, and so part of the group focused on that. And then another group of which I was part of really studied the host cell proteins that were involved in mediating entry of the virus to the cell. Seora Kim: Amazing. That sounds super cool. And I was also wondering, were there any pivotal moments for your decisions that shaped your different parts of your journey in your career path? Because I know that you had several experiences before coming to Roivant Sciences. Keith Haan: Yeah, so I would say during grad school, viral entry was a hot topic and was actually very topical for HIV entry and HIV treatments. And so, because some of those newer drugs were being studied in the clinic at that point in time, it sort of got me interested in the biotechnology field in general. But I was also looking at the company and saying, "Hey, this is a company that I think I know well because I understand viral entry well. It's a publicly traded company. That is also interesting." And so, I think given the pace of where the biotech field, where it was going and looking at equities as a way to really be exposed to a lot of what the industry was doing, not just from a single company standpoint, but from an industry-wide standpoint, I got interested in biotech stocks. Which led me into the finance industry starting in equity research, and then moving on in my career to being a partner at a venture firm, and then portfolio manager at a hedge fund. Seora Kim: Awesome. That is super cool because I know that there's a lot of students at Northwestern interested in like economics or finance, but then also the bio side of things. So it's super cool to learn about your experience and how you combined biology as well as finance-related careers in your path and how you did biotech-related stocks equity research. So can you share a little bit more about what you think was the most attractive elements in each part of those roles, like was the more interesting parts in equity research or venture capital's portfolio management, so the students can understand what are differences between those jobs? Keith Haan: Sure. So I can start with the equity research first. It was my foray into finance, and that time was really sort of spent leveraging what I knew and what I had gained just in either biological insights and then translating that to how I thought value could be created from companies. And obviously, at that point in time, there was a pretty big backfill for me in learning the financial building models. I mean, that was something that I had not done at Northwestern. So that was a very good learning experience to be able to combine both as well as to learn how stocks move independent of what you might consider to be an intrinsic value. So that whole learning experience I thought was very valuable. And ultimately, I wanted to be able to, instead of being on the analytical side in equity research, I wanted to move on to being in a place where I could be deploying capital against those ideas. And where my initial interest was, it was sort of the earlier stage, probably earlier in the clinic or preclinical, which was more attuned to what I had learned in my background in my PhD, but also in the small company and the company formation. And so, I chose to go to a venture capital firm where I thought I could really build on the skills that I had already developed in equity research. Seora Kim: Definitely. So I think something that is really interesting is that you're focusing on biotech stocks or biology related financials. So can you share a little bit more about what is different between regular stocks or health tech stocks with biotech stocks? Keith Haan: I think one thing that is different about the biotech sector in general is it is something that is, first of all, highly volatile. There can be very large price swings depending on whether the results from a clinical trial allows a company to move forward to the next step of the clinical studies or to get approved. And when you are putting things in the human body, sometimes you get the results you are expecting and sometimes you don't. So there is a lot of volatility around just those stocks in general. And because of that, it is not something that a lot of funds will necessarily allocate a lot of time or people to, unless they have people that have deep experience doing it. So it is, as opposed to funds that may have a lot of their portfolio invested in tech or other industries that are a little bit better understood, healthcare is a little bit [inaudible 00:08:22], and biotech in particular is a little bit different. Seora Kim: Totally. That makes a lot of sense. And since you mentioned it requires a lot of knowledge and also because of the clinical trial stages, do you think that it's important for students who want to focus on biotech related finance roles to do bio majors or PhD? Or what kind of level of education would be required for these kind of roles? Keith Haan: I think it is helpful, but I have sat next to incredibly intelligent and very, very good people from all different backgrounds. So I have sat next to people that have finance or econ majors and have sort of picked up the biology, the clinical aspects, or the regulatory overlay over time. And then, there are many people that I've worked alongside that have a biology or have a medical background that sort of supplement and backfill with the financial overlay. Seora Kim: Definitely. So it's not necessary to have a bio background, but it can be a very diverse background and anyone who is interested can have a shot at this role? Keith Haan: Yeah, I mean, if you are sort of interested in that nexus, you can come into it from various backgrounds. Seora Kim: Perfect. That's amazing. That's great news for our students. And I guess going on with that, I wanted to learn a little bit more about your current company, Roivant Sciences. So can you maybe elaborate a little bit more on what are some of the current day-to-day in the job right now? Keith Haan: Sure. So in my role, I lead the group that is responsible for the licensing and acquisitions at Roivant. So Roivant is a little bit unique in that the licensing and acquisition plays a very large role in our strategy. So we look really industry-wide and where the innovation is, and a big part of where we find the innovation is external. And so, what we do is try to find collaborators and partner with those assets, and then found very nimble small companies that are really charged with bringing those forward in developing and commercializing them. Seora Kim: Well received. So regarding this kind of business model, would you say your investment strategy or how you find these smaller companies be based on certain criterias or standards? Keith Haan: Yeah, I mean, I think what we ultimately want to do is have something that we believe sort of meets our bar for having a reasonable likelihood of clinical and commercial success. And that can be we can get comfort with that in different ways. But in a lot of instances we can pull from maybe data sets for similar compounds or something has similar mechanism or maybe get comfort from extrapolating some early clinical data. Seora Kim: Sounds good. So regarding that, I think it's super cool to learn about how you bring these smaller companies to the market and commercialize them. Are there any significant trends or innovations currently that you are focused on, or what are some of the recent companies that you've brought on? Keith Haan: I think one of the things that is sort of part of the foundation of Roivant is being nimble and being able to go where the innovation is. So we don't constrain ourselves to looking in a particular therapeutic area or looking at a particular modality, whether it is small molecules or large molecules like antibodies or even other things like gene or cell therapy. What we are looking for is something that can truly be transformative for patients and therefore for Roivant. And the way we are set up, I think we are operationally set up to be able to go where the innovation is and where the field is going. Seora Kim: For sure. So it's super cool to learn how there's no restriction on which specific field that you guys are focused on, but just following the trend of innovation. So was wondering if you could maybe describe what are some of the more recent trend or innovations that you are seeing currently that is kind of the hot field in biotech world? Keith Haan: Yeah, so maybe I can use one of our recent sort of licensing deals to highlight some of those things. So we licensed a program from Pfizer in late in 2022. And part of what drew us to that asset was it had a unique biology where many drugs for inflammatory bowel disease or for inflammatory disorders in general can have the ability to really suppress the immune system. And we saw this asset as something that really had very strong efficacy, some of the strongest efficacy that had been shown in inflammatory bowel disease, but we also thought it maybe had a mechanism that wouldn't be associated with this immune suppression. So I think that was a very strong part of why we decided to bring that asset in. But another layer to that was we also had a biomarker which we felt could predict for even better responses. And I think that is something that really the field is trying to move toward is being able to really deliver the best outcomes for patients. And in inflammatory disorders, that is starting to, I think the field is trying to start to segregate patients who will respond to therapy better. That has been done in oncology, and so there is precedent there. But I think as we learn more about some of these diseases, there's something that certainly we are interested, but also the field is interested in as well. Seora Kim: Totally. That is amazing to learn about. And I think the inflammatory disorders is something that is super important to address, and it's really cool how Roivant Sciences is working towards patient improvement and patient experience. I think it's all leading to a much better world in the healthcare field. So thank you for sharing that example. And to close us out today, I have one last question for you. What do you wish you could tell yourself when you were in our shoes as college students? Keith Haan: Ah. Seora Kim: I'm sorry. Keith Haan: That's a good question. I think I guess what I would probably tell myself is what I would tell students at Northwestern or quite frankly the new employees that are coming into Roivant that are either fresh or relatively fresh out of undergrad is, one is be comfortable that your career is going to be, especially in this field, is going to be really based on sort of a lifetime of learning. It's a field that changes. And as you get more experience, you'll be able to develop expertise in those particular areas, but you will also be exposed to additional things that you might not necessarily have seen before. So just being comfortable with being in a field that is constantly changing and being comfortable with the fact that you just need to sort of be a bit of a lifelong learner. I think I would probably tell my younger self that, but it's something that is also important, and I would say to new employees coming in from undergrad as well. Seora Kim: Totally. That is super helpful for us to consider. Thank you so much for this great advice and for joining us today. Keith Haan: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. Seora Kim: Thank you for listening to this special episode of the Weinberg in the World podcast. We hope you have a great day and go Cats!

This special student-hosted episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast features a conversation with Sonia Punjabi '21 who graduated from Northwestern with a Biological Studies Major and a Art Theory & Practice Minor.  Student host Smera Dwivedi, a rising sophomore majoring in chemistry, interviews Sonia Punjabi, a third-year Doctorate of Physical Therapy student at the University of Miami. Sonia shares her journey from Northwestern University, where she explored various fields before finding her passion in physical therapy. She highlights the impact of being a peer advisor on her personal and professional development, emphasizing the importance of interpersonal skills and diversity training. Sonia also discusses her current clinical rotations and the challenges she faced along the way. https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonia-punjabi/ Transcript: Smera Dwivedi: Welcome to the Weinberg in the World Podcast, featuring stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's environment. My name is Smera, and I'm your student host of this special episode of this podcast. I'm a rising sophomore and I have an intended major in chemistry on the premedical path, although I'm not that sure about that, but I'm very excited to learn about physical therapy and your career. Today, I'm excited to be speaking with Ms. Sonia Punjabi, who is, I'm not sure I asked you where you're working or the title of company or anything. Sonia Punjabi: Totally fine. We can get to that when we start. Smera Dwivedi: Okay. Well, good to know. If you'd like to introduce yourself, thank you so much for speaking with me. Sonia Punjabi: Yeah, of course. So I'm Sonia, she/her/hers pronouns, and I'm currently in Miami, Florida. I am in the third year, third and final year of the Doctorate of Physical Therapy program at the University of Miami, which I never thought I would be doing for multiple reasons. It's really cool. We'll get into that. But because I'm in the final year of the doctorate, we have clinical rotations, which means I'll be at different places until I am fully licensed and practicing on my own. So for now, just UMPT, but I love it here, and when there's a job opportunity, I'll let you know. Smera Dwivedi: Oh, good to know, good to know. So how was your Northwestern undergrad shaped how where you are now? Sonia Punjabi: Oh, I loved Northwestern. I adored it there. I came in not knowing what was going on, which I think is normal. I came in thinking maybe I would do math because I had done well in my math classes in high school. I had excelled in the APs. They offered me the MENU course. I don't know if it's so called MENU. So I was like, "Oh, this is kind of neat." It wasn't quite what I was looking for because I didn't know what I was looking for, so I thought, "Oh, architecture, I like art and math. Maybe journalism. Maybe I should switch to McCormick or potentially SESP." I kid you not, I looked at so many things when I was in Northwestern, but the things that stood out to me and made me who I am were being a peer advisor for two years. I was a peer advisor for the class of 2023 and the class of 2024, which is happy tears since they've graduated, if they stuck with that graduation year, and the fact that I took advantage of Weinberg because it's arts and sciences, I took a bajillion English courses, some short of a minor. I probably could have done a minor in English literature, and I did a minor in art theory and practice, and those highly influenced how I am as a person today, both personally and professionally, but we'll get into that. I don't want to talk your ear off immediately. Smera Dwivedi: You're so good. You're completely good. So what about being specifically a peer advisor made you realize something about yourself or something about your interests or something along those lines? Sonia Punjabi: I think the peer advisor course, the way that they prepare students to be peer advisors is phenomenal. It's so well done. I'm still hoping to encourage my current institution and future institutions to utilize some of the same training techniques where we learn about diversity in ourselves, we learn about identity in ourselves, we learn about how to dialogue, and those are essential skills for humans that interact with other humans, but also for healthcare providers that support other humans in health. So that was huge. That was my 101 and how to talk to people and also who am I. I loved it. I loved it. I gained so many incredible interpersonal skills from being a peer advisor that I probably still use at this moment to this day. They've just been honed as I've entered the doctorate program. Smera Dwivedi: Okay. Good. So what was the hardest part about where you are now? What was the hardest part, whether it was undergrad or something else? Sonia Punjabi: Good question. I think not to be too pithy here, there are ebbs and flows in every stage of life. In undergrad, maybe early undergrad, it was that I didn't know. I was confused about my path, which is the way it's supposed to be. I didn't know if I was even in the right school, right major. I had no idea. So I was a biological sciences major, inevitably, confusingly, begrudgingly pre-med, not that that's not a wonderful track, but it didn't quite fit and I wasn't sure why. And I kid you not, I was thinking about preparing for the MCAT and preparing for applying to medical school until the last quarter I was at Northwestern, the final one. I changed my mind. I think it must've been February 2021 and I graduated in June 2021. So I decided really late that I wanted to go into PT school. So maybe in the beginning it was that uncertainty and that feeling that I hadn't found quite the right fit. I knew what I liked, I loved the art theory and practice classes, I loved being a peer advisor, I loved writing and talking, but I didn't know how that would translate. Smera Dwivedi: So I kind of relate to ... I'm in the pre-med path, but I'm not sure if that's something I want to do. So what made you realize that physical therapy was what you wanted to do or what made you finally decide to get off the medical school path? Sonia Punjabi: Sure, and again, I do want to emphasize that I have some lovely friends in the pre-med, well, now medical school world. They're deep in medical school now, and it's a great path. It's amazing. I don't want anyone to feel like, "Oh, this is wrong," because it's a great path. It just wasn't my path. For me, it was that I had a history of my own PT journey as a patient with dance. I danced at Northwestern. I was one of the first years who auditioned for Ahana when it was formed in 2017. So I was on Ahana, I had auditioned for the Bhangra team, and I realized I couldn't do everything I wanted to do, and that was tough. I hadn't found the right kind of PT for myself either. I didn't know what I was looking for. Finally, we get to February 2021, and in my brain, I've already kind of thought about and entertained physical medicine and rehabilitation. It's called PM&R for short, you may have heard of it, and it is a specialty in medicine in which physicians intervene pain management with rehabilitation, either mildly invasively, moderately invasively, noninvasively. There are a ton of ways that physicians can intervene in PM&R, but I thought that was really attractive to me. I was like, "Oh, there's a physician at Shirley Ryan that takes care of performing artists," and I met her. This was right before the pandemic. I kid you not, it was maybe the week or the week of, week before or week of. I go downtown. I have a meeting with one of these physicians who was nice enough to greet me, and we chat about the differences between the physician track and the physical therapy track because they work closely together for rehab. And she was very honest about it. She said, "Yeah, well, I think as a physician, you get to make decisions about medications if that's applicable, about surgical interventions if that's applicable, but you spend less time with your patients compared to a clinician in physical therapy who might see someone two to three times a week for an hour each, depending on the setting they're in. So you have different relationships with your patients and you accomplish different things together." And I was like, "That's interesting," Smera Dwivedi: Absolutely. Sonia Punjabi: I started entertaining that track during the pandemic when everyone was making sourdough and banana bread. We made a lot of banana bread. I was also- Smera Dwivedi: I forget the [inaudible 00:07:43] Sonia Punjabi: A lot of banana bread and a lot of podcasts. I was listening to podcasts by dance trainers working in the rehab world. I was listening to podcasts and looking at online resources from PTs who did a different kind of PT than I'd ever seen. They did strength-based PT. So I started educating myself and applying some of these skills and I was like, "Well, this is pretty cool." Finally, when I was juggling PM&R, PT, PM&R, PT, I made the decision to do PT because the lifestyle of the educational trajectory made sense to me. I got to be a clinician earlier and for longer time with patients, and that's what I really liked. Smera Dwivedi: Okay. Very nice. A podcast, so I need to start listening to podcasts. Got it. Got it. Sonia Punjabi: You don't have to. It just happened to be- Smera Dwivedi: It's like another avenue to explore to see what I want to do. It's very nice because- Sonia Punjabi: I was exploring on Instagram. There are clinicians that show you how they treat knee pain with certain exercises. Again, be careful, it's the internet. They might be like, "Hang upside down from a tree," and that's obviously not going to ... Well, it might, but it might not be the right thing, but I was exploring resources to understand the variety of people not only in rehab, meaning doctors and PTs and OTs and other folks that help with the rehab world, but also styles of rehab within physical therapy. So this was all on my own accord. Northwestern has a wonderful PT program, but I don't think the undergrads get a lot of exposure to what that is. Smera Dwivedi: Okay. That makes sense. So you looked at you said Instagram. Did you ever shadow a lot of doctors? Did that help or anything of sort? Sonia Punjabi: Yeah, good question. Again, because times were a little different, when COVID picked up, I had just started entertaining that idea, and that's why I met with some of the folks at Shirley Ryan. So I'd been to Shirley Ryan a couple times before the pandemic, and I had seen their space, which is really interesting. They overlap their engineers and their PTs and their physicians all in the same space in the same floor. So I got to speak to an engineer there, I got to speak to this performing arts physician and PM&R physician there, and I probably would've continued doing that with the children's hospital I applied for a position, et cetera. But when the pandemic happened, the resources available to me were Spotify or Instagram were folks that were posting information, again, beware, but information that you could learn bite-size pieces about how they treat, and a lot of folks are doing that, especially in this day and age. So it's a wonderful way to explore. It's not the only one. It just happened to be one of mine. We have a family friend who I also was able to speak to on the phone who is at Hopkins Rehabilitation now and specializes in triathletes and runners. I got to speak to him about his experience. So that's also definitely an option. If you have connects in certain areas and they're willing to speak, ask some questions. Smera Dwivedi: Makes sense. Do you have any advice for somebody who's going through something similar or doesn't know what to do or something? Sonia Punjabi: Of course. So I think Northwestern kids are often certain personalities. They often are extremely high achieving, very bright. There's a reason that we're all in this cool place or we're in this cool place. We really like what we're doing and we're good at things that we're doing, and we want to continue to learn and excel. I also feel that sometimes the perfectionism can mask our abilities to see, "Hey, I have all these really cool things going on," and I might not be where that person is, but I've learned how to speak Mandarin. I've learned how to oil paint in Kresge. I've learned how to code, and I'm a history major. Sometimes it's okay to do something purely out of interest and fun, even if it doesn't feel like, "Oh, this is going to be something on my resume or it's going to take me to this future degree," whether it's a medical degree or a law degree or whatever that may be. It doesn't necessarily have to make sense. I think explore and be okay with making mistakes and being lighthearted about it. I will be totally honest, I think my art theory and practice minor and all of my English classes greatly influenced how I am as a future clinician. I think it's made me really well-rounded, and it's something I love. Typically with the pre-medical track, they may not be like, "Go take an art class." They might give you time, but don't feel like that's not the right thing if you're interested in it. Certainly, there's volunteering, there's health related courses, you have to take all of the prerequisites. Those are a given, but give yourself some space to make mistakes, to be lighthearted, to not be too hard on yourself and to explore. Smera Dwivedi: Well, that's really good advice because I feel like a lot of times I think of the longterm value in all the classes I take and if they're going to benefit my career or resume, so that's- Sonia Punjabi: It's not a bad thought. It's not a bad thought at all, but the pressure can feel like a lot sometimes with that. Smera Dwivedi: So along the same lines, do you regret doing something like that? Do you regret something like in undergrad that you wish you'd done differently? Sonia Punjabi: I think I can say the only thing I regret is being too hard on myself, genuinely. I think you are meant to explore and change your path. They know you're going to do that. If you don't, something's wrong. You are meant to explore, make mistakes and grow and change course. So if you're doing that, you're doing the right thing. So I wouldn't regret anything. I think I had a wonderful time. I explored and I did a lot of really unique things that made my Northwestern experience. Smera Dwivedi: That's reassuring to hear, for sure. So I'm worried I'm going to regret doing certain things or taking certain classes. Sonia Punjabi: I took, like I said, a bunch of art courses for the art minor, and I took English courses for fun because based on my Weinberg credits, I didn't need them, based on my premedical requisites I didn't need them, but I remember them maybe the most, and that's super cool to me. Smera Dwivedi: So other than your classes, and you talked a little bit about social media and how that influenced your decision, other than that, were there any extracurriculars that pushed you towards your career or any that you were like, "Oh, wow, I like this a lot. This is something I want to do in the future," or something like that? Sonia Punjabi: Let me think. Well, I did touch on the dance scene at Northwestern, which is lovely, amazing, super cool. There's a wonderful performing arts scene, as you know. The fact that I loved it so much but had some hurdles on my own participating in it, that was a big hole. I was like, "Gosh. If only I could wholeheartedly with my whole musculoskeletal system participate in this, that would be amazing." And I still did, but just at my own pace since I hadn't found the clinician that was right for me yet. I think that is often a common story in my fields. A lot of my classmates in my cohort, they have their ACL history or they have their shoulder labrums or their hockey injuries, and that is a common segue into the field, but not the only one. Some people come from advertising degrees, business degrees, they have kids, they come from serving in the military, in the Navy. So a lot of paths can lead to this, and much like any other career, many paths can lead to a law degree. Many paths can lead back to medicine if you pursue medical school. I don't want people to think that there's one path to get here. I think I deviated from your question a little bit, so we might need to come back to that. Smera Dwivedi: Totally okay, just whatever you'd like to say. I did want to ask, Ahana, is that the Bollywood dance group or is that the one with the Danyas or which one? Sonia Punjabi: Good question. So I think I auditioned for pretty much all of them when I was a freshman, a first year. Ahana is the noncompetitive, as far as I'm aware, still noncompetitive Bollywood dance, like a film fusion dancing. I remember exploring the Raas team exploring the Bhangra team, exploring TONIK Tap, which I thought was super cool, legendary, such interesting performing artists, the TONIK Tap. I was familiar with Refresh. I hope that there's still a large participation in the dance scene at Northwestern, and I would hope that in the fields in physical therapy, there is more tension given to performing artists now than before because I think that's been a developing part of the field where performing artists have a very unique sense of sport, of what they have to do, demands in the sport, and they haven't always been treated as such. So I think getting proper treatment and having clinicians that understand that is so [inaudible 00:16:36] because then it takes people years to figure out who they need because it's not common knowledge. So little mini plug for all of our dancers out there. If something's not right, don't be afraid to get second opinions and look for clinician that makes sense to you and that treats you to your sport and to your needs. Smera Dwivedi: So did you continue doing Ahana all four years? Sonia Punjabi: I did Ahana for a year-ish, a year-ish. I remember I had to say goodbye to the team my sophomore year, I believe, my second year because of my PT journey. I hadn't found what I needed yet. It was getting tougher to participate in dance, but I think life has a funny way of showing you what you need when you need it. So I've found some really amazing resources, clinicians, worlds of PT that lend themselves back to what I was doing in Ahana like, "Oh, that thing I wanted to do, that's why it was so hard because I hadn't had this training, this treatment, this person." I mean, life is kind of funny like that. Smera Dwivedi: So was it the balance, was it a lot of time commitment, which is why you had to just let it go or were you just like, "I need to be more career-oriented," and some extracurriculars can't be balanced well? What was the driving- Sonia Punjabi: It was actually the physical pain injury stuff. I was having trouble with that, and yeah, it's a tough journey for any athlete for any performing artist when you have to take a break because of that, but I'm really glad my life went the way that it did because I don't know if I would be here if it hadn't. Smera Dwivedi: Do you have any role models growing up or just whenever? Sonia Punjabi: Yeah. So currently, a few of my role models here in the Miami area are the women who work in the subspecialty of PT called pelvic floor therapy. It's a therapy that you might not recognize applies to more than just pregnant folk because, certainly, that's a population that needs pelvic floor PT at times, but there are subspecialty of PT that works with stability, strength, integrity and function of the pelvis and the things in the pelvis. So this is bladder and bowel function, this is sexual health, and this is pain, injury, et cetera. They're so cool. I have a wonderful mentor in the Delray, Boca Raton area who has her own clinic, and she's always available for me to ask questions, for me to come in and say like, "Hey, can I participate as a shadow? Can I see who you're treating today?" if they're comfortable with it. She's wonderful. And then I have my own clinicians here, actually, that have treated me, that have seen me throughout my own journey who are so smart, so interesting, such fun individuals to provide support. They show me that being a colorful human is not only allowed but also encouraged in a field where you're treating humans. So I think if we handle ourselves with imperfect grace, that's great. That's going to be a wonderful way to connect with people when you show them like you're doing your best and you are acknowledging when things get a little twisted and continuing on. So definitely my role models in pelvic PT, my parents and my brother who are all Northwestern alum. We are a very purple family. They are definitely a big support system to me. There are so many other people on the list, my sister-in-Law, my brother's wife and the cat outside. Essentially, your support system cheers you on, and the mentors and the role models I have are often one and the same, so to keep it light. Smera Dwivedi: Right. Good to know. It's also nice to have a support system, for sure. Sonia Punjabi: Absolutely. Oh, I should probably mention, if you do another degree after Northwestern, all of the faculty, all of the clinicians, all the people who are teaching you become amazing role models and support systems. A little shout out to the faculty and staff at the University of Miami Physical Therapy Program. They're a family. That's why I came. They are like a bonafide family. They will care for you. They will help you to the point of texting you when something's wrong or you texting them when something's wrong and they'll respond to you. They are available by email. They're available to meet with you. They're honestly available to give life advice. I have a faculty member's book sitting in my bookcase right now. So if you're open to being vulnerable, which is a huge part of what peer advisor training teaches you, people will help. Smera Dwivedi: Okay. So you talked a little bit about your post post-grad struggles. Sonia Punjabi: So again, every chapter is going to have its own flavor of ups and downs. When I graduated from Northwestern, so bittersweet, amazing, very exciting. I started a gap year position at a Miami-based gym and physical therapy clinic. I was doing their photography, their media, their patient and client interactions. It was amazing because I got to learn all these wonderful things from people who were already doing it ahead in this part of the career, but it was tough because I didn't have any peers and I felt a little bit like an island. So that can be a little isolating when you have a new chapter and you feel like you're on your own footing and you would benefit maybe from seeing where some of your classmates are or having a peer that's just at the same stage of life. So it was helpful when someone else came in at that position who was applying to med school, and so we had that commonality of life chapter. Smera Dwivedi: That's nice that you were able to navigate through that. So your two years post ... You said you graduated in 2021? Sonia Punjabi: I did, yes, in June 2021. Smera Dwivedi: So you mentioned your doctorate program that you have to get back to. What is that? Sonia Punjabi: Yes. So the PT program, typically in the United States now, are three-year programs and they're doctorates. So when you graduate, you have a doctorate of physical therapy, and then you take the licensing exam to practice. So okay, you have the doctorate, you're knowledgeable, now you're allowed to practice. So that is where I am. I'm in the third year and I'm finishing classwork in October, and then October through May for our program, we have three clinicals in a row where we get to have hands-on experience with a clinical instructor who will oversee you and you'll treat people in the hospital, you'll treat pediatrics if you're into that. For me, I'm going to be treating pelvic in March. So this termination of the program is really hands-on practical work. Smera Dwivedi: Got it. Okay. Is there anything else you'd like to say or, I don't know, speak about, give advice for anything? Sonia Punjabi: Open-ended. I have silly versions of this answer and I have serious versions. Do you want both? Silly versions. Still, they hold weight, go check out Bookends and Beginnings. It's, I think, still in the alley at where the box is. You know where the campus gear store is? Smera Dwivedi: Yeah. Sonia Punjabi: There's an alley, there's a bookstore in there. They also have a book front, which is beautiful, if I'm remembering correctly, on Sherman. I think it's on Sherman. Go check it out. It was my little lifeline during PT or not PT school, during my Northwestern undergrad experience. And if the fourth floor of North still exists- Smera Dwivedi: Yeah. They're doing some construction with North, but it's like they're adding a pub of something. Sonia Punjabi: Interesting. Smera Dwivedi: There's still like a third and fourth floor. Yes. Sonia Punjabi: I think it's the fourth floor and people don't know about it. If you take a staircase, go check that out if nobody knows about that yet. Smera Dwivedi: It's nice and quiet up there, for sure. Sonia Punjabi: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I think I have a few about the library. Do they still take out the Mario Kart Wii during reading week? Smera Dwivedi: Yes, of course. Sonia Punjabi: Okay. Good. Play a lot of that. Do a lot of that. Participate in every primal screen you can. Smera Dwivedi: Haven't done that yet, actually. Sonia Punjabi: Yeah, you should. I think it's 9:00 PM. Is it the Sunday before finals? Smera Dwivedi: Yeah, I believe so, around that time. Sonia Punjabi: Do that. If you're feeling adventurous, go take a look at Blick, the art store near where the movie theater used to be. Smera Dwivedi: There's still a movie theater there, the AMC. Sonia Punjabi: Oh, surprising. I'm sure more fun, silly ones will come to mind, but my gist here is just explore just a cool place. Evanston's a great place. Northwestern's a great community. Don't be afraid to strike up conversations with people you haven't really crossed paths with. Serious ones would be don't be afraid of change. Change is the only constant. It's that very famous saying or phrase. Don't be afraid of change with anything, with undergrad, with your personal life, with post-grad. Don't be resistant to change. It will often make you better. Smera Dwivedi: No, good to know. I do. Sonia Punjabi: Yeah, of course. Smera Dwivedi: Well, I mean, that was really helpful for me to consider. Thank you so much for your advice and for talking about your career and personal stuff about your life and [inaudible 00:25:50] I appreciate it. Sonia Punjabi: If anyone has questions about the physical therapy world, I'm more than happy to chat, to get on a video call, phone call. It's a really cool place. I think a lot of health leaning undergrads may not know this is an option for them or what it even looks like. There are a million different things you could do in PT. You can help folks post-stroke walk again. You can help folks post-spinal cord injury participate in leisure, in recreation. For me, I can help folks during pregnancy or if you just want to rehab ankles and pediatrics who play soccer, do that. It's a cool field. Consider it, and I'm here for questions. Smera Dwivedi: Okay. Thank you. Sonia Punjabi: Yeah, of course. Smera Dwivedi: We appreciate you tuning into the special edition of the podcast, Weinberg in the World. Go Cats. We hope you have an amazing day.

This special episode features the most recent edition of Weinberg College's faculty speaker series “Conversation with the Dean.” This event series is designed to deliver insights into cutting-edge research and teaching from faculty experts around the College. The events are offered live to Weinberg College Leadership Society donors with a real-time Q&A. In this conversation, Professor of English Chris Abani and Dean Adrian Randolph discuss “ubuntu,” a concept that recognizes our interconnectedness, the importance of an English major in today's world, and the Program in African Studies, which holds the largest collection of African and Africana books and artifacts outside of Africa.  Weinberg College Leadership Giving Society: https://giving.northwestern.edu/s/1479/282-giving/21/interior3.aspx?pgid=7407&gid=282   Explore more "Conversations with the Dean": https://weinberg.northwestern.edu/after-graduation/for-alumni/conversations-with-the-dean/

This special episode features the most recent edition of Weinberg College's faculty speaker series “Conversation with the Dean.” This event series is designed to deliver insights into cutting-edge research and teaching from faculty experts around the College. The events are offered live to Weinberg College Leadership Society donors with a real-time Q&A. In this conversation, Professor of Chemistry Shana Kelley and Dean Adrian Randolph discuss creating new tools to diagnose and treat diseases, the importance of interdisciplinary and translational research at Weinberg College, and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub: a new and cutting edge collaboration between Northwestern, UChicago, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Weinberg College Leadership Giving Society: https://giving.northwestern.edu/s/1479/282-giving/21/interior3.aspx?pgid=7407&gid=282   Explore more "Conversations with the Dean:" https://weinberg.northwestern.edu/after-graduation/for-alumni/conversations-with-the-dean/shana-kelley.html

This special episode features the most recent edition of Weinberg College's faculty speaker series “Conversation with the Dean.” This event series is designed to deliver insights into cutting-edge research and teaching from faculty experts around the College. The events are offered live to Weinberg College Leadership Society donors with a real-time Q&A. In this conversation, Professor of English Susie Phillips and Dean Adrian Randolph discuss why teaching matters, how asking bold questions can open entire worlds of “speculative possibility” in scholarship, and the power of gossip.   Weinberg College Leadership Giving Society:  http://tinyurl.com/ykn89ep6 Explore more “Conversations with the Dean”: http://tinyurl.com/yc2v4afn

This episode features clips from this year's Weinberg College Career Summit alumni panels where a few alumni share stories about some of their most impactful classes and how those classes helped them in their future careers. Alumni from our Energy & Sustainability and Startups & Entrepreneurship alumni panels talked about an array of classes that helped them form arguments and think differently about their industries. ·         Timestamps: 0:00: Introduction 0:45: Impactful Sustainability Classes with Ariel Drehobl '12 and Mark Silberg '14 3:55: Impactful Entrepreneurship Classes with Jin Hwang ‘01 5:55: Outro https://weinberg.northwestern.edu/after-graduation/student-alumni-connections/whats-new/2023-2024/career-summit-2023-final.html   

This special episode features the most recent edition of Weinberg College's faculty speaker series “Conversation with the Dean.” This event series is designed to deliver insights into cutting-edge research and teaching from faculty experts around the College. The events are offered live to Weinberg College Leadership Society donors with a real-time Q&A. In this conversation, Professor of History and Director of the Latina and Latino Studies Program, Gerry Cadava and Dean Adrian Randolph discuss the meaning of diversity in the United States through the lens of Latino identity, as our nation approaches its 250th anniversary.   Weinberg College Leadership Giving Society: https://giving.northwestern.edu/s/1479/282-giving/21/interior3.aspx?pgid=7407&gid=282   Explore more “Conversations with the Dean”: https://weinberg.northwestern.edu/after-graduation/for-alumni/conversations-with-the-dean/ 

This episode features highlights from the career summit focusing on the changing landscapes in these industries. Speakers from all three fields discuss topics such as hybrid work, work-life balance, travel expectations, and more. Timestamps: ·         0:00: Introduction ·         0:45: Trends in Marketing ·         2:45: Trends in Consulting ·         5:20: Trends in Healthcare ·         8:30: Outro

This episode, brought to you by the Waldron Student-Alumni Connections Program and Northwestern Career Advancement, features an in-depth discussion with Tracie Thomas from NCA about the difference between job function and industry, narrowing down career options, and how to approach an event like the Career Summit. This is a great overview of career exploration in general, so feel free to listen to this episode to prepare for any future alumni event you register for as well as the career summit. Timestamps   0:00: Introductions   1:40: Job Function vs Industry   6:00: The Process of Narrowing Down Career Options   10:15: How to Approach the Career Summit   14:00: Closing Advice for Students

This episode features a few clips previous alumni conversations highlighting their memorable experiences relating to their majors in the humanities and how those experiences helped in their future careers. First is a closing remark from our conversation with David Gefsky ‘92, where he speaks on the value of curiosity and the other skills you develop through an Arts & Sciences education at Northwestern that can help you in a field like finance. Next is a quote from our “What Can You Do with a Language Major” Panel from last year with Khiabett Osuna ‘11, who talks about the core skills she uses every day as an Immigration Attorney: “Read, Think, Write.” Khiabett shares stories and examples of how her work can change rapidly in topic and focus, and how those core skills can help adjust to those changing conditions. The last clip comes from a previous podcast episode focusing on Chicago Field Studies with Charlie Vasbinder '19. Charlie discusses the value of his history major for working in real estate in teaching him how to develop relationships, communicate with a wide variety of people, and form arguments on sales pitches. Links to the full conversations: https://weinberg.northwestern.edu/after-graduation/student-alumni-connections/whats-new/2022-2023/featured-conversation-david-gefsky.html https://weinberg.northwestern.edu/after-graduation/student-alumni-connections/whats-new/2021-2022/winter-languages-video.html https://open.spotify.com/episode/15U2p8EOJ2fuhEsb0eOo6n

This episode features a few clips previous alumni conversations highlighting their memorable experiences relating to their majors in the sciences and how those experiences helped in their future careers.  First are a few selections from our interview with Danny Ginzburg '13, where he talks about the impact of his Environmental Sciences Major and Environmental Policy & Culture minor. He also talks about impactful classes and how those classes impacted his worldview and direction toward a career path. Next is a quote from our panel on Nontraditional Paths in Science and Medicine with Yujia Ding '14. Yujia goes into detail about how her background colored her time at Northwestern, and how those experiences allow her to connect with students and be a better teacher. Our last clip comes from a previous panel on Women in Science with Amy Yarrington '11. Amy speaks on the value of an interdisciplinary education and how a wide background can help you communicate effectively through writing and conversation. Check out the full conversations here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3JQOF1KXEQHyzRyCyeAbku?si=d65bd22001884fc0 https://weinberg.northwestern.edu/after-graduation/student-alumni-connections/whats-new/2022-2023/nontraditional-career-paths-science-medicine.html https://weinberg.northwestern.edu/after-graduation/student-alumni-connections/whats-new/2021-2022/winter-women-in-science-video.html  

This episode features a few clips previous alumni conversations highlighting their memorable experiences relating to their majors in social sciences and how those experiences helped in their future careers.  First are a few selections from our interview with Khoury Cooper '08 JD'13, where he talks of some memorable Political Science and African American Studies classes and then speaks on how an Arts & Sciences background impacts him as a lawyer today. Our second clip is a quote from our conversation with Kathy Lin ‘08 PhD, who shares stories about finding the MMSS major and Sociology classes. Kathy goes into detail about how these classes and the professors that taught them helped her support new ways of thinking and find career paths she didn't know of beforehand. Lastly, we featured a conversation with Austin Waldron '78, who many of you may recognize from the name of our program! Austin talks about how Northwestern's Arts & Sciences education helped him learn to understand people from a variety of different backgrounds, and how that understanding helped him perform better while working in Operations.   Check out the full conversations here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3EtI2E4YlV6y0OL6QsjdOb?si=8bb3f9fe84984f95  https://open.spotify.com/episode/3U1oH6kOcEQ1qPTScuSpe4?si=5dc708a4470e4f5e  https://open.spotify.com/episode/41kucgY9msAdUyLQvIbDf6?si=74bc8381466848fd   

This episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast features a conversation with William Paik '20, who graduated from Northwestern with English and American Studies Majors and a Asian-American Studies Minor. William shares insights on the Asian American Studies Program, Law school decisions, Comedy at Northwestern, Fulbright Research in Korea, how an Interdisciplinary education has helped him! ·       Timestamps: 0:40: Student Experience 3:30: Moving away from Law school 6:25: Starting Comedy at Northwestern 10:15: First Job During the Pandemic 13:05: Experience During Research 15:00: Fulbright in Korea (here) 20:40: The Value of an Interdisciplinary Education

This episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast features a conversation with Mai Sistla ‘14, who is currently a Deputy Director at the Aspen Tech Policy Hub after Graduating from Northwestern with an Economics Major and a Global Health Studies Minor. Mai shares insights on Important Classes, Extracurriculars, Connections, Grad School, Working in Tech Policy, Good Fellowships, and the Arts & Sciences Background. For more information about the fellowship discussed by Mai during the podcast, click below: http://www.corofellowship.org/ Timestamps: 0:40: Student Experience and Pivoting Majors 4:30: Extracurriculars and Important Connections 8:15: Path to Grad School 14:15: Working in Tech Policy 19:00: Projects in Tech Policy 22:40: Good Opportunities out of Undergrad 24:05: Arts & Sciences Background

This episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast features a conversation Khoury Cooper '08 JD'13, who is currently a Corporate Counsel in the Youtube Division of Google after Graduating from Northwestern with a Political Science Major and a JD in Law. Khoury shares stories about Impactful Classes, Fraternity Life, Going Back to Law School, Choosing a Career Path, Working in Music at Amazon, Work-Life Priorities, and Networking! Timestamps: 1:00: Impactful Northwestern Courses and Programs 3:55: Impactful Extracurriculars 6:10: Deciding to Go to Law School 8:15 First Job After School 9:55: How Did You Pick Your Career Path 11:55: Working Before Grad School 13:45: Working in Music 18:00: Working in Chicago and Priorities 21:05: Networking Advice 23:30: Arts & Sciences Background

This episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast features a conversation with Kian Gohar ‘98, who is currently the Founder and CEO of Geo-Lab and a best-selling author of “Competing in the New World of Work” after Graduating from Northwestern with Majors in History and Political Science. Kian shares stories about a Great Teacher, Working During College, Choir, Learning Skills, His First Job After Graduating, Participating in Fellowships, Deciding Between Different Post-Grad Options, Working at a Development Firm, His Book, Working During the Pandemic, Focusing on Key Tasks, and more! Timestamps: 00:45: Studies and Student Experience at Northwestern 3:30: Skills Learned from Extracurriculars 5:55: First Job After Graduation 8:05: Experience With Fellowships 11:30: Working at Geo-Lab 14:15: The Hybrid World of Work 17:45: How to Thrive in a World of Uncertainty 21:35: Teaching, Training, and Writing 27:00: Future Challenges and Goals 28:30: Networking

This episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast features a conversation with Liz Ott' 00, who is currently the President of Threespot after Graduating from Northwestern with a Psychology Major and an Economics Minor. Liz shares stories about her student experience, Learning and Developing Skills Through Work-Study, Her First Job and Career Path, Growing Within a Company, Finding the Right Space in an Industry, Advice for Getting into a Similar Field, the Value of her Northwestern Network, and the Value of Arts & Sciences Education! Timestamps: 00:45: Student Experience and Work-Study 4:10: Previous Jobs 8:45: Working at Threespot and Growing Your Career 15:00: Finding Threespot and the Company Vision 19:00: Advice for Students looking for Activist Work 21:00: Liz's Northwestern Network 24:35: The Value of Arts & Sciences Education

This episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast features a conversation with Kathy Lin ‘08 PhD, who is currently a Product Insights Manager at Spotify after Graduating from Northwestern with Sociology and MMSS Majors and a Global Health Studies Minor. Kathy shares stories about the MMSS Major, Internships, the PhD Process, Working after Grad School, Work-Life Balance, Finding a Career Path, and Working at Spotify. Timestamps: 0:40: The MMSS Major and Memorable Classes 4:15: Rarity of MMSS 6:20: Extracurriculars and Internships 9:30: Deciding to go to Grad School 14:40: the PhD Process 20:20: First Job After Grad School and Work-Life Balance, and Finding a Career Path 30:30: Working at Spotify

This episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast features a conversation with Veronica Berns '09 and Robin Stark '98, who are both currently working at the Chemistry Department at Northwestern. Veronica is currently an Assistant Professor of Instruction after graduating from Northwestern with a Chemistry Major and a Mathematics Minor. Robin is currently an Undergraduate Program Coordinator after graduating with a Major in Environmental Science. Veronica and Robin share insights on influential classes, internships, first jobs, figuring out your next step, working in higher education, teaching, making a comic book, learning to communicate with different people, and how to Network. Timestamps: 1:10: Northwestern Student Experience 4:45: Extracurriculars and Internships 8:20: First Jobs and Next Steps 14:15: Working in Higher Education 18:50: Arts & Sciences Education 21:00: Making a Comic Book 25:55: Networking

This episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast features a conversation with Charlie Vasbinder '19 and Thanas Kountroubis '19, who both participated in the Chicago Field Studies Program interning at Barnett Capital and currently work there today after Graduating from Northwestern. Charlie and Thanas share stories about the Northwestern Experience, the value of different majors, changing majors, Chicago Field Studies, working at Barnett Capital, and the value of an Arts & Sciences Education! Timestamps: 1:00: Charlie's Northwestern Experience 5:20: Pivoting From Econ to History 7:40: Thanas' Student Experience 14:15: Struggling through Northwestern Coursework 16:10: Chicago Field Studies 20:00: The Value of CFS as an Extracurricular 26:00: Arts & Sciences at work Today and Not Being Afraid to Fail

This episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast features a conversation with Prashant Bhayani, who is currently the Chief Investment Officer at BNP Paribas after Graduating from Northwestern with an Economics Major. Prashant shares insights on the value of a diverse education, business internships, his first job after a recession, developing a career abroad, his role as a Chief Investment Officer, his small town background, learning to communicate effectively! Timestamps: 1:00: The breadth of options at Weinberg College 4:05: Internships 5:30: First Job 7:10: Transitioning to working overseas 10:30: Working in Asset Management 13:05: Adjusting from a small town and the considerations of a global career 18:10: The Value of Arts & Sciences in Finance 22:50: The Northwestern Network

This episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast features a conversation with Danny Ginzburg '13, who is currently starting a PhD in plant sciences at the University of Cambridge through the Gates-Cambridge Scholarship after Graduating from Northwestern with an Earth and Planetary Sciences Major and an Environmental Policy & Culture Minor. Danny shares insights on his Northwestern experience, Greek life, undergraduate research opportunities, his first job in data analysis, Academia, Scholarships and Grants, and the value of an Arts & Sciences education! Timestamps: 0:45: Northwestern Experience 4:25: Finding the right major 6:45: Research at Northwestern 11:05: First job after graduation 14:30: Academia and the Gates-Cambridge Scholarship 17:30: The value of Commercial Hydroponics 22:10: Scholarship Program at Cambridge 26:20: Future plans after Cambridge 28:05: The value of an Arts & Sciences education

This episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast features a conversation with Chandana Sooranahalli ‘20, who is currently a Management Consultant after Graduating from Northwestern with an Economics Major and a Cognitive Science Minor. Chandana shares insights on great classes and extracurriculars to consider as an undergrad, the unique challenges and opportunities she had as a transfer student, her experience doing undergraduate research, and her plans of heading to med school through a nontraditional route! Timestamps: 1:00: Northwestern Experience 3:00: Advice as a Transfer Student 4:10: The Value of Extracurriculars 6:10: Changing Career Plans 8:00: Undergraduate Research 10:45: Recruiting for Consulting 14:20: What is Consulting? 16:30: Nontraditional path to Med School 18:10: The Value an Arts & Sciences Education 21:55: Networking at Northwestern 24:40: Challenges as a Transfer Student

This episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast features a conversation with David Ngene '07 who is currently an Innovation Design Director at the NXT Space Kitchen at Nike after Graduating from Northwestern with an Art Theory & Practice Major. David Ngene shares tories about changing majors at Northwestern, the Art Theory & Practice Major, his first job after graduating, heading back to school, working at Nike, the value of an Arts & Sciences Degree, and the experience and memory of being a student athlete! Timestamps: 0:00: Insight Unpacked 2:30: Weinberg College Experience 4:30: Plans Heading into Northwestern 6:25: Changing Majors to Art Theory 11:55: Art Theory and Practice 16:50: After Graduation and First Job 20:20: Deciding to go to Grad School 23:55: Working at Nike 26:45: Learning Design at Weinberg College 30:05: The Impact of being a Student Athlete 33:10: Closing Advice for Students

This episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast features stories from Alumni from the Career Summit and previous alumni conversations focusing on lessons related to networking. Alumni speakers share their thoughts on how to network with your peers in college and the lessons it provides, developing relationships by networking with those who interest you, and the value of networking in person at large events! Timestamps: 0:45: Anthony Ward '06 (Psychology) 3:35: Machel Mills-Miles ‘98 (Cognitive Science), Marc Tetel ‘86 (Biological Sciences), and JJ Guajardo ‘97 (Psychology) 10:40: Kelly Choi ‘94, ‘98 MD (English) and Mark Stovsky ‘86, ‘91 MD (Sociology)

This episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast features a conversation with Professor Sandy Waxman and Jackie Cantu, who are working together with the Posner Research Program. Professor Waxman is a Weinberg College Faculty member in the Department of Psychology and the Director of Northwestern's Infant and Child Development Center. Jackie Cantu is a rising sophomore majoring in Psychology and Global Health Studies. Sandy and Jackie share insights on their research in child development at Northwestern, participating in the Posner Research Program, what goes on inside a lab, how their research has affected their career path, and advice for those interested in pursuing research! Timestamps: 1:15: Introductions 6:20: The Posner Research Program 10:05: What do you do in the lab 14:20: Paths after Northwestern and the value of research 23:15: Advice for students about research

This episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast features quotes from Alumni from the Career Summit and previous alumni conversations focusing on lessons learned through first jobs. Alumni speakers share their thoughts on jobs that change constantly over time, how to succeed in a transforming job field, gaining skills during your first job, and seizing new opportunities! 0:50 - Samir Patel '94 (Biological Sciences)  2:35 - Juna Nakai ‘04 (Economics, International Studies) 6:40 - Michelle Wantuch '15 (Psychology with Global Studies minor) 10:35 - Liz McMath '09 (Biological Sciences)  For more details on the panels featured in this episode, click the links below: https://weinberg.northwestern.edu/after-graduation/student-alumni-connections/podcast/index.html   https://weinberg.northwestern.edu/after-graduation/student-alumni-connections/whats-new/2021-2022/career-summit-2022-final.html   https://weinberg.northwestern.edu/after-graduation/student-alumni-connections/whats-new/2020-2021/video-emerging-careers.html   https://weinberg.northwestern.edu/after-graduation/student-alumni-connections/whats-new/2021-2022/winter-women-in-science-video.html 

We are excited to feature a few clips from this year's Career Summit panels and a previous alumni conversation focusing on how extracurricular activities during their student experience helped alumni in their future careers. First is a quote from the Politics and Policy Alumni Panel at the Career Summit. Tara Corrigan '08 (History) talks about her experience as the Co-chair of Dance Marathon and how much she learned from her time managing such a big endeavor! The next quote is from the Research and Education Alumni Panel at the Career Summit, where Marc Tetel '86 (Biological Sciences) talks about his greatest teaching inspiration from where else: the Northwestern Karate club. Also from the Research and Education Alumni Panel, Machel Mills-Miles '98 (Cognitive Science) continues on the topic from the previous quote and delves into an impressive list of extracurricular activities from her time at Northwestern including the Asian-American Hunger Strike! Our last quote comes from a previous alumni conversation with Jeanne Sparrow '91, '15 MSC (Psychology) who happened to be the 2022 Weinberg College Convocation Speaker. In this clip, Jeanne talks about how she gained experience in radio by joining clubs and trying out new things at Northwestern. Jeanne gives great insight on how developing skills outside of the classroom can help you explore and find your career path! Recordings of the Career Summit will be uploaded at a later date. If you are interested in hearing more from Jeanne Sparrow, you can find the whole podcast episode here: https://weinberg.northwestern.edu/after-graduation/student-alumni-connections/podcast/index.html

This episode, brought to you by the Waldron Student-Alumni Connections Program and Northwestern Career Advancement, features a prep session for the Weinberg College Career Summit. Whether you are coming to the Career Summit to build your network because you already have a job or maybe you want to just come to listen to alumni from different fields share their stories because you are still undecided in what you want to do after graduation, this episode will help you prepare for the event.   Networking is a key skill to learn as part of your career exploration and internship/job search. In this episode, you will learn: 1) how to prepare before the Career Summit networking event (or any upcoming alumni events), 2) what do you do during the networking event, and 3) how to follow-up after the networking event.   This is a great overview of networking in general, so feel free to listen to this episode to prepare for any future alumni event you register for as well.

We are excited to feature a few clips from previous Waldron Student-Alumni Connections Program conversations and panels focusing on finding a career path and following your passions. First is a conversation with Rachel Kimber '03 (Cognitive Science) and her experience working her first few jobs after graduation. Rachel's insights might be particularly helpful for those of you who are anxious about finding the perfect first job after graduation. Up second is an excerpt from a conversation with Steve Greenspon '91, '09 MBA (Political Science), who talks about using your passions and interests to help you pursue a career that is right for you. If you are overwhelmed looking out into the job market and don't know where to start, Steve's words can provide guidance! For more insights from Rachel Kimber '03, watch the recording of this alumni panel on Exploring Your Career Options: Majors Without a Direct Path. https://weinberg.northwestern.edu/after-graduation/student-alumni-connections/whats-new/2020-2021/video-no-direct-path.html For more insights from Steve Greenspon '91, '09 MBA, listen to our interview with him on the Weinberg in the World Podcast. https://weinberg.northwestern.edu/after-graduation/student-alumni-connections/podcast/index.html

Austin Waldron graduated from Weinberg College in 1978 with a major in psychology. He had originally planned to become a doctor but after a quarter of organic chemistry he sought out other options within the medical field. He had a long and successful career in operations at Health Care Services Corporation before recently retiring. Austin hopes today’s Weinberg College students realize that they too can pursue many paths, regardless of their major or even with a major change part of the way through their Northwestern career. This is one of the reasons why he initially invested and ultimately made a philanthropic gift to name the Waldron Student-Alumni Connections Program. He is thrilled that this is a resource where students can engage with, and hear from, alumni in a wide variety of industries, that were once, where the students stand today. In this episode, we talk about how Austin’s arts and science background helped him move up from where he started in customer service to be a Senior Vice President by the time he retired.

David Leander graduated from Weinberg College in 2010 with a triple major in materials science, economics, and Spanish with a global health minor. He didn’t feel prepared to go to medical school right after Northwestern but after working in the public health industry for a few years he decided to go back to pursue an MD/MBA. He is now a resident physician at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. We talk about why he wanted to major in three seemingly different fields, how his time after graduation in the public health industry led him to pursue an MD/MBA, and his advice for students interested in medical school, even if through nontraditional means. Learn more at Weinberg.northwestern.edu and search for Waldron or email us at waldron@northwestern.edu.

Naomi Joyce Bang graduated from Weinberg College in 1981 with a double major in Political Science and French. Joyce later became a human rights and human trafficking attorney as well as a law school professor. We talk about a Northwestern experience abroad that changed her path forever, some of her most interesting and impactful projects oversees, and her advice for students looking to pursue either law school or something different. Learn more at Weinberg.northwestern.edu and search for Waldron or email us at waldron@northwestern.edu.

We spoke with Diana Richter ‘09 and Peter Moore ’09 who both graduated from Northwestern during the last recession with very different paths before and after graduation. Diana majored in Art History and pursued a career in entertainment and brand marketing. Peter majored in Economics and Spanish and after starting his career in investment banking, he quickly pivoted to working in startups. We talk about what it was like graduating into a recession, how to make tough career decisions in uncertain times, and advice for current students along with recent grads. Learn more at Weinberg.northwestern.edu and search for Waldron or email us at waldron@northwestern.edu.

This episode is a recorded Waldron Student-Alumni Connections Program event where Cody Keenan talked with students in the fall of 2019 about his career. He has been a speechwriter for President Barack Obama for nearly a decade, rising from a campaign intern in Chicago to Director of Speechwriting at the White House. He is also now a visiting professor at Northwestern. Though this talk was from 2019, which was a very different time compared to today, we are excited to share this talk with you and we hope you enjoy it! Learn more at Weinberg.northwestern.edu and search for Waldron or email us at waldron@northwestern.edu.

Kathryn Haydon graduated from Weinberg College in 1999 with a major in Spanish. After a long career in the education space, Kathryn is now an author and speaker who helps people develop creative thinking and problem-solving skills. We talk about how she picked her major, some of the surprising ways her major helped propel her career, and how we can still be creative during a very stressful time. Learn more at Weinberg.northwestern.edu and search for Waldron or email us at waldron@northwestern.edu.

This is a recorded Waldron Student-Alumni Connections Program event where Junta Nakai talked with students about his career where he transitioned from finance to startups. Junta graduated from Northwestern in 2004 with a double major in economics and international studies. After 14 years in the finance industry, he decided to take the leap to startups. He now leads Financial Services at Databricks where he works with customers who are defining the future of finance. He is also a part-owner of Brooklyn Kura, the first Sake Brewery in New York. Learn more at Weinberg.northwestern.edu and search for Waldron or email us at waldron@northwestern.edu.