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*]:pointer-events-auto R6Vx5W_threadScrollVars scroll-mb-[calc(var(--scroll-root-safe-area-inset-bottom,0px)+var(--thread-response-height))] scroll-mt-[calc(var(--header-height)+min(200px,max(70px,20svh)))]" dir="auto" data-turn-id="78ed7aa7-b197-46f2-b487-7774eb26dacc" data-turn-id-container="78ed7aa7-b197-46f2-b487-7774eb26dacc" data-testid="conversation-turn-2" data-scroll-anchor="false" data-turn="assistant"> *]:pointer-events-auto R6Vx5W_threadScrollVars scroll-mb-[calc(var(--scroll-root-safe-area-inset-bottom,0px)+var(--thread-response-height))] scroll-mt-[calc(var(--header-height)+min(200px,max(70px,20svh)))]" dir="auto" data-turn-id= "request-6a076382-d620-83ea-ad11-16c3882f072b-0" data-turn-id-container= "request-6a076382-d620-83ea-ad11-16c3882f072b-0" data-testid= "conversation-turn-4" data-scroll-anchor="false" data-turn= "assistant"> In this episode, Weinberg alum Bonnie Wong reflects on how her Northwestern education in philosophy and mathematics shaped her career in healthcare strategy by teaching her intellectual rigor, precise communication, analytical thinking, and resilience. She discusses her nonlinear path from law to business to population health, explaining how liberal arts skills helped her connect data, policy, finance, and human-centered problem-solving across roles at Humana, Oscar, and Molina Healthcare. Bonnie also shares how Northwestern taught her to work through challenges, take intellectual risks, seek support, and view setbacks as part of building a meaningful career.

In this episode of the Weinberg in the World podcast, student host Abigail Thomas '26 sits down with Northwestern alum Karen Smith '94 to explore how an early cognitive science degree shaped Karen's career and life. Karen reflects on discovering cognitive science in its early days, launching into the tech boom to design early digital learning systems, and later channeling her interdisciplinary background into writing, podcasting, and a decade-long positive‑psychology journaling practice. She shares advice for current students—embrace curiosity, explore campus and Chicago, stay open to changing paths, and trust that a Northwestern education provides adaptable, lifelong tools for whatever comes next. Transcript Abigail Welcome to the Weinberg in the World Podcast, where we explore the value of interdisciplinary liberal arts education in today's complex world. My name is Abigail, and I'm your student host of this special episode of the podcast. I'm a senior at Northwestern majoring in cognitive science and minoring in data science, and I'm looking forward to learning more about how your academic experience is connected to your professional journey and how your cognitive science background supports the work you do. Today I'm excited to be speaking with Karen Smith. Thank you, Karen, for taking the time to speak with me today. Karen Thank you for having me. Abigail To start us off today, I'm wondering if you can tell us more about your time at Northwestern as an undergraduate. What did you study? What were the impactful experiences for you that led you to your current career path? Karen I received a cognitive science degree in 1994. The lore or the legend is that we were the second graduating class. I'm not sure I haven't fact-checked that. but I know that I graduated with just two or three others with our degree. I understand that the cognitive science program has grown, so I think that's fantastic. I found cognitive science because one of those other two or three was a friend of mine, and I was complaining to him about how to choose a path when I found a lot of college classes really interesting, but I kind of had the sense that I couldn't choose just one. there wasn't one thing. I was dabbling with the idea of doing a sociology major. And my father, who was a business consultant, a technology and business consultant, asked me once as I was just exploring this at home on a break, there aren't very many sociologists out in the world. I don't see a lot of people saying, you know, hello, hi, I'm A sociologist. His point just being that if I were to be really interested in that path, I might need to have some idea of what else I wanted to do or to be planning to pursue a career in academia, which had never really occurred to me and wasn't what I found interesting. I thought sociology was interesting because we were studying people and cultures and how people do things in groups. That I found plenty interesting, but it wasn't so interesting that I was sure. And then the friend mentioned, you should think about this new interdisciplinary program 'cause it lets you do a little bit of this and a little bit of that. So I started looking into cognitive science and realized that the classes I already took were already quite applicable to the required courses for the degree. And then I looked at what else I should take. I think I was, it was first or second. quarter sophomore year. So I still had 2 1/2 years plus to look at. And everything in the list was something I wanted to take. Like it was already on my radar screen or it was new on my radar screen. I was like, are you kidding? I could take classes like this. is perfect. So that interdisciplinary sense is what appealed to me back then. I don't know if it's the same for folks today. Abigail Yeah, definitely. I find it, I also chose it because I just loved how interdisciplinary it was and how you could take classes from different fields and still be able to apply that to my major. So that definitely still holds true. Karen Yeah, wonderful. Well, what I did with my degree, I graduated into the early, early phases of the technology boom. And you know, we've been in boom and bust cycles. And so part of my career story includes both. But I graduated into an atmosphere where we were beginning to use technology to solve all kinds of problems that previously we had to do manually. We had to do in person with people, very labor and time intensive. And I worked at what is now Accenture, but was then Anderson Consulting. And my job was to build learning systems for corporate clients. So I was teaching adults how to do their job using technology to mediate it instead of having to create a course that was then led by an instructor and conducted in person on site somewhere, which was the old model of training. And that's how all corporate training had been done till then. So it was a pretty exciting time to launch out into that. But a lot of the technology tools we used were very early days. Like I remember waiting for videos to compress. and waiting for hours and hours for videos to compress and then finding that the edit had gone poorly and that we had to do it over. And things that today are kind of comical since we can use our phones to just go out and do an on the street interview with someone and have it on the internet in minutes or even live stream. These things were just not even, like we hadn't even imagined where we were going to go with this technology. So There were inconveniences, but it was also tremendously interesting because there was just so much to consider. And a lot of the times we needed to write new software to do the things we wanted to do. There now are authoring tools and platforms that you can kind of plop your training content into and sort of publish without needing a lot of technology background. Back then, we were doing things with teams of five and six. developers, plus I was on the design side, designing the learning experience and then management and content creators and things like that. I'm sure it's quite different now, but as I mentioned, the boom and bust cycle, or the bust and boom cycle, led to, it was the early 2000s, the technology, the.com bubble burst is how history tends to refer to that. And companies like mine did massive layoffs that included me. That time coincided with when my husband and I were starting our family. And so it led me to just kind of reevaluate a lot of things and choose to take a step back for a while, which has been great for myself, but it meant that I wasn't out there doing the things that I had been doing. So I don't have as good a perspective on how we're using those technology tools in these last 20 years. But for a time in the 90s, it was a fascinating and interesting way to apply my degree. And I was one of the only people I knew who did in my work what I studied in my undergrad degree. Everyone else was like a political science major who's now writing code or what else, like a anthropology major who was one of my co-designers on my team, things like that. Abigail Yeah, that's really interesting. I was just wondering, like going based off of having something you learn applied to your work experience, are there other classes or experiences specifically at Northwestern that ended up being more valuable than you realized at the time? Karen I certainly appreciate the computer science classes I took, even though my job never required me personally to write code. And I don't today choose that as a way to spend my time either. Even when I'm just like dabbling with my own personal projects, I find some of the code aspects aggravating. And it's one of the places where I'm most comfortable with the AI revolution because frankly, These are things that I feel like I should be able to get my head around, but I can't get my website designed to look the way I want it to. So if an AI bot can do it for me, that would be great. I would love that. But the underpinning of just understanding some of how technology systems work and a lot of the, I'm not sure I can put this into words very well, but the way when you're trying to write a computer program, you have to think both logically, but also you have to think divergently, right? You have to think in order. This has to happen, then that. This has to happen, then that. You have to do a lot of the dependencies and understanding what needs to come first and what needs to come later. But you also have to be prepared for things that are way outside the realm of what you might have expected. So you have to expect someone's going to use your computer system in a sideways way. And so you have to be prepared and to be able to think about those things differently. And I for sure wouldn't have had as much facility with that had I not taken, it wasn't a million, but I probably took, I don't know, four or five computer science courses in the course of getting my cognitive science degree. And I feel like each one just contributed to this ability to think in several different flexible ways and to break a problem down out into even just, planning a bake sale or, trying to do something completely, every day out in the real world, being able to know, oh, if we don't come up with a language for the flyers first, we won't have anything to put on the flyers. If we don't, we can't give it to the person to use Canva to go make the flyers for us if we don't have all the wording written, and things like that. I find it's not that these skills don't exist in others, but sometimes they're like overlooked. Folks don't maybe think through things in a process-based way. And I believe, it's been some time, but I believe that a lot of that came from some of this more technical work that I did while in undergrad. Abigail Yeah, definitely. Thank you. I saw that you worked in different industries after leaving Anderson or Accenture at that time. How has your cognitive science degree pre

In this episode of the Weinberg in the World podcast, Zifan Wang '29 interviews alumnus Robert Sevim '97 about how his interdisciplinary studies and adaptability shaped his journey to a career in real estate. Sevim emphasizes emotional intelligence, exploration, and building real‑world exposure, advising students to focus on growth, stay curious, and trust that clarity about career paths will come with time.

In this episode of the Weinberg in the World podcast, Olyvia Chinchilla '18 shares how early experiences (from studying abroad in Poland to working with a Stanford-affiliated nonprofit) shaped her passion for economics, social justice, and empathy-driven research. Olyvia reflects on the challenges and rewards of creating change, emphasizing the importance of adaptability, framing conversations, and seeing people beyond statistics. Her career journey spans teaching, global research, and policy analysis. Transcript: Leonie: How did your career begin, and what were your career goals coming out of undergrad? Olyvia: Well, I believe I mentioned while I was at Northwestern, I had been in the reserve officer training course, I had been planning to go into the Navy, and that ended up not panning out because of a few athletic injuries. But earlier in my time at Northwestern, I believe it was the summer of my sophomore year, I studied abroad. And I was studying in Poland and it was my first time actually being out of the country, so it was super exciting. And I was just super excited also to explore Poland because my mom is originally from Poland. So it was just this really amazing moment. And I remember going into that program not being able to fully form sentences, to then leaving the program a few weeks later and literally just talking to my friends in the program in Polish as we tried to navigate the city. And I owed a lot of that to one of the instructors there at the program. So she spoke Polish the whole time, but she was so patient whenever we couldn't get it or we didn't understand or there's a translation error. And I think in that moment, my passion for learning was melded with my... I had this vision of perhaps using that to then also teach. So I had this idea, it stuck in the back of my mind, "Oh, maybe I could take a year off and teach or teach down the road." I did not take a year off, I went back to Northwestern, but I was at a career fair later. And one of the first people I ran into was a national teaching organization. And so that, again, kind of stoked that thought in my mind. And I had planned to actually teach for that program I got accepted, but then I took a year off actually to have a medical procedure following one of the athletic injuries. And when I took that year off, I'm like, "I'll just go to San Francisco for a few months and then Australia for the rest of that year." That was my plan to travel as I recovered. But when I got to San Francisco, I ended up getting in touch through the Northwestern network with a nonprofit based out of Stanford University, so they were sponsored by Stanford. And it was perfect because it melded my interest in teaching because they had a large educational component in the program for fifth through 12th grade students. And then there was also a significant amount of research being conducted by all of the people at the institution. So it was such, I think, a perfect blend for me because then I got to teach as well as do a lot of research for the program. And I actually ended up researching five continents, or I should say four. I didn't go to the last one, but I definitely traveled the whole world doing that research. So it was quite exciting. Leonie: Wow. What subjects were you teaching? Olyvia: So the program was structured so that people could focus on their specialties in teaching and research. So I was focused on economic and social policy, and I had colleagues that worked on immigration more specifically, more specifically on cybersecurity, technology issues. I did cover some of technology like AI issues where it met with economics. So I say I covered a lot of issues, but my specialty was always coming at it from an economic and social perspective. Leonie: And then I assume the research you were doing was related to economic policy? Olyvia: Yes, yes. Policy, but I would say also some of the societal and ethical questions that come up along with policymaking as well as just how communities work and operate. So for example, when we were studying immigration, we were also interviewing a lot of local businesses on the US-Mexico border. We talked with a lot of locals, nonprofits, immigration advocates. So it was kind of like a 360-degree look, but I was always the one who brought that economic knowledge and thought a lot about a lot of social issues too. So that's why several years later, I actually went to London to get a master's in political sociology. So that politics and society part, I think was definitely an element along with the economics. Leonie: Yeah. And you kind of touched on this earlier when you were speaking, but you can expand on it now. What was your motivation for going into this field? Olyvia: So I think I've always just been really fascinated with how people think and how people also are affected by different structures. And that's where the economics piece comes in because economics, of course, impacts different people differently, impacts different communities differently based on how the policies are structured. So I, for almost as long as I can remember, have been interested in economics. I remember as a 12-year-old, I read Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, and it was a really long book, but at that age, I was still really fascinated by it. So I've always just had that interest, how money interacts with people. But as I've went along, and definitely the role I was in really opened myself to thinking even more about a lot of the ways in which money and economics also creates wealth disparities, racial disparities, disparities for other minorities, like gender groups. So I feel like all of that, my thought and motivation has evolved quite a bit, I will say, but I think that as I've come along in my career, I've really, as I've just talked to so many people across the entire world, whether it's the communities in Colombia that are still recovering from drug trafficking or whether it's in Iceland talking to different police and then social groups or Portugal as they're working on drug decriminalization, and then seeing that in San Francisco as well in the criminal justice system, just having all of these conversations has really made me really just be motivated to see how we can create the best world for marginalized groups. Leonie: Yeah. And then along those lines, what has been the most rewarding and the most challenging aspect of your job? Olyvia: So for one, for teaching, it was incredibly rewarding to be able to work with students and to see them understand something. And I think it felt to me a little bit of a puzzle when they didn't as well, how's the best way you can communicate, what's the best way to present a topic? And what I found actually, which was interesting to me with teaching was that oftentimes the way I would structure a lesson to start would actually be the exact opposite of how I would end up teaching it. So I would perhaps structure it linearly, and then I compared it to pulling a plastic bag inside out. You would take something from the middle of that linear story and move it to the beginning and switch things around because I think the way that we actually think is often different than the way that we're tempted to explain things. So working with that jigsaw puzzle of how to best explain things was also very fascinating. And I think it's also inspired a lot of my thought process about even as I move forward with potentially moving more into policy implementation or other work and policy, definitely that experience will shape that moving forward because I find how we frame conversations around social policymaking really makes a big difference in terms of how it's understood, how it's received, even how people access the program, for example. There was a study I found very fascinating that was conducted, I believe it was by the University of Minnesota economists. And what they found was that even if they sent a letter in the mail to underprivileged students saying, "Hey, you qualify for this scholarship," but it was actually the same sort of funding they would get anyway just based on their need status, students were more likely to apply for that program. And so I think things like that are really fascinating where we're framing and conversation, thinking about how people think, not just students, but people broadly really does have a big impact on policy. So I think it was very just amazing and fulfilling to actually have that opportunity to grapple with that. But I think also even just the idea of stepping into a space where you're actively envisioning, researching, working towards creating a better world was very fulfilling. On the flip side, I think it is the same thing that's rewarding in that regards is also sometimes one of the challenges that I think definitely as someone who I really aspire to be a changemaker, and I think that that's sometimes you're constantly learning, constantly thinking. And I think sometimes it's easy to... It's challenging, I should say. It's easy to get burnt out or it's easy to perhaps work too hard maybe. But I would say, for example, even just some of the interviews that we conducted with people were challenging even to talk to unhoused people in the city or to talk to people in poverty in Aspen, Colorado when we were studying poverty there, or to interview people that had fled from Gaza and to hear their stories, all of those were definitely very emotionally challenging stories. And I think to meet people in that space, you have to give out a certain amount of empathy and understanding, even if it's for research purposes. And I think just navigating that balance was challenging in its own way. Leonie: Definitely. I think the point about balance is a really good one. I think being able to incorporate empathy into research is a very critical skill that I think sometimes is lacking. So I really do appreciate that point. And based on your vast exp

Cassie Petoskey: Hi, everyone. Thanks for being here. I'm Cassie Petoskey. I use she or they pronouns. And I'm the Director of the Waldron Student Alumni Connections Program, where our goal really is to help Weinberg College students explore career options through connecting with alumni. So thank you so much for our alumni for being here with us today. And we're going to spend some time. Amelia is going to take us through some prepared questions for our speakers. We'll get into it. Are you okay? I feel like I always talk at the worst time too. So no worries. And then we're going to save plenty of time for questions at the end. And Shai is going to moderate questions from you all. So please, we'll save plenty of time for that as you all are writing [inaudible 00:00:44] down throughout. And I think that's it without... And of course, thank you to Geoclub for partnering with us on this event. Very excited to have you all bring this idea forward and work with you all on this. So thank you. And without further ado, I'll pass to Amelia and Shai. Why don't you introduce yourselves first and then we'll go to our alumni speakers? [inaudible 00:01:06]. Amelia: Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for coming. I'm Amelia. I'm a second year. I'm a Bio and Earth Science... Technically, Earth Science minor, but whatever. And I'm the president of Geoclub. And I'm so grateful that you all attended this event. We really wanted to be able to show people what Earth and Environmental Sciences can do for you in the future and expand the idea of there are [inaudible 00:01:29]. Shai: Hi, guys. I'm Shai. I use he/him pronouns. I'm a senior majoring in Earth and Planetary Science. I'm education chair of Geoclub. So also very glad to see so many [inaudible 00:01:40] here, and I'm excited to hear all the wisdom that our alumni have to offer. Thank you guys. Amelia: Yeah. So to start us off with some questions, can you share with us more about your industry and current job function and introduce yourselves while you're at it? And if you could speak to the microphone, that would be wonderful. Cassie Petoskey: Yeah. We're recording it. Sorry. Seems silly. Max Jones: Sure. Yeah. My name is Max Jones. And speaking of the future of your careers, I'm the near future because I graduated in June actually. So I am a class of 2024. I'm currently a Master's student at the Chicago Botanic Garden and I'm working as a conservation biologist and wildlife biologist. And so right now I've just returned from seven months of fieldwork in Panama doing work on forest fragmentation and animal movements. And I'm super excited to talk about all that and then also how I've kind of gotten to this point, especially so fresh out of undergrad. And then moving forward, I'm also going to be moving to Germany this summer to work with some scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior to keep working there. And so I'm going to be talking mostly I guess about my time networking at Northwestern and then how Earth and Planetary Science and Environmental Science has led me to the strange position I'm in right now. Margaret Isaacson: Hey, everyone. So my name's Margaret Isaacson. I graduated in 2015. It's been a minute. I'm a graduate of the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department, and currently I am a conservation and outdoors division manager at the Parks and Rec department in Evanston. So I'm pretty local. My position title is a long way of saying that I oversee our local nature center and all the programs that we run out of that facility along with the park services team that oversees the maintenance of the public restrooms around town and the athletic fields around town and picnic areas. So happy and excited to be here and talk to you all. And I think what I'll focus on, but happy to answer any questions, is how my experience in the department brought me to maybe an unusual career path and sector of the workplace, which is parks and recreation. Amelia: Thank you. So what were some of the impactful classes or experiences for you in your undergrad at Northwestern that led you to pursue your career path? Margaret Isaacson: Max, I feel like yours is in more recent memory, but I'll dig back. Max Jones: Okay. For mine, I think I'd probably start with saying ironically Spanish. Spanish led me down a snowball into this world of Latin American conservation that I've found myself in. And it was really that triggered the start, but then also I had everyone in the Environmental Science Department urging me to branch out and try new things, which was something super interesting. And so then specifically which classes, I'd say the GIS class with Elsa Anderson that I took was incredibly impactful in my senior year. That's been a skill that I've used all the time going forward. And just knowing these different kinds of programs like that have made it really easy for me to quickly pick up new kinds of analysis or feel comfortable going into different fields that I might not have experience with at the time. There was that, and then I'd also say my community ecology class from... That one's with the Biology Department, although I think Environmental Science students often take that too. That one just exposed me to a lot of different kind of paper readings. And so at first I thought those classes were very unfocused, but then I realized the goal is to expose you to so many different kinds of scientific thought that then you can... You find that one paper that you get really, really into for some reason and then that ends up being the rabbit hole that you follow down into the career that you want. Margaret Isaacson: The first thing that I'm thinking about back 10 years ago is some of the field experiences that I went on with the various classes, everything from Earth 201, that [inaudible 00:05:45] like trip, which hopefully is still around, to doing lake sediment coring up in Wisconsin on a frozen lake in the middle of February. That's right. Maggie remembers that hopefully. It was very cold. It was very, very cold that day. A lot of dancing on the ice to keep warm. So these experiences in the outdoors, they built on my passion for camping, my passion for spending time in the outdoors, but I got to be doing important science while I was out there. And now as a parks and recreation professional, my job is primarily outdoors and the goal of our Ecology Center here in Evanston is to inspire families, young kids, adults, people of all ages to spend time outdoors, whether that's through a quick class, through a whole summer of summer camp. But really it was those experiences doing science outside that showed me what can I do to inspire other people. "My professors are inspiring me now. Is there something more local, maybe less academic that I can have an impact on a broad range of people?" So I think those experiential moments were really important for me and really didn't guide me directly to parks and rec, but reinforced my passion for the outdoors and for inspiring that in others. Amelia: Max, you mentioned a bit about how your connections and networking that you had here are important. I don't know if that's applicable to you, but if you'd share a bit more about that, I'd love to hear. Max Jones: Yeah. Sorry. Give me just a second. You guys, it really was like... It's a funny thing on how you get started in these things because it's never the path you originally take that ends up to where you end up in the end. Because I think I started with one of the professors who was teaching an introductory climate change course my freshman year. I worked with her on processing photos of trees for a while and then that slowly led me to meet the people at the Chicago Botanic Garden. And then even though my research interests don't perfectly align with them, I did a thesis with Trish, with Patricia Betos, as my undergrad thesis advisor. And Trish is a mover. She loves pushing people to go do more and more and more. So I ended up going and doing a thesis in Costa Rica for my undergrad field work. And this is what I mean by the snowballs because I started taking photos of trees and then I ended up in Costa Rica doing sea turtle work with Trish and then from there I met the people that I worked with on this project as well. So that's the number one thing that I always recommend is don't be afraid to follow a lead, even if you don't know exactly where it's going to lead you to in that moment. Margaret Isaacson: Yeah. I could add a little bit to that. Not so much networking here on campus, but just post-grad when you start out at an opportunity. My first job was a part-time... My first job after post-grad was a part-time position with the Ecology Center. It was limited hours. I was learning on the job how to lead programs, completely new in the environmental education field, but I then left and came back two times and in four different positions leading to the one that I'm in now. So I think, like you said, following a lead, even if you don't know necessarily where it's going to take you, building relationships with the folks that you work with, the folks that... Whether it's academic or professional or just a summer experience, those are connections that you're going to take with you along the way. They might be people that you meet again. They might not. But like you said, Max, it's going to take you somewhere. And I think I wouldn't be where I was now if I didn't have the Ecology Center, for example, in the back of my mind and just building back towards that in some ways once I found something that I was excited about. Amelia: That's great. Thank you. What has surprised you about what you learned or did during your school days that helped you in your work today? I hope something you learned helps today. Margaret Isaacson: I can speak to that a little bit. So when I was an undergrad, I had two majors. I studied French all the way at the south end of campus, and

Dora: First of all, thank you so much for your willingness to connect and speak with us today. And to start off, do you mind briefly introducing yourself? Sijh: Yes. So my name is Sijh Diagne. I am a Weinberg class of 2010, did Economics and International Studies at Northwestern. Today I work as the advisor to the CFO of the African Development Bank. It's the largest multilateral development bank in Africa. Before that, I used to be in the Senegalese government as a senior advisor to the Minister of Economy, Planning and Cooperation. So the last five years I have found myself being at the intersection of policy and finance in Africa. Really enjoy playing some of my hobbies. I enjoy playing tennis. I enjoy playing a little bit of basketball, love watching tennis as well. Had a chance to travel quite a bit. So I enjoy traveling and trying out some new foods. So that's a little bit in a nutshell about myself. Dora: Sounds great. I'm actually going to play tennis and basketball later today. Sijh: Ah, fantastic. Dora: It's very nice out. Yeah, I'm a big fan of tennis and basketball too. Sijh: Very good. Dora: Thank you so much for introducing yourself. So I think my first question is that we're wondering how did you end up working at the African Development Bank Group and being where you are right now? Sijh: Yes. So my mentor I've had since I graduated from college when I joined Oliver Wyman as a consulting, he was an investment bank at the time in Dubai, Senegalese named Amadou Hott, and he became the Minister of Economy, Planning and Cooperation of Senegal in 2019. So I sent him a text message when he became minister. At the time I was at Harvard Business School. I finished my MBA and I was working at Credit Suisse in New York. And I said, "Congratulations." And he said to me, "You should think about joining the government, you'd be good to come home and serve your country." And I said, "Yeah, yeah, it's okay. No problem. I'm enjoying banking, but I wish you the best." And long story short, he did contact me and came to New York and said, "I need you. I'm building a team. I want you to join the ministry as my advisor. You're going to be in charge of private sector development." This was at the end of 2019, had decided thinking about everything personally and professionally, that this was going to be a really cool opportunity to serve your country, contribute to policy, especially something that I've always wanted to do since my days at Northwestern. And he took me on board and I became his advisor. We did a lot of interesting things in Senegal, COVID-19 pandemic economic recovery plan, an emergency youth jobs plan, PPP law, and really put Africa on a map, at least Senegal on a map, especially when we were sharing the African Union. And subsequently, he then moved on from government, went to the African Development Bank as advisor to the president, special envoy. And when the CFO of the bank was looking for somebody, had asked him and he suggested my name as somebody who had the profile, given my investment banking background, coupled with my policy and government background. And that's how I ended up at the African Development Bank. So it's a quite combination of personal interests, luck, but also relationships given the fact that it was a mentor who had recommended me. And this is a lot of times how the world works at a certain level. It's word of mouth, its connection, its relationships. And that's how I ended up where I am today. Dora: That's really cool. I think it's really cool that you ended up contributing to your own hometown by using your interest and skills and expertise. That sounds very cool to me. And you've also mentioned that you started off as a consultant at Oliver Wyman. What led you to decide that you want to do consulting when you first graduated? Sijh: So consulting was a little bit by accident, I would say. At the beginning when I was a junior at Northwestern, I had an undergraduate research grant to do studies. I was doing a thesis on China's economic involvement in Africa because I was surprised that when I went on vacation in Senegal, I saw a lot of people from China in Senegal. And Senegal was not a resource-rich country at the time. We did subsequently find oil and gas, but that was much later. And I was just quite interested in that new phenomenon. And so while I was doing that project, I started talking to merchants and consumers about business, about trade, and I got very interested in maybe the business of giving advice on strategic advice. Instead of maybe going for a master's in international relations and doing diplomacy, I maybe thought maybe I should explore deep field in management consulting, especially in emerging markets because it was one of the fastest growing markets in the world and I wanted to get exposure to that, given my Senegalese background, the fact that I also had chance to spend also a study abroad in Egypt and wanted to also develop my Arabic. So I looked at opportunities that will place me in the Middle East where I can be focused on at the time Middle East and Africa. And Oliver Wyman was recruiting in their Dubai office, and that was my top choice. Now remind you that this was in 2009. It was at the height of the economic crisis. So it was extremely challenging to find a job, and I just remembered applying to so many jobs at the time and just feeling completely agonized that what if I don't get it? Because a lot of my classmates were not getting jobs, people were getting laid off, were not recruiting as much. And I really thought that this is the only chance I have to differentiate myself because the US market was just quite challenging. And I practiced many, many hours a day. I only took three classes when I [inaudible 00:06:37] Northwestern versus four just to give myself a chance to get to that job. And so by God's grace, I got the job and then I moved to Dubai. And that's what I ended up doing for a few years. Dora: That sounds really cool. So you've mentioned that it was really hard to find a job back in 2009. And I'm sure it got a lot better now, but it's still a little hard for us because I'm a junior, so I'm also applying for jobs. It's still hard, especially for international students to find jobs. So is there any advice or suggestion you can give to the students seeking for a job in financial service or just seeking for a job in general? Sijh: Do not underestimate the power of the alumni network and in your relationships. When I was applying for jobs at the time at Oliver Wyman, most of the people who were interviewing me were from the Chicago office, Northwestern alum. And so I really tapped into that network at the beginning. It's the only network really I'd had at the time, frankly. And so in any job you have to look at what is required of the job in terms of skill set. Does it match currently the skill sets that you've been building or working on? And then number two, just really talk to alumni, talk to your network who work in those fields. Because oftentimes what might make a difference is just a person at the right time saying, "Oh, I know this person. I've worked with this person, I've interacted with this person. I can tell this person's character. I can tell this person's work ethic. I can tell about how assiduous they are. I can tell about how much integrity, how good communicator they are, and how consistent they have been in terms of reaching out, following up, asking the right questions and really putting in the work." Because at the end of the day, that might be what differentiates one or two candidates, what you do well, what you can control, having a good GPA applying for the job, but tailoring your CV, preparing for the interviews. But at the end of the day, sometimes the decisions are being made based on other emotional quotient. What were the interactions like with the people who you've met? Have you been very consistent at reaching out at talking to them? What has been your demeanor? I found that these interactions really made a difference, and so I made it a point in my career to just continue to reach out to mentors, continue to reach out to people in my different circles. This interview that we're having today would not have been possible if it weren't for a Northwestern alum, my sister Nikki Okrah, who gave a brilliant commencement speech last year and to whom I'm being very, very grateful for to open doors. And these are the ways in which the Northwestern alumni has been used. Nikki and I have been friends for almost 17, 18 years, since freshman year of college. She's back in Ghana building Chaku Foods, which is a startup in the agricultural space. And so my point is just leverage the network, build genuine relationships with people, your colleagues, your peers, and these things will pay dividends over time. Dora: I definitely agree because I've been doing networking and coffee chats with a lot of alumni as well, and I know that they have also been reaching out and talking to a lot of students. But I don't know if this question might be a little repetitive. Do you have any advice or suggestion for students to maybe stand out in those conversations? Like you mentioned being consistent and always follow up, but is there any more things or specific strategies we could use to... Sijh: Yeah, and I think these times are very challenging times as you can see given what's happening at the global environment. Quite challenging, quite complex, but it's also a tremendous time of opportunities and growth. One way in which I differentiated myself at the time when I was graduating is that I knew I had a language differentiator. I was fortunate to speak five languages, including Arabic, which was a differentiating factor when I was applying for jobs in the Dubai office. Being from Senegal, having had good quality education from Chicago at Northwestern and making sure that you had a good academic perf

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

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 inno

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 change

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

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 lik

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 y

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 hundr

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.

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