Sarah Sowell
Rice University 
Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

featuring Adrianne Waddell, Associate, Holland & Knight LLP, Austin (30.2° N, 97.7° W)

Adrianne Waddell is an associate at Holland & Knight LLP living in Austin, Texas. After attending Rice University for a degree in civil engineering and receiving a law degree from the University of Texas at Austin, Ms. Waddell worked in the public sector for the Office of the General Counsel and the Public Utility Commission.

The biggest takeaway from my conversation with Ms. Waddell is that college is a time to explore —fields, majors, classes, and ideas— but this exploration doesn’t end once you graduate. Instead Ms. Waddell models how law school, and a law career, can offer an opportunity to explore fields such as energy, environmental policy, and engineering. During her time at Holland & Knight, Ms. Waddle has been able to simultaneously focus on a law specialty that suites her interests, ideas, and skills and explore different corners of law. The excerpts below from this interview shows us how her law career provided her a unique chance to choose a field and explore new ones long after she completed her undergraduate education.

Highlights from the interview:

I would like this interview to aim for how we can inform college students on diverse career paths. What do you think were some influential factors that led to your current position?

Since I was 8, I wanted to be a lawyer, but my path of getting here was nothing traditional, or a straight path. I didn’t really have any lawyers in my family. I would meet them through school events or programs, but I didn’t really have a sense of what that actually looks like in reality. So, I think that the things that kept me going towards this path were pre-law educational opportunities and programs, or having friends with similar interests.

I studied engineering at Rice University because of a pre-college program at University of Texas that encouraged STEM academics. I liked math and science and I thought I could be a lawyer with any degree; so, I ended up pursuing that. At Rice, I also studied environmental law within my degree with Professor Jim Blackburn and took some sustainability courses. So, I started figuring out how to mesh these fields with law. Fortunately, these educational opportunities and programs, or the groups I was in helped me get to my career, even though I did not get there through a straight career path.

Since engineering is an unusual major for a lawyer, could you elaborate on why you picked that and how does that affect your current role?

I honestly had the idea after attending an engineering intro program where I heard engineers can do whatever they want. I focused on environmental and sustainability studies. At the end of college, I thought about whether I wanted to work or go to graduate school or do something else. Finally, I realized I didn’t want to do a master’s in engineering and decided to go to law school. Looking back, I do wish I worked as an engineer for a year or two [after I graduated from Rice].

When you go to law school, you realize that so many people come from different backgrounds. You also have a lot of people that have worked [in different fields such as] the medical field or accounting. I do wish I had worked in a technical field for a little bit because I think it would have given me a different perspective in law school, but also a different perspective on the working world.

When I was in law school, intellectual property law was a big area. Just because I had the technical background, people pushed that a lot on me. And I did explore it. I ended up realizing I really did like the energy side of things. I ended up working for the Railroad Commission here in Austin, which is the state regulatory agency that regulates the oil and gas industry. And from there, I ended up at the Public Utility Commission of Texas, which regulates the electric and other utilities. That was energy- and sustainability-based work. From there, I was hired to my law firm job. I currently work with electric companies, and I have a basic understanding of what’s going on, because I have an engineering background, which gives me credibility with them that, otherwise, I might not have. I have tried to tie what I knew together and what made sense to me naturally.

How do you think your family, your culture, and your community shaped your career path and your interest?

My family has always been very supportive. I didn’t have any lawyers in my family; so, there wasn’t any technical advice or specifics my family could give me. I did learn a lot on my own. But that’s also why I love to speak [to students] like you. I learned so much as I went, but I also had a really good community around me. There was a program that I was in throughout middle school and even high school, and it’s called “Con mi Madre,” which is a Hispanic mother-daughter program, that the Junior League used to run. They were very big on college prep and readiness. They were often the leaders of other Austin community groups. So, I’ve known those people since I was in elementary or middle school and I still see them to this day. They were also founders of the young Hispanic Professional Association of Austin, whose board I joined two years ago, or the Hispanic Bar Association of Austin. They supported me in law school, and now I sit on their board as well. I think they even sponsored a scholarship I had when I was at Rice. I’ve definitely been supported by the community around me in some way, shape, or form in whatever path I’m on at that moment or helping me get to the next step.

What are some of your projects or accomplishments you’re most proud of?

I would say that within the last couple of years, I’ve been taking on more direct roles in case management or handling hearings and depositions firsthand instead of just being the person behind the curtain. You are either writing the pleadings, or doing the prep for a hearing. I think the biggest thing for me is being someone my clients are comfortable calling directly. I’m fortunate that the department I work with fosters that environment and that my clients can call me up directly and say “I need help with this project,” or “we just had this incident happen and need to start preserving evidence, or we’re probably going to get sued on this.” I’m in my sixth year; so, I’m still an associate, but I’ve built up enough trust from my clients.

What kind of projects do you work on? How would you quickly describe your current work?

Anything and everything. My practice encompasses litigation and transactional and regulatory work, and general advice. One day, I could be working on a regulatory project before the state, the next day I could be working on a breach of contract suit for a company that has nothing to do with electricity. Then the next day, I could be looking at someone’s bylaws or board resolutions to help them with corporate governance. Part of that is that we are a general counsel to a certain group of clients. And there are some days where I’m just the middleman trying to get people connected together so that they can do the work I can’t do.

Lately, I’m learning new things, which is nice, because sometimes you can get caught in a monotony of a certain type of work. Fortunately, one thing I’ve been learning to do, as I get higher in my career and move from being an associate to hopefully a partner, is learning how to generate business and pitch myself for new things. I am approaching those things as a learning opportunity. I am trying to learn how to put myself out there more and advance my career in terms of learning new things and generating new business and opportunities.

Taking initiative is definitely a great skill for a college student, and learning as well. What advice do you have for students interested in law?

Contact lawyers and get to know them. Lead informational interviews. Lawyers love to talk in general. I think this equally applies to college students and I’m always happy that students reach out. Our schedules can get very busy; so, I always tell them to be persistent. Taking the initiative speaks volumes to me, especially when someone takes the initiative to contact me. I really do try to always get back to them and make sure we meet. I also think there’s no better way to learn what [lawyers] are doing and what it actually looks like to be a lawyer, what all your options in law are. You would be amazed at how many people with law degrees and aren’t practicing law. I think all those things are so important to figure out. I’ve thought so many times about what I wanted to do with my career in 15 years or 20 years? Do I want to be at a law firm? Do I want to be practicing law in the typical sense? Or do I want to be working at a corporation at a managerial role or compliance role?  There are so many different options.

When I was working at the state, I thought I would work there for two years and then start looking for jobs in a law firm, but I got called within my first year of practice. My mentor that I’d known for four or five years at that point had just moved to this law firm and said that they were looking to hire. They didn’t give me a job off the spot; I still had to interview for it, but my job was never posted online. It was never formally out there. So, your personal network helps you get jobs within this industry.

I think taking the initiative to meet with lawyers, getting to know people, and asking questions will help you learn the ropes basically. Also, take advantage of any opportunity to do a clerkship or even just a day program.

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee. This article only aims to share personal opinions and learnings and does not constitute the interviewee’s current or former employer(s)’ position on any of the topics discussed.

Quint Smits
Tilburg University 
Tilburg, The Netherlands (51.5° N, 5.0° E)

featuring Hakan Bacakoglu, Senior Program Manager, Sikorsky, New York City (40.7° N, 74.0° W)

I had an opportunity to lead a career conversation with Hakan Bacakoglu who is a senior program manager at Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation in New York City. Our exchange has taught me to take more risks and take advantage of the opportunities in college where I can fully focus on studying as those opportunities may not arise again when I have a full time job. Another important takeaway for me was the importance of finding mentors in my field who might later open up some career doors.

Hakan grew up in Turkey where he went to school at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara where he got his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering. Afterwards, he attended the University of Waterloo in Canada towards his postgraduate degree in systems design engineering. Since then, he has worked for the leading aerospace/space companies such as Boeing and Sikorsky.

When I asked him about the conflict-free work environment at the International Space Station, unlike on earth, and how they achieve this, he mentioned that there is a form of common understanding that the priority is building and maintaining the space station with high quality and safety standards. He also highlighted that there is no politics in space; they only focus on the main mission, which is creating a working microgravity environment for research and development to improve life on earth.

As a student in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), I had some questions about the societal impact of AI replacing certain jobs like driving for Uber. In response, Hakan talked about the importance of implementing regulations that would create an adjustment period for people who work in those jobs to give them a chance to properly adapt to the changes, which I found to be a well-thought-out answer.

I feel very fortunate to have had such an insightful interview with this accomplished person, and I certainly will be putting the takeaways from our conversation to good use in my own journey.

Highlights from the interview:

You have done some research at the University of Waterloo in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. Can you tell me a little bit about that side?

On the space station, a big deal is given to the vision systems. Because the astronauts are not out there, we have to rely on cameras. There’s a lot of cameras on the space station, especially for robotics operations. If you’re going to manipulate an object in space, the robot or the astronaut staying in the space station need to know where that object is. So, using the machine intelligence computer vision, you calibrate your cameras and manipulate a robot to go and grab the object. I extended that research a bit more [at the University of Waterloo]. Canada is very rich in natural resources. Yet, we Canadians are very conscious about recycling. So as part of that, I did research on a vision system combined with ultrasonic sensors. Imagine a recycling company, and there’s plastics, paper, and glass going on the conveyor belt. My research was to use actual intelligence analysis to identify if that object on the conveyor belt is paper, plastic, or glass or not recyclable, and to grab that object using computer vision at the right speed. It’s a faster, more accurate, and cheaper operation for the recycling industry. Artificial intelligence played into how to classify and categorize this object in terms of what kind of recyclable material that is.

You have worked at the Johnson Space Center for some time. Can you tell me how your day was like there?

Their space station program has international partners: NASA, European Space Agency, Japanese Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency, and Russian Space Agency. The Johnson Space Center is an administrative hub, but some technical activities are also conducted there. Our offices were at Boeing; so, we didn’t really spend our entire time at the Johnson Space Center. A couple of days a week, I went there for technical meetings or program meetings, or to train astronauts on the use of robotic systems. The Canadian Space Agency is the manufacturer of the robotic system on the space station, and thus we trained NASA astronauts so that they can use the vision system and the robotic system efficiently. The astronauts train in a big pool inside the Johnson Space Center, called the Natural Buoyancy Lab, where they have a mockup of the ISS to get the feeling of microgravity artificially.

This is almost a philosophical question. There are a lot of conflicts on Earth, and space seems to be an exception. All the countries cooperate on space projects, such as the ISS. What do you think how they keep it cool in space?

When I worked on ISS projects, at my level, we were just focusing on the work. We weren’t focusing on politics. We had a common understanding, a common vision about building the space station with high quality and safety. Everybody’s purpose was that. No politics, no other ambitions. Get the job done so that humanity can have a working microgravity environment for research and development and for improving the quality of life on Earth because a new space discovery and the technology you get to work on for space operation may come back as real, day to day technologies we use in our [daily lives].

Shortly after working on the ISS, you went to Washington State University to get a degree in engineering. Why did you get another degree?

It was a certification program; it wasn’t a full degree. I have a master’s degree from the University of Waterloo. My research at the University of Waterloo taught me how to attack the unknowns. You don’t have an exhibitable model to solve a problem, you have to understand what the problem is, you have to model the problem, you have to find solutions to the problem. So, it’s really broadened my perspective, in terms of how we’re going to identify and solve a problem. It really satisfied my scientific thirst, per se, because I produced a lot of publications after that, in computer vision, pattern analysis, and so forth. As you progress through your career steps, your goals and interests may change a little bit. I realized that I was good at people management, at coordinating, and at sequencing tasks in a logical way. So, I realized that I had better strength in managing projects. I had two options in front of me, an MBA or a masters in engineering management. I chose engineering management. It gave me additional skills of project management, budgeting, and people management. Basically, you redefine your interests, ambitions, and visions for future as you go through your [career] because you’re not static. As humans, our feelings, ambitions, and desires for future change. Since I realized that I was better in managing projects, I wanted to have that second certificate. I still use my skills I learned at school.

Do you think that in some areas like space or health, the money factor should just be turned off so that we can spend all the resources in developing those fields?

I think you should do the opposite because there are many moving parts in human society; sociological developments, technological developments, and cultural developments. So, you have to invest in all of these traits. The amount you spend on each of these skills may fluctuate, but you have to keep your tabs on for every field. Now we have a COVID-19 situation, and since last year, we’ve been working from home. Having internet and the Zoom technology enabled me to conduct my business from home as efficiently as I could do from work. So, you never know how these technologies can turn into a very usable application. We have to do our business, and we have to make sure all parts move at the same time. Maybe not at the same speed, but they have to move [together].

Do you really enjoy your work?

Yes, I’m one of the lucky ones. I have worked for good companies in Canada and in the US, and I went to good schools. I was lucky to be able to do what I wanted to do.

What are some skills you learned in college, or during your time at NASA, or any of your other jobs that you find the most useful? Which ones do you use the most?

The field of aerospace and defense is very complex. The systems are very complex. There is no way for one person to know everything. You have to rely on many other people with specific skill sets. It’s not like you write an iPhone application and observe whether it works or not; in the aerospace business, people’s lives [are on the line]. So, you have to make sure that things that you design work properly and safely. You have to be really structured and systematic. Millions of components go into a complex machine or a vehicle, and you have to do the design, manufacturing, and testing in a really structured way. There are standards that you have to follow. You have to be disciplined every day. As you get to a certain point in your career, when you’re moving up, you got to make sure that you’re empowering your team members, giving them responsibility, giving them a chance to prove themselves. Even if they fail, make sure that they learn from the mistakes so they become better at what they do. Create a vision; everybody has to have a common vision and you have to have their buy in. For example, for ISS, everybody is working together so homogeneously, in harmony. And that’s because everybody wants to make sure that the Space Station is completed, it’s operated safely, and new technology and research development is good for humanity. That is creating a common vision.

There has recently been some discussion in the European Union about the use of AI and a social point system. I believe they’re trying to ban it. What do you think about the use of AI in certain ways?

My contribution to research was done 20–30 years ago; so, I may not be up to speed with what’s going on in the AI area. These technological advancements need to be looked at carefully for their social, cultural, and technological impacts. In the U.S., a lot of people are employed in the AI and automation areas. So, are we really replacing these individuals with artificial intelligence and automation? And if we do so, what are the implications on the society? I think it needs to be balanced. I think that has to be some sort of a global initiative. How are we going to deal with AI? Because technology develops very fast. We as humans are not like that. We go to universities, we get education, and we continue to learn. But we also have our lives, families, and commitments to people around us. So, the development in AI or automation should be carefully orchestrated to make sure that the normal functioning society can catch up with those developments. We do not want to create a crisis in the society by replacing humans with robots. You have to make sure that it’s paced carefully.

In my lectures on AI, they say that technological advances in AI won’t creep up on us. So, it shouldn’t be that almost everyone gets unemployed because of the rise of AI. But, in automatic vehicles, it is the case right now that quite a few Uber drivers are seeing those impacts.

Yes. And what are we doing for those people? What are you giving those people, or how are you empowering them with new skills to make sure that they still stay employed, they still function as normal humans or individuals, adding value to society, who can still take care of their responsibilities, their families, and their loved ones. That’s the job of the governments. Because if you leave this to the free-operating, corporate environment, they will go to the extreme. It’s governments’ job to make sure that things are regulated, the society is protected, and people are given a chance to get properly adjusted.

Can you tell me about what you are doing right now in your job?

I started my career as an instrumentation engineer; I worked on instrumentation systems for flight test aircraft. That was the stage that I progressed through technical fields, and I became a project engineer. Now, I’m a program manager. Program manager is a person who is ultimately responsible for the proper execution of a program on time, given the schedule and budget constraints; that is my day-to-day job. I’m the person responsible for a program. There are multiple projects under that program. Those projects are mostly performed by different function groups in the company such as engineering, operations, quality, and aftermarket. Under our program, we have five P&Ls (profit and loss centers). We assign a program manager to each P&L. I’m one of the program managers for a P&L. The budget is $100 million plus, and it is a 10-year program. We’re halfway through, we have another four or five years to go to finish the program. It is a very complex program. So, I have to make sure that not only the program is executed according to the schedule, but also we stay very close with our customers, because at the end of the day, whatever we develop, whatever we manufacture, we need to make sure it meets the customer needs and requirements. So, I have to manage not only the internal program execution, but also the communication and interface with our customers and suppliers, some of them are international suppliers.

What do you think about people such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos coming into the aerospace scene and taking over with their private companies?

It’s a good thing. It’s always been the case; the government establishes the foundation, like Internet, and then the private companies come in and find new applications, new areas, new fields to apply the new technology. In the past, when we launched space shuttles and other rockets, it was NASA playing a bigger role and taking all the cost, engineering, and integration responsibilities. But the United States government enables private companies to do the work as much as possible. So, this is along that direction. The government thinks if we create an environment where private companies get into the business and compete, it will eventually be the best option for the people because it will give you higher quality products at a cheaper cost to the taxpayer. Having Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos come into the space business is good because hopefully it will create a competition, it will make things more efficient and generate better technology. But they will have to make sure that the safety is fully practiced. These private companies are profit-driven, meaning they want to maximize their profit. But we still have to make sure that as these companies evolve and grow, they follow the standard safety and quality protocols and operate in a safe environment.

Could you give some advice to students interested in the field of aerospace, AI, or budget management?

First of all, do the best you can at school. Learn the subjects well because it’s a special time of your life where you can focus 100% on learning. When you start in the professional field, the schedules are crazy and you may not find the same opportunity again to learn or relearn. So, make sure that you maximize your studies at school, stay close to your professors, do additional research in the summer. Use those opportunities in a company where you work for a few months or for a few weeks, you learn what’s going on in those fields. If you’re doing summer practices, try different fields. Go for an aerospace company one summer, work for a medical company another summer and see which ones you really are interested in. Your targets and goals will always change. And they need to change. If they are not changing, there’s something wrong there. But establish goals. Important thing is to get a mentor. When you start working, look around yourself and then pick individuals and ask for mentorship. Although you’re learning on the job and getting experience, those mentors can also give you additional insight into career door. You got to set your expectations really well. You may not find aerospace and space as dynamic and fast-paced as the computer industry, or artificial intelligence. So, make sure that you’re aligned to that. Decisions take time to make and to get there; so, you have to have all the facts, and then you can move on to the next step. So, don’t expect a fast-paced environment. The environment in software companies is very complicated, you will not know everything. So, just be prepared for that. But it’s very rewarding. You feel like you really add value to the society, you get the satisfaction working in the aerospace field. Again, I cannot comment too much on the AI field. I think it’s the future. And work hard. In the industry, no matter how smart you are, you will not know everything. The knowledge base is huge, and everybody has access to that knowledge base. But to differentiate yourself, have a good education, focus on your studies, be disciplined, and work hard. And don’t be afraid to take risks. Even if you fail, you will learn from your mistake. I’m not saying just take foolish risks. Take calculated risks, show yourself, and learn from your mistakes.

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee. This article only aims to share personal opinions and learnings and does not constitute the interviewee’s current or former employer(s)’ position on any of the topics discussed.

Sarah Sowell
Rice University 
Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

featuring Daniel Cohen, Associate, K&L Gates, Washington, D.C. (38.9° N, 77.0° W)

The reasons many undergraduates plan to go to law school following graduation are numerous; to avoid entering the workplace, to appease their parents who want them to have a second degree, or due to the cultural impacts of the movie Legally Blonde. Whatever the reason, around 15% of college students plan to go to law school. However, many of them are unaware of the nature of the profession and are unsatisfied with their jobs and the momentous student loans that often accompany a law degree. In my interview with Daniel Cohen, I quickly realized that law is not what I expected, but for the right kind of student, it can be the path to a fulfilling career.

Daniel Cohen is an associate at K&L Gates in Washington, D.C., where he works in regulatory compliance for banking institutions and trust companies, digital asset regulation, and public policy counseling. Before starting at K&L Gates, Mr. Cohen attended Rice University where he studied political science and economics and then attended the University of Virginia School of Law. He began his career in law as a legal intern at the Legal Aid Justice Center before interning for the Attorney General of Virginia: Consumer Protection Section. In addition to his work in law, Daniel has also volunteered on the Making Justice Real Campaign for the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia and is an advisory board member of Longitude.site.

The first thing that struck me during my interview with Mr. Cohen is how he viewed his education and childhood affecting his current work. He describes how his cultural background encouraged him to work hard in school, stating “many Jewish Americans, my family included, are very keyed in on education early on,” leading him to study hard and have “a lot of opportunities once we thought about college.” Once at Rice University, Mr. Cohen focused on political science and economics, which he feels pointed him towards the legal field.

Once in law school at the University of Virginia, Mr. Cohen focused on the financial services law, a specialization many undergraduates might not consider, despite the abundance of passion for finance among many college students. However, it was not an instant decision. By exploring public policy and economic policy, and “through different things I did at Rice and at UVA and then at K&L Gates, I had different opportunities that have led me to being a financial services and financial technology lawyer.” This role means working with banks, payment apps, cryptocurrency platforms, and other industries at the intersection of finance and technology to help them “think through how they can provide services and products in a way that complies with federal and state laws.” To me, this seems like a perfect niche for anyone interested in law, finance, and technology.

Another important part of our interview was when Mr. Cohen detailed what skills a prospective lawyer should have. One skill Mr. Cohen recommended was communication, a skill necessary to be able to specifically explain complex ideas and strategies to a client. While communication is an important part of the legal field, Mr. Cohen also noted that lawyers spend ample time alone. He describes the field as “a hybrid industry with respect to teamwork,” stating that his diverse work experience in legal aid societies and his private firm among others has showed him how to “spend a lot of time on your own thinking through a problem and a question, doing research, drafting an answer, getting back to the client”, and that pre-law undergraduates should prepare for some solitary work. Still, that does not mean that teamwork is not crucial to success. Mr. Cohen detailed how, after you have figured out a problem by yourself, communicating and perfecting that idea are built around crucial cooperation. Teamwork not only helps solve a problem, but also allows all lawyers to take their individual takes on an issue to synthesize and explain a complex, multifaceted solution to the client with clarity.

For students who think that this career suits their aspirations, Mr. Cohen offered some inner-industry advice on how to enter the field. First, he warns that law school is not the only path to law-adjacent careers, like public policy or business, but is one of the most expensive paths; so, he recommends pondering this decision greatly. For those still excited about law school, choosing the right school, at the right price point, is critical. However, before all this, Cohen reminds students to reach out, to use opportunities like Longitude.site or other resources to connect with industry professionals and build a network. That does not have to be transactional, but it allows experienced professionals to assist newer ones as a way of paying it forward. No matter what career or educational path one takes, “do whatever makes you happy, particularly when it comes to giving back to the community,” look for ways to give back, and “follow that passion throughout your life.”

Highlights from the interview

How did your childhood or cultural background and values affect your career path?

I’m a third generation American on my mom’s side and fourth generation on my dad’s side. In some ways, we have an American immigrants’ story, focusing on hard work and education. Many Jewish Americans, my family included, are very keyed in on education early on. So, my older brother and I learned to study hard, did our homework, and always made sure to be really engaged with our classes, to prioritize that above all other things, and to do as well as we could. That gave us a lot of opportunities once we thought about college. I wanted to go to a school that was engaging, that had a lot of opportunities, particularly in public policy; so, the Baker Institute at Rice University really caught my eye. I wanted to go to a place where kids were smart and serious. So, I think Rice fit that mold well and into this career of being a lawyer and policy advisor. I was always interested in government growing up. At Rice, I focused on political science and economics, and it was a natural lead into a legal career. At the University of Virginia [UVA] School of Law, which has a great access to the DC market, I decided I wanted to be a financial services lawyer. I wanted to work in public policy and also found economic policy interesting. Through different things I did at Rice and at UVA and then at K&L Gates, I had different opportunities that have led me to being a financial services and financial technology lawyer. So, that’s where I am now.

In your time at Rice or even at law school, were there any specific organizations or experiences that shaped your career path?

The Baker Institute, particularly the Baker Institute Student Forum, played a big role in my development at Rice. When I was a freshman, I joined the group and volunteered to organize events. I brought an activist minister named Jim Wallis to campus at the beginning of my sophomore year. That was my first introduction into fundraising, networking, public policy forums, and realizing how hard it could be to make the ideas happen. So, that event turned out to be very successful. We had hundreds of people come, it was a good dialogue. That got me excited about public policy and social thought, and I stuck with the organization. I was president for a couple of years. Also, at Lovett College, where I was a student, and president in my senior year, I was always involved in government and went to events and met people. It was great to meet students from every grade, every major, every background. It really changed the way I think. One of my best friends who I still talk with, and some of my colleagues who I work with in the legal sphere or in related business ventures are from college. And then going to law school was critical to what I do now. Law is a very prestige-oriented field. There are tiers; where you go to school and how well you do at that school don’t dictate but help inform what firms you can go to and what opportunities you have. Going to the UVA helped me start working at [K&L Gates], and being at this firm has given me a lot of opportunities in my career early on.

Could you give an example of the type of projects you work on? And maybe a quick rundown of your typical day?

I have a wide portfolio that focuses mostly on what we call financial services. My clients range from big banks to financial technology companies such as payments apps, and cryptocurrency platforms like Coinbase that help you buy bitcoin and other digital assets. I advise those companies on their regulatory compliance and risk, help them think through how they can provide services and products in a way that complies with federal and state laws. I also work with cannabis trade associations to help promote normalization of cannabis federal policy, particularly in banking. In most states, medical marijuana is legal, and a lot of companies are licensed and registered to provide those products, but they can’t access banks because marijuana is still illegal federally; so, I work with them on lobbying Congress. I also work with a wide range of food companies on insurance claims; whenever they have a problem with their product, like a recall, I help them recover funds so that they can keep operating, keep people employed, and stay in business. So, it’s a wide range of things, and as a result, I don’t have a typical day. But some of the things I generally do are conference calls with clients to help them reach out to a member of Congress or their staff, draft a comment letter if a federal agency is proposing a rule to govern how the client operates, or answer questions about what a certain regulation requires the client to do. I also advise them on what’s happening in Congress, and I draft contracts and settlement agreements.

What skills do you think are important to your job?

Communication. Fundamentally, written and verbal communication, trying to take complex, ambiguous, confusing or incomplete concepts in law or politics, and helping clients (a) understand them, and (b) apply some strategies to overcome them. Sometimes, it’s advising the client on options of how to provide a product; for example, if you want to provide product A, then we need to get you a license, or if you want to provide product B, you can partner with someone who already has that license, or you can offer this product by actually providing a supplementary kind of service and letting someone else provide the product itself.

Would you say that teamwork is very important to your job? And what kind of dynamics do you try to foster on any team you are in?

Lawyering is a hybrid industry with respect to teamwork. Private practice is the only private sector experience I have had. I’ve not worked for a company other than my law firm or in a non-legal setting. In college and law school, I did internships in a wide range of things, in legal aid societies, at the Virginia Attorney General’s office, different government agencies, and a think tank. My experience is not completely limited to the law, but internships only tell you so much. And I say that as a preface because in law, you spend a lot of time on your own thinking through a problem and a question, doing research, drafting an answer, getting back to the client. But once you’ve done that, teamwork is critical, especially in the public policy realm. Because you have to convince a lot of people on what to do. So, we often have internal calls and get on the same page about strategy. Because when we talk to the client, we have to be uniform. Because if we share disjointed perspectives, then the client will be confused. As an example, I work with several trade associations that represent lots of individual companies, and their goal is to get all those companies on board with a particular message. Our job is getting the trade association and its members on board, and it takes a lot of effort to communicate on calls, in emails, texts, and just to be ready to answer questions whenever needed.

What changes or challenges do you foresee in your industry?

There are more firms and entities that are trying to get into the legal field, and that creates competition for business, competition on pricing within industries to respond to what new rules are happening or to shape them. So, there are more voices coming up to advise and put forth ideas.

I think, in this remote era, there’s going to be a lot of conversation about how much can we really work from home after the pandemic, and how much do we need to be in person. So there’s going to be pressure on reducing real estate holdings and new office space and things. I hope we don’t go too far. That’s one risk I foresee because [legal] work in a sense can be done from anywhere. Because what I do is what we’re doing now. I get on a Zoom call, and I talk to you, I write a memo at my desk, on my laptop. But I think something is lost if you completely lose the element of the physical coming together. So I do see a pressure there, of too much focus on remote work, and that puts a lot of stress on people’s time, because it’s much harder to unplug. And I think it puts a lot of dependency on technology. You know, laptops always got to be up, the programs you use always have to be working really well. And as we know, like, Zoom for business, or WebEx, or other things don’t always work great. Whereas if we’re in person, I can always just walk to your office and have a conversation. I think [another] risk is overly siloing people, especially for work from home, it’s just too easy to just work with people you always work with, because you don’t see other people, right? It’s out of sight, out of mind. And you don’t think to yourself, even though we have email, and I could email anyone, there’s just too much going on in your [own] silo [and] [in] your own home. I think gets people thinking let me just rely on the people I already work with. So I figured a way of actually discourages outreach and connectivity and synergy with other employees. Even though, you could theoretically talk to anyone anywhere in the world via zoom and via email, so I think it’s a careful balance of those two.

How do you think that your volunteering or experience at internships has affected your outlook on your industry?

I think the most relevant experiences, as for my outlook on the industry, is working with the legal aid organizations. Cumulatively, I worked for a year and a half with the Legal Aid Justice Center in Charlottesville. I also worked for a semester at the Virginia Attorney General’s office. Neither of those are private entities or businesses competing for profits, but they are entities that shape what the private sector can do. The Attorney General brings different cases against certain businesses or entities creating the need for defense attorneys, and legal aid provides certain services to low income communities and people who need legal aid. That creates opportunities for private law firms to assist. We have an ethical duty as lawyers to do pro bono work, but it’s very helpful to partner with a legal aid attorney for doing pro bono work because they have the expertise, they have connections with the community, they have their trust. So, working there helped inform my view of pro bono work and why it’s so important. In my own practice, I have worked with a bunch of organizations, such as Kids in Need of Defense (KIND). Having worked with those organizations directly helped me appreciate the importance of letting them take the lead, but also the importance of helping them because they are so overworked and they need so much more aid.

What advice would you give students looking to go into your field?

Really think about whether you want to practice law or do something that’s law related such as public policy, social work, community organizing, strategy. Strategy can be in the private sector, in the philanthropic sector, or government sector. A lot of people think that just having a law degree is inherently good. And there’s some truth to that. But as the world becomes more competitive, and school continues to be more expensive, just being credentialed for the sake of credential is not necessarily the best idea. You should be strategic. I’m a big fan of higher education. I think advanced degrees can be good. But you should get it because it makes sense. Law is a protected industry; you need to pass a bar exam to be able to practice law. And to do that in almost every state, you have to go to law school. So, if you’re going to go to law school, you should practice law in some form, at least for a while, and really learn a field, learn the skills, understand how to think in practice, like a lawyer, and then go do something else. But if you just want to go to law school, and then start a business, then go to business school, or do something else. You want to go to the best school you can because it opens the most doors. But you don’t want to create an unsustainable amount of debt for yourself, especially if you don’t want to do private practice. So, think about the finances. Think about what you like to do. Do you like to be around people? Or do you like to mostly think and write on your own? For the latter, there are some law practices that you can go into. Think about your personality. Do you like to fight? Do you like to argue, do you like to be right? Then litigation might be good for you. If you’re conflict averse and you’d rather people get along, there are fields of law that are useful for that, but law is at least tacitly aggressive in all fields. So, if you really don’t like fighting, then this is probably not the field for you.

Is there anything else you’d like to mention before we leave?

I encourage students to do what you’re doing, to reach out to professionals. Use Rice, use Longitude.site, and the Houston area connections to your benefit. There are great opportunities. You need to have the goods, but you also need to be networking with people so that people know who you are. There are so many people out there in a position of power, but if they don’t know who you are, they can’t give you a job or an opportunity. So, meet people, stay on good terms with people. It doesn’t mean you have to be best friends with everyone. But check in with people every couple of months and keep relationships alive. When people need help, help them. When it’s your turn, they’ll help you. I think a lot of people are concerned that they’ll be too transactional. Don’t view people as tools, but view the situation as an opportunity to help others and opportunity for them to help you. When you’re in a position of power, make sure that you’re looking out for other people, someone that you can give a chance to. And do whatever makes you happy, particularly when it comes to giving back to the community whether that means political campaigns, social activism, or volunteering, social work. Definitely follow that passion throughout your life because there’s always going to be plenty of work to do whatever your employer is; there’s always going to be something to do. It’s too easy to let those opportunities to go by until it’s too late. So, stay anchored in that.

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee. This article only aims to share personal opinions and learnings and does not constitute the interviewee’s current or former employer(s)’ position on any of the topics discussed.

Quint Smits
Tilburg University
Tilburg, The Netherlands  (51.5° N, 5.0° E)

featuring Jaena Kim, Classical Flutist, Winnipeg, Canada (49.8° N, 97.1° W)

Mayra Zamudio
University of Houston
Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

featuring Maria Guerrero, Business Analyst, Deloitte Consulting, Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

Last year, I had the opportunity to meet María Fernanda Guerrero at a career fair at the University of Houston. The chance to interview her allowed me to have a more in-depth look at her career path towards consulting and her background as a first-generation university student in the United States.

I had the pleasure to further learn about María and her position as a business analyst at Deloitte in Houston. María started by describing the role her parents played in shaping who she has become and her admirable work ethic. Throughout the interview, she offered valuable advice focusing on her experience as a college student at the University of Houston where she graduated from with a double major in supply chain management and finance.

Towards the end of her college experience, Maria was unsure of what career path she would take with her degree. When she first heard from Deloitte, she was not sure that she fit the requirements although consulting sounded like an interesting job. When she received the job offer, she realized that the knowledge and skills she gained through internships prepared her for a position that she did not expect to have. She emphasized that internships in college years provide an invaluable experience to explore different types of companies and career paths that match individual interests.

A key takeaway from my conversation with Maria is that although we are products of our environment, the way life plays out can be controlled by the decisions we make as well as the support we receive from our family. More specifically, discovering our interests through college classes, organizations, and internships can really change the course of life after college. In Maria’s case, those experiences enabled her to become a problem solver in an industry that she did not know much about at first.

Overall, Maria offered a great deal of valuable advice that applied to her consulting position. Through internships, she was able to learn the importance of teamwork and curiosity in a field where social skills are very important. The use of curiosity in her job and personal life enabled her to know what she wants to do and what best suits her skills. Although she did place a fair amount of importance on her grades, she never hesitated to attend to her extracurricular responsibilities, which really set her apart when applying to jobs.

Highlights from the interview:

What were your parents’ expectations for you? How did they shape you into choosing your career?

My parents have always supported me. When I wanted to be part of a club, play a sport, or sell candies at school, they always supported me. I remember when I was in junior high in Mexico, there was an opportunity to sell candy at school. My mom drove me to the candy store every day after school; I would pick up my candy supplies and take them to school to sell. That tells you that my parents have always had that entrepreneurship mindset. They wanted me to always have something to look for in the future, to be active, to go out there, explore the world, and see what’s out there for me. That was their main expectation. They never pushed me to do anything I didn’t want to but I knew I wanted with my life; I wanted to go to college and get more educated.

Were you the first in your family with a degree? If so, do you believe it affected your career choices?

My dad went to college in Mexico. He is an agricultural engineer. I am the first to go to college in the United States. My dad’s college experience in Mexico was totally different from my experience here. It took a while for me to adjust to the academic life here, to be able to get to the next level and understand everything that was going on around me. The language barrier was there, and my family was away. I was lost at the beginning, but the feeling of being lost was also a motivation source for me. I didn’t want to be feeling like that for the rest of my career. The idea of making my family proud was a huge motivation for me to keep going and find the answers, even though I had to go out of my comfort zone. I think finding the right people to guide you, mentors and friends who might be going through something similar or who might be more experienced than you, is very important to get through those challenging times.

When did you first envision yourself as a consultant? Or was there something else that you wanted to be?

I didn’t know what consulting was at first. Then I heard about management consulting, and it sounded nice, but I didn’t think I was qualified enough. But I knew what type of job I wanted and what type of skills I had; I had developed those skills through internships. The internships are a big reason I am in consulting today because they allowed me to start acquiring different skills. I strongly recommend interning in different industries while you’re in college; take more than one internship every summer, every semester, as much as you can, because the opportunity of changing companies every three months or so will not be there once you graduate from college, when you take a full time job. I did as many internships as I could and worked in different companies so that I could experience how it feels like to work for a logistics supply chain company or for a technology company. I tried different fields such as sales, accounting, finance, or supply chain. After all those internships and classes, I started defining what I wanted to do in my career. I knew I liked problem solving. I knew I wanted to be a manager eventually; I wanted to be leading teams. I thought about the type of jobs that could give me the satisfaction of doing all these things. I went to the career center at the university to talk about it, and they recommended consulting. Then I started working as an internal consultant for a company before moving to external consulting and management consulting. I didn’t choose consulting, I think consulting chose me. Knowing what you want to do and being able to self-reflect and ask yourself what is it that you want to be doing after college, or five years after college, are the most important things you can do for yourself.

What led you to Deloitte or to your current position? What does this position entail?

In 2018, before I graduated, the market was a little different than what it is now for consulting and recruiting. Big consulting companies like Deloitte weren’t necessarily recruiting from certain schools and my school was one of those. However, the changes were already in track. During my senior year in college, I got an email from the people at the career center about sending my resume to a few companies. You never know where the opportunity will come from. Networking is very important in any aspect; even after graduation, you should continue to network because it’s important for people to know what you’re doing and for you to know what others are doing. You never know where life will take you. I was about to get a full-time offer from another company when I heard from Deloitte. So, I interviewed with them and got offered a job. Deloitte is a great company to work for. They have great internal programs, a lot of flexibility in the work environment, especially now during COVID. They’ve been very responsive and supportive of their employees.

I am currently a business analyst at Deloitte. My role entails learning to interact with the client; learning the technology, strategy, human capital, management; starting to take responsibilities and develop solutions that the clients are looking for. This is a period of trial and error for me. You’re not expected to know everything, but you’re expected to have curiosity for asking the right questions, to learn fast, to be on your feet, to be able to pick up things and put together the puzzle. As you move up in the company and get promoted, your responsibilities start changing, and as a manager or a senior consultant, you’re not allowed to make the mistakes that you were able to make as an analyst. 

My advice to college students is that every step you take in college, ask yourself if that step is putting you closer to your goal or taking you away from your end goal. I tried to be very intentional to ensure that everything I was doing was bringing me one step closer to my end goal. I knew that I wanted to work for an amazing company, and I knew the type of job I wanted to do and the skills I needed to have. I knew that for me to meet all those requirements, I needed to enrich my resume with different experiences. Gaining experience as a college student is very important, and you only get it by putting yourself out there, by going to conferences, by talking to people, and by going to networking events and meeting new people. All those things that I did during college put me closer to where I am today. And when the opportunity came, I was ready.

What are some of the skills you find utilizing the most in your position? How do you feel your college years prepared you for it?

I think teamwork is very important. I don’t think there are any jobs that require you to work alone nowadays. But, it is not enough to say that you worked in a team in the past; you should be able to say what value you added to the team, what your role was. I was usually the team leader in a lot of team projects in college. But when there was someone else who wanted to be a team leader, I would step back and let them do it. I learned those are skills in college and they have helped me in my career at Deloitte.

Another skill is the ability to communicate with people; it goes back to the team effort and teamwork. The ability to sell something is also important because you sell something every day of your life. For example, when you’re interviewing, you’re selling your experience to a company. College is a great time to make mistakes and learn from your mistakes. In college, you can practice running a program for your organization; you can recruit members, talk to companies to get sponsorship, or talk to a professor so he can help you put together this project. It’s fine if you can’t get what you want or if you make a mistake; it is important that you tried. The next time you do it, I guarantee that you’re going to do it differently because you already did it once and this is what happens when you practice.

The other skill that I acquired in college and heavily use in my work is taking good notes when I talk to my manager or to a subject matter expert. This is very important because I am not going to remember what they said in the meeting; I don’t have a photographic memory, and most people don’t. Most people might forget what the conversation was about, what was discussed. Taking notes makes the person that you are talking to feel like “this person actually cared about and listened to what I had to say.” So, notetaking for me is a great skill; I’ve practiced it a lot in college and I still do it here at Deloitte.

What keeps you motivated about your work?

My motivations change constantly, year to year. First of all, I want to do a good job at work. There are days that I wake up and say “I want to be the absolute best at what I’m doing and I’m going to go ahead and find all the resources to learn about it and do my best.” There are other times that my family is my motivation, and I want to make sure that I have a balanced life. There are times that I’m setting myself for success for my promotion. These are all different motivation sources for me.

Can you describe the team dynamics in your organization?

We have a lot of conversations and a lot of teamwork. In management consulting, you never work alone; you work with your client and other people who know more about a specific topic. We have conversations all the time, meetings, discussions, and brainstorming to find the best solution possible for the client. We are co-workers, we’re humans, we need to empathize with the other person who is on the other side of the computer so that we both can deliver something.

Self-studying is also important in team dynamics. If you are part of a team, you can’t say “you gave me something I don’t know well. I don’t know how to do it. Why did you give it to me?” Instead, you should at least try for a fair amount of time to say “these are the solutions I explored, but it is not giving me the right answer. What do you think?”

How has COVID reshaped the work you do? Do you believe it will continue this way once there is no virus threat?

COVID has changed everything. It changed the way we work, the way we study, the way we interact with people. I used to travel almost every week, and now I don’t anymore. On the one hand, it is nice because I get to spend more time at home with my family and I get to cook my own meals instead of ordering. On the other hand, I don’t get to see my team as often. We’re all working from home remotely through the computer. The human interactions with my team were invaluable, and they brought so much knowledge that is hard to share through the computer. Management consulting is an industry where you react to and anticipate what the market is going to need, what your clients are going to need. I just know that if the client needs us, we’ll be there. But if they’re okay with us working from home, then we’ll stay that way. So, it’s going to depend on the market and the needs.

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee. This article only aims to share personal opinions and learnings and does not constitute the interviewee’s current or former employer(s)’ position on any of the topics discussed.

Jamie Chen
Rice University 
Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

featuring Jessica Pang, Product Designer, SiteMinder, Sydney (33.8° S, 151.2° E)

Jessica Pang is a product designer at SiteMinder, a leading global hotel industry guest acquisition platform in Sydney, Australia. In 2012, she graduated from Boston University with a bachelor of science in hospitality administration and business administration with a concentration in finance. Since then, she has worked in various roles from marketing to UX (User Experience) design in industries such as retail and travel in Hong Kong and Australia.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Jessica in Sydney through a video conference while I was three hours behind in Taipei. In the interview, we talked about her unique experiences and the booming, yet still comparatively loosely defined field of UX and design.

Jessica never expected herself to be a product designer. A decade ago, terms like UX, UI Design were not as popular as they are today; there were no UX courses or majors. During her time at Boston University, she double majored in hospitality and business hoping that they would provide her with more options after graduation. Jessica knew she was interested in consumer insight and the motivation behind human behavior.

After graduation, her first job was a marketing role at a multinational company, but she wanted to work in the technology industry and moved from retail to travel two years later. After that, she landed her first design role at Cathay Pacific’s Asia Miles loyalty rewards program as a data-driven UX designer. Since then, she worked at a consultancy firm and moved back to the travel industry, to her current position, early last year when she realized she wanted to focus on travel.

Jessica talked about the concept of T-shaped generalist — where the top of the T represents the breadth of one’s skillset and the vertical segment represents the specific area one chooses to focus, and be an expert, on — and its significance for a relatively open role such as a designer. Jessica revealed that the role of designers, especially product designers, requires a diverse skill set due to the diverse nature of the work ranging from research to planning to delivery. Hence, all designers should have basic proficiency in the fundamentals, and the real value comes from each designer’s distinct expertise — the “stem” of the T — whether it be an industry focus or skill focus.

Jessica mentions that although studying broad majors may seem disadvantageous in search of a well-defined career path, experiences here and there can accumulate to form one’s own edge. In the area of “design,” this is even more relevant due to its novelty and open nature; hence, designers often come from all backgrounds. Furthermore, each design role can vary greatly for each company.

Jessica also stresses that empathy is key to human-centered design (HCD) — the framework or way of thinking behind UX/UI, product, and service design. Additionally, Jessica remarks that skills such as UX writing, a revamped form of copywriting, and storytelling have become increasingly crucial over the last couple of years and are likely to continue gaining importance in the coming years as the standard for engaging and brand-aligned content continues to rise.

Lastly, for those interested in design, Jessica strongly recommends, in addition to “improving your craft, design, and upskilling,” to get to know the design community. She emphasizes the importance of networking in a small but growing field like design, not only to meet people and learn about others’ experiences, but also to receive advice and discover one’s own interests through others.

Aside from understanding the fundamentals of design thinking, design process, and various design disciplines, aspiring designers from traditional and non-traditional design backgrounds should have a portfolio to highlight their case studies and/or personal projects.

Final takeaways for all:

•   Your experiences make up your own personal edge.
•   Don’t be discouraged by not knowing exactly what you want.
  • Move in a direction that feels right, and carve out your own way.

Highlights from the interview:

When did you first envision yourself working as a product designer, or UX designer in the travel industry?

It wasn’t something I envisioned when I was at school. When I studied at Boston University, I did a double major in hospitality and business. I wanted to study something that gave me more options. I was interested in consumer insights, why people behave the way they do. And that was the only thing I was exposed to at school. Back then, UX wasn’t even part of the curriculum. I worked in marketing at a multinational company, but I really wanted to work in the tech industry. My first design role was at Cathay Pacific’s loyalty program. It wasn’t a conventional product design role. It was more of a general UX design role. My title at the time was data-driven designer, which is different from product designer, but it has the same principles and practices. That’s how I started and then went on to different roles. Then I came back to travel again. The more I worked in the travel industry, the more I realized that that is something I want to do. You might have heard of this concept of T-shaped generalist. If you look at the shape of a T, the horizontal part is all the skills that you have. Designers should maintain a general set of skills because especially in product design, we have to do research, we have to do journey mapping and workshops and then deliver the work. The bottom stem of the T is the area you choose to focus. For example, if you’re really good at research, that could be your specialty. Alternatively, you can also have an industrial specialization. For example, I want to focus on the travel industry. That’s what I want to plan for myself. In short, I just fell into the design and travel industry. The more I was immersed in it, the more I enjoyed it and am hoping to continue down this path.

Did you have any design experience before your first design job?

No, I was not officially trained. In high school, I took a few multimedia classes and had some experience with Photoshop, video editing, and HTML coding. When I got the design job, I had to learn most things either from scratch or learn them again. I think it’s more of a matter of practice and  it takes more time to train to become really skilled.

What were your goals right out of college? How does your current path align with your expectations?

I didn’t know what to do after college. I had no goals. I’m really glad I found this career path because it gives me satisfaction and fulfillment. I think many people who study broad majors like business are not really sure what their career path will look like or what kind of roles they want to take right out of college because there is no well-defined path. But, the good thing about it is that you get to try a little bit of everything. All these experiences add up and give you your own edge. I can tell you that a lot of designers don’t come from traditional design backgrounds, and it’s actually something that’s valued. It’s very common for user researchers to come from a psychology background because they have a natural understanding of people. There are many architects who are also UX designers. It’s actually an advantage in a way because if you’ve only been exposed to design for a long time, you lose other kinds of thinking that could really help. Design is not just about making beautiful screens. You should first understand who you’re designing for. The users you’re designing for may come from a very particular industry. For example, you could be designing a platform for health professionals; so, you have to understand the day-to-day experience of a doctor or a nurse. Having exposure to a broad range of things helps you understand the user quicker and better.

Are there any misconceptions about your job, whether it’s product design or UX/UI?

Design has been around for a long time. Now it’s really become a whole practice of its own, where we start defining things differently, which is why all these terms came about. Every company defines UX quite differently. Some companies might not fully understand the concept of UX or the designer’s role. They just know that they need one. They may advertise the job as a UX designer position, but what they’re probably looking for is a UI designer. That’s a very common thing that happens, depending on the company’s design maturity. UX focuses on the experience itself, and UI stands for user interface, which is more like the actual design of screens and flows and animation. There are also other disciplines of design such as the human-centered design (HCD), which is more of a framework or a way of thinking. The word HCD itself is self-explanatory; whenever you’re designing an experience or product or service, you are centering it  around humans, their motivations, goals, and behavior.

Today, as we define product designers, we mean designing digital products. It involves some UX, some UI, and some research. They all stem from the same line, which is being empathetic. Empathy means that you’re fully able to understand your users; you walk in their shoes. If you have that understanding, then you can design whatever you want. Service design is another discipline, which has the same roots of thinking, but the approach is slightly different in a way where it’s about services such as going to a restaurant, or going to a hospital clinic to see a doctor. Service design involves physical human interactions, the process and the design approach is slightly different. But at the end of the day, the fundamentals are still rooted in the human-centered concept. 

Between UX and UI, user experience is at a higher level and more abstract whereas user interface is more technical. Is that the difference between these terms?

Broadly, yes. You described it quite closely, but I wouldn’t say UX is more of an abstract thing. It focuses more on how users think by understanding their behavior, goals, and motivation. The goal is to design for a better experience.

What experiences have led you to your current position? What suggestions do you have for people who want to go into user experience product design? What skills should they have to be successful in such roles?

It really depends on what part of design you want to focus on. If you want to focus on UI, you should have strong visual design skills. If you want to focus on UX, study HCD or psychology to understand how people think because there are some common denominators to how human beings behave in general. You should be able understand what motivates them. If you’re interested in working at tech companies, as a product designer, both UX and UI are very valuable because product designers tend to work on designs from start to end, in the entire design process. Product designers lead the process of doing user research with customers to understand what’s currently happening and the challenges they’re facing and then work on a solution, do testing, and implement the design. Alternatively, if service design is something you’re aiming for, then definitely focus on the HCD side of things, and also get really good at workshop facilitation, which is organizing workshops to identify problems and getting the team to align on something. That’s a key skill for service designers because service designers spend a lot of time aligning with different people. They’re always talking to customers to immerse themselves in the service experience, and workshops help achieve that.

Can you give me an example of some of your favorite projects in your current role or during your career?

It would probably be my first project at the Cathay Pacific loyalty program. When I joined, I was hired as a designer under the data science team. It wasn’t a traditional design job in the design team. At the time, they were building a data science team, and they wanted to have a designer to be able to design a more personalized experience for customers, or what they called the loyalty program members. That was an interesting role because I got to define what I wanted to work on. I was able to do experiments in collaboration with data scientists on what works and what doesn’t. It was quite challenging for someone like me who was not experienced in design, but at the same time, it was probably my steepest learning curve out of everything that I’ve done. I was trying to understand two things at the same time, design and data science.

How do you see your field or the general field of design and user experience interface and these types of roles developing in the future?

It depends on what you want to prepare yourself for. Some of the skills that have become increasingly more important are going to be transferable to evolving experiences. One thing that really came through in the last couple years is UX writing, which was initially more like copywriting. Designers have realized that if you write good copy, it’s more engaging for users and customers. Now, there are proper roles in companies where you’re hired as a UX writer, which means you collaborate with UX and UI designers to fill in the content and make sure that it makes sense and is engaging, and fits with the brand of the company. The other thing is storytelling; it is an emerging field of design around VR and AR experiences. In design, you’re taking users on a journey where you’re telling the story about whatever product they’re using.

How has it been working in the travel industry over the past years? Where do you see it going?

Travel is always fun. Instead of designing for travelers like you and me, today I am designing for hotels; they use our software to manage their pricing and availability. With COVID, no one was traveling [initially], and some hotels shut down or have decided to temporarily take a step back. That was a bit of a challenge for us because of very low engagement from customers. We went through a quiet period. Some travel organizations have had to downsize. It’s been rough. I think the worst part is over, at least for domestic travel. I believe that once international travel is open again, travel will come back stronger than it was because everyone really wants to travel.

Are there any interesting experiences you would like to share?

For anyone interested in design, aside from improving your craft, design, and upskilling, also make sure that you get to know the design community better. All the jobs that I’ve gotten have not been through recruiters or direct job applications but from networking. I went to a lot of design meetups. I wanted to see what’s out there. The more you talk to different designers, the more you discover what you are interested in. Most of the time, people are really nice about giving you great advice.

Coming from a non-design background, what would you say are the key skills or background you should have when you apply to an entry level design job?

Make sure that you understand the fundamentals. Understand design thinking, the design process, design disciplines that I’ve mentioned, and the main difference between UX and UI. Then do a bit of research on other types of design disciplines. The second thing is having a portfolio of case studies or projects you’ve worked on. This is very important. If you’re going to structure a case study, you should always start with “what’s the problem you’re trying to solve”? Once you have established that understanding, then show the whole process of how you went from defining the problem to designing the final solution, and then what you learned.

If people are looking to go into design right out of college, should they just be looking at design roles, or some other roles that would be beneficial in their future design career?

It depends on how determined you are to want to become a designer. If that is something that you know you want to do right out of college, definitely aim for it as a first job. If it’s something you fall into, there are many opportunities to look internally and externally. For example, in tech organizations, there are always stories about engineers or product managers who switched to working in design because of the exposure to working with designers.

How important are the artistic or graphical skills in the realm of design?

I would say it’s relatively important, but it also depends on how much you want to specialize. If you’re more interested in UX, as you go deeper in your career, you probably don’t need to do as much screen work. Whereas if you really want to specialize more in the interface side of things, I recommend up-skilling on the visual design skills and animation. As a basis, it’s definitely important to have both tiers. Otherwise, I would suggest you spend your efforts on whatever you want to specialize in.

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee. This article only aims to share personal opinions and learnings and does not constitute the interviewee’s current or former employer(s)’ position on any of the topics discussed.

Alishahal Macknojia
University of Houston
Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

featuring Sandra Johnson, Founder, CEO & CTO, Global Mobile Finance, Inc., Cary (35.7° N, 78.7° W)

Most people do not envision themselves in the positions they end up later in life. The same held true for Dr. Sandra Johnson. In our conversation, we talked about Dr. Johnson’s journey from her undergraduate years to being a CEO, engineer, patent creator, and one of Inc. Magazine’s top 100 women entrepreneurs of 2020.

Dr. Sandra Johnson is CEO of both Global Mobile Finance, Inc. and SKJ Visioneering where she bridges the gaps between the blockchain technology and mobile app development for sub-Saharan African markets. She graduated from Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with a bachelor’s in electrical engineering. She received her master’s degree from Stanford University and PhD from Rice University. She was the first African American woman to receive a PhD in computer engineering in the United States. She was also an IBM technical leader and is an IEEE fellow. In our conversation, we discussed how her engineering background and time spent at IBM helped her become successful later in her career.

During her college years and beyond, her engineering education has taught her how to think about approaching a problem from a broad perspective. She has applied the experiences she gained in her college and post-graduate years to all aspects of her life, not only to engineering problems. I especially enjoyed hearing about her long career at IBM during the height of IBM innovations and her part in the design team that developed the prototype for the IBM Scalable Parallel Processor (SP2), which is the base machine for the Deep Blue chess machine.

In her current career as an entrepreneur, her focus is on giving back to the community and creating a deep impact; specifically, she wants to use her technology background to help the people in sub-Saharan Africa and developing countries. To achieve her goal to this end, after leaving IBM, she started her own global remittance company to make money transfers to Africa more secure, cheaper, and easier.

She also talked about the importance of networking and having a mentor for career development. Connecting with people in positions of power helped her advance her career to the next phase. It gave her more mobility and insight into what she wanted to do in her career. These past experiences led her to search for new mentors with entrepreneurial experience when she left IBM and started her own company.

Dr. Johnson’s advice to students interested in a similar career path is that “they should go for it” if they are passionate about it. If you have an interest and passion, then you can develop the STEM skills needed for emerging technologies to expand your future horizon. With a genuine passion, Dr. Johnson encourages anyone who decides to pursue this field and says that “the world is your playground.”

Highlights from the interview:

Everyone’s family, community, and life circumstances create an initial role for them in society. What was expected of you growing up? And did you stick to it? Or did you stray from it?

What was expected of me from my family is that I go to college, get a good job, make a better life for myself, and make a positive contribution to the community. From my perspective, I did live up to that.

You were named among top 100 women entrepreneurs of 2020 by Inc. Magazine. You are an entrepreneur, CEO, consultant, innovator, and patent creator. When did you first envision yourself in any of these positions?

I never really envisioned myself in any of these positions. I walked into them without even putting up a plan in place to make it happen. When I first arrived at IBM, after I graduated from Rice University, I was in the research division, at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center, just outside of New York City. I did some work that was initially an extension of my PhD thesis at Rice; I had some preliminary results, and I sat down with my manager to review the results. He said he believed that my work was patentable. Very surprised, I drew up a patent application based upon that work, and it did eventually become a patent. I can share with you many more examples like that, where I walked into without even planning. I was just doing what I thought was interesting and exciting work, work that was satisfying to me, and it happened to be innovative and creative as well.

How do you think college years, and engineering background specifically, benefited you the most?

During college and especially Ph. D, you are trained on how to think to look at all the angles of an issue. The process of learning how to think about approaching any topic from a broad perspective was the most valuable experience that I learned. And I have applied that to all aspects of my life, not just education.

How did you validate the market for your product or service, and what was the assessment that made you think ” I’m ready and confident enough to pursue this full time.”?

I have worked for IBM for 26 years. My last role at IBM was Chief Technology Officer for Central, East, and West Africa. I lived in Nairobi, Kenya. In that role, and the one before that, where I was in Dubai for two years, I spent three years traveling around the Middle East and Africa. Traveling to many different countries, learning about the cultures, meeting with C-level technology executives and business executives made me think about what I wanted to do next in my career. I really wanted to focus on leveraging my technology skills to help the people of sub-Saharan Africa specifically, but even more generally, people in developing countries and make an impact. I came to the conclusion that if I could not find another role that will enable me to do that and have a significant influence within IBM, then I would be willing to leave IBM and become an entrepreneur to make that happen. When I lived in Nairobi, I used mobile money; when I came home for a vacation and tried to send money back to that part of the world or other countries, I experienced the pain of remittance. When I used mobile money in Nairobi, Kenya, it was like a financial account or a cash app associated with a mobile telephone phone service, not backed by a bank because more people have mobile phones there than bank accounts. So, I put two and two together; remittance where the money is transferred into the mobile money accounts of the recipients, and that’s how I got the idea of starting my own company.

What was the scariest moment in your career? And what was the solution?

Most financial institutions across Africa and Middle East that are IBM customers have very high-end services that use IBM servers for most of their major banking needs. There was a situation where the system of one of these banks went down, and they couldn’t figure out what was going on. It was scary. It got to the point where the president of the country started calling IBM to say what’s going on. We, being IBM, worked with a team to do root cause analysis and concluded that the IBM has the skills to solve this problem for various corners of the world. So, we had to get on the phone and call the IBM people literally from every corner of the Earth to get on a plane and go to this country as soon as possible. Finally, they worked through the problem and resolved the issue. That one was a little fearful because if we did not resolve that issue within some reasonable period, the banking operation would have gone to a halt for several days.

Did you have any mentors that you worked with either right out of college, or when you first started your business?

In my interview trip to the IBM Research Center, I had a female host, who greeted me at the door; she put my interview schedule together and ensured that I was moving along throughout the day. She eventually became my mentor. I did not know at the time that she was a highly regarded researcher in a different field. And she went on to become the first female IBM fellow and also the first female to win the ACM Turing Award, which is the highest award you can get in computing. So, even before I started working there, I had her as a mentor. When I arrived at IBM, I also connected with a few others who were in positions of power and influence to make things happen for me, especially when I encountered obstacles. Given that experience, once I left and started my own company, I also searched for mentors with experience in entrepreneurship. And I did connect with a couple of them who have been very helpful.

Can you give an example of any current or past projects you have worked on?

I can give a brief description of the one that was probably the most fun. It was when I worked with a team of about 30 people on a research project called Vulcan, which eventually became an IBM server product. I was part of a sub-team of that project, which was designed to be a very powerful supercomputer and targeted to be one of the fastest in the world. I worked on the design of one of its subsystems. Once a research project reaches a certain point, then it is productized; i.e., we work with the developers to turn it into a product. There was a team within the research project who took that product and added just a few accelerators to it to make it a chess machine, called the Deep Blue chess machine, which played with the world chess champion two separate times. The first time, the human won. The second time, the machine won. IBM attempted to get Garry Kasparov to a third match. But he said no. I think he was smart enough to realize that in a couple of years between the two matches, the machine became more powerful. It was just raw computation looking at the moves back and forth; 12, 13, 14 moves straight, and another couple of years, it would be able to go deeper and faster than any human can. Kasparov knew that and didn’t want to lose again. It was fun working on that project.

How is technology reshaping the work that you do? Do you foresee any changes coming in the next five or 10 years?

I am definitely leveraging technology; what I do is a mobile app. But I am also leveraging analytics. Looking at customer behavior to gain insights to make predictions for the customer for additional remittances or for suggestions. Part of what this app does is to enable the sender, which is our customer, to contribute to a nonprofit organization that focuses on transforming lives from a list that we provide, take a percentage of the transfer fee, and deposit it into an account that they can control. And then save that money for the recipients, future milestone events, like starting a business or going to school. Much of that is driven by analytics, by looking at customer behavior, to make suggestions to the customer. We are leveraging quite a bit of technology as part of the process, in addition to a basic mobile app technology, and I can see even more insightful results from analytics in the future. The other thing is that right now, we are partnering with a b2b, business-to-business, that already has a global payments network. In the future, we want to look at the blockchain technology to leverage that to create our own global payments network, but that’s something we want to do in the future and it’s not part of the solution at this time. These are just a couple of examples of how we are leveraging technology.

What do you think is the biggest issue facing your industry?

I think the biggest issue is that FinTech companies are coming into this space. There are players that have been around a long time, like Western Union and MoneyGram. But FinTechs are coming in and providing faster and cheaper service. So, the business is becoming more of a commodity, and profits and gains that “the old timers” may have benefited from may not necessarily be sustained. When a business becomes a commodity, you address the issue of revenue and margins and build a value on top of that commodity. That is what we are doing; we are building the value of developing the customer, the relationship with the customer, and the customer experience.

Do you think it is beneficial for college students who want to become entrepreneurs to join the accelerator programs such as AngelPad and Y Combinator?

I think it is beneficial to connect with entities that will provide you with the guidance and direction that you need. A lot of it depends upon the experience of the founders. So, for example, I have been in corporate America for 26 years, and what I learned in those 26 years enables me to teach in an accelerator program. So, it really depends on the experiences of the founders as well. Many accelerators, and incubators to some extent, require some amount of equity in your company, whether is 4–5%, sometimes 10–15%. But, you can get a similar amount of information, education, and knowledge through programs that are free. It may require some due diligence to find them. I have been in three accelerated programs, and none of them have required that I give up equity. What I learned in those free programs and in those that do require equity are approximately the same. So, I would encourage anyone to focus on the knowledge that they need, but also on getting that knowledge without paying, without the cost of giving up equity in your company, because there are programs out there that enable you to do that. You just have to find them.

What advice would you give to students interested in your field?

If they are interested in my field and they have a passion for it, they should go for it. Electrical and computer engineering is a wide-open field. When I think about the technology of the future on the horizon, there is a critical need for individuals with these types of skills, with STEM skills in general. The world is your plate, your playground. So, if you have an interest and passion for it, go for it and have fun.

Do you have anything else you would like to mention?

I have a few closing words I would like to share. First of all, know your purpose and then do that well, even if it has nothing to do with what you went to school for, or what you’re in school for. Also, please do relax, have some balance, but by doing something that you are passionate and excited about. Chances are your purpose is associated with that. You will be happier, you will probably have less health-related issues associated with work, and as a result, you will be a more productive, positive contributor to the society. So, find your purpose and then pursue that and be happy.

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee. This article only aims to share personal opinions and learnings and does not constitute the interviewee’s current or former employer(s)’ position on any of the topics discussed.

Ecem Uluegeci
Harvard College
Boston (42.3° N, 71.0° W)

featuring Alican Ozkan, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, Boston (42.3° N, 71.0° W)

Many students go through the dilemma of choosing between the industry and academia especially as their graduation approaches. That was one of the highlights of my conversation with Dr. Alican Ozkan. I was especially excited about this interview because Dr. Ozkan is currently working at an institute that I have been following since I got interested in biotechnology.

Dr. Alican Ozkan is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, a cross-disciplinary research institute at Harvard University, which focuses on developing bioinspired materials and devices. He graduated from the Middle East Technical University – Northern Cyprus Campus, Turkey with a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering and received his master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Bilkent University, Turkey. He has recently obtained his PhD degree from the University of Texas at Austin. In our conversation, we talked about his research interests and what keeps him motivated to pursue them.

As a mechanical engineering student, he “did not have a lot of enthusiasm toward the incorporation of biology and [engineering]” before starting his PhD research. However, he still wanted to get out of his comfort zone and work on the technologies that can be applied to life sciences. In the first years of his PhD, he worked on the organ-on-a-chip concept in collaboration with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Dell Medical School. At Wyss, he is currently working on increasing the cellular complexity of these devices as well as discovering the interaction between difference compartments of tissues.

Something that fascinates him in his current workplace is having a team of diverse engineers, molecular biologists, and clinicians collaborating on the same project. He believes this makes the Wyss Institute a special research center, which brings people from different backgrounds working on the same problem while looking at it from various angles.

To him, academia provides enormous amounts of flexibility to pursue one’s interests. Being able to work on the scientific questions that he wants to find answers to is a great motivation source for him. I always thought one of the challenges of being in academia is keeping yourself motivated to do research on the same subject for a long period. Seeing the potential applications of his research keeps Dr. Ozkan motivated because he believes that his research will help improve the treatments of various diseases.

Dr. Ozkan’s advice to the undergraduate students interested in staying in academia is for them to experience what research is like as early as possible; if possible, during their undergraduate studies. He thinks that getting a master’s degree facilitates the transition from undergraduate to postgraduate research for those who plan to stay in academia or those who are uncertain about their future plans. He encourages students to get involved in the grant writing process and publishing papers at the early stages of their academic careers. Finally, he emphasizes the importance of finding self-motivation to pursue their research interests to overcome the challenges that they might face during their careers in academia.

Highlights from the interview:

Everyone’s family, their community, and their life circumstances create an initial role for them in society. What was expected of you and how did those expectations shape you into choosing your current career?

My parents are both chemical engineers in Turkey. My mom was in academia, and my dad worked in the industry. Becoming an engineer was never forced on me, but my strong interest in mathematics and physics led me to study mechanical engineering. However, I would like to note that my parents have always been supportive of me and have motivated to improve myself scientifically.

What led you to your current position as a researcher? And what does this position entail?

Ever since I started my doctoral studies, I have always wanted to collaborate more frequently with clinicians and life scientists. In the first years of my PhD work, we were making these devices called Organ-on-a-chip at the University of Texas at Austin. Our progress on the engineering side in the first years of our work helped us set up a collaboration with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Dell Medical School for our devices to be used as preclinical tools. In my current work at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, we have direct access to patient biopsies that can be incorporated into our microfluidic models and devices. These models reveal findings that conventional systems cannot, help us make a diagnosis and come up with new pathways and solutions to prevalent diseases.

Were you always interested in life sciences, or did you get interested later in your career?

Not in the first years of my academic career, but I later recognized the potential applications of microfluidics in the field of biology and this got me interested in life sciences. In my undergraduate years, I was working in the field of microfluidics, creating microscale channels that you can flow any kind of fluid like blood or cell culture media; or even water and air. Microscale channels have many different applications. I was using this technology to synthesize small nanoparticles that can be used for magnetic resonance imaging. But the major advantage of this technology was to create very fast reactions. In a batch, you can synthesize these nanoparticles in three days, but in these microfluidic channels, you can complete this process in just a few minutes as compared to hours. That’s a huge improvement. Microfluidics already has a lot of different applications; Organ-on-a-chip is one of them, circulation tumor cell isolation from blood and single-cell encapsulation and their genomic sequencing are other examples. I have always been interested in bio-related microfluidic approaches. Before starting my PhD studies, I did not have a lot of enthusiasm toward the incorporation of biology and [engineering], but I wanted to make another attempt in the biology field to get out of my comfort zone. Organ-on-a-chip is a perfect example of combining engineering and biology by incorporating blood flow or airwaves, airflow, and mechanical stretching motions, or even creating architectural complexity so that you can recapitulate complex disease models. I spent five years at the University of Texas at Austin, collaborating with MD Anderson, where we used patients’ cells provided by our clinical collaborators and incorporated them into our microfluidic devices and recapitulated the same disease model observed in humans. There’s a lot of new potential applications of these organ models as Organ-on-a-chip models. Right now, we are trying to increase the cellular complexity of these devices and are tuning the extracellular matrix that we put inside the Organ-on-a-chips. For instance, cancer has different stages, it progresses, and every patient is diagnosed at different stages. Some patients can be at the fibrotic or cirrhotic stage when the tumor tissue much stiffer than the earlier stages. The stiff tissue alters the chemoresistance of the cancer cells. We are able to calculate the stiffness factor so that we can incorporate this in our organ-on-a-chips and estimate the true response of the cancer cells to the chemotherapeutics. Stiffness not only controls chemoresistance but also alters the vascular barrier permeability, that controls the amount of nutrient and drug delivered to the tissue. We were able to capture this in my previous work as well.

What keeps you motivated about your work?

I think making a scientific discovery is the top one. Knowing that we might be one of the few labs that can make discoveries in these top-end engineered Organ-on-a-chips. Working with the actual biopsy samples to isolate cells, analyze extracellular matrix properties such as stiffness and components between different patients and to incorporate in our devices makes our work even more unique. These advances will improve treatments; we will get into more personalized treatments with these devices. That’s very motivating for me.

How did you decide to stay in academia instead of working in industry?

In academia, you have more flexibility on what you work on. I don’t have a lot of background in the industry; so, it might be wrong to make assumptions. However, in academia as long as you work on an issue that is of interest to you, and you are answering a novel, important, and impactful question, you can establish strong collaborations, get funding from large agencies and feed your enthusiasm to make a scientific discovery. When you have your own research lab, you can pursue your own research ideas and I think having that opportunity is invaluable.

How do you feel about the research funding process?

It is definitely concerning because if you don’t have any funding in your lab, then you cannot do any research. It’s the number one rule of the universities in the US. That’s something we need to swallow and keep working on because there are a lot of good researchers out there making a lot of progress in their work. It is a tedious progress, but the funding agencies don’t have unlimited resources to fund all the laboratories; they can only fund the most important projects that can answer the biggest and critical questions.

Do you think there are any misconceptions about your job, about being a researcher?

The most common misconception about people working in academia, especially in my home country, Turkey, is that academics work 40 hours per week. I don’t believe many people realize the extra work we put in our spare time, on holidays and weekends. I think academia is an underestimated field; people don’t see what goes on in the background, how much effort and time we’re putting in the laboratory, or how many nights we’re staying awake to solve the problems or to find reasonable explanations to the findings of our research and experiments.

Can you describe the team dynamics in your group in terms of structure, organization, and other characteristics?  

What fascinates me about my workplace is that there are clinicians, molecular biologists and engineers from different backgrounds collaborating on the same projects. Furthermore, these team members have also specialized in the disease model that they have been working on. That is to say, every research member has their different expertise and perspective on how to tackle the problems that we are facing. Moreover, occasionally these disease models are combined to investigate the biodistribution and interaction between different organs. That’s the biggest novelty of our work, which at the same time makes Wyss a top-notch research institution. For those who are interested, I would like to invite you to check out our website and publications.

What advice would you give a student interested in staying academia after college?

After college, getting a Master’s degree would be a good transition to academia. Students can always turn their master’s degree into a PhD then if they feel like the research is what they want to do, and they can continue to build their academic career. During their undergraduate years, younger researchers should get involved with the research activities of one, maybe more laboratories, participate in publishing papers, and have a sense of what the research environment is like, what kind of sacrifices you need to make a good scientific discovery or progress. Having an internship at different companies is also valuable; it helps them observe the differences between academia and the industry. I would definitely recommend for them to attend workshops on grant writing, take active roles in writing proposals, and apply for scholarships/fellowships. Applying for scholarships/fellowships is going to be really minor compared to these big grants, but still, it’s going to be a good learning process for them. Lastly, self-motivation is very important. Like I said, a big portion of the experiments we are running fail because they’re very novel; there will be some problems to troubleshoot, problems you have never faced before or anticipated because you’re doing those experiments for the first time. So, you will feel down a lot during your academic career, but you need to have the self-motivation to keep moving forward because without that, you will not be able to get into the lab, work hard to complete your project and make an impact.

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee. This article only aims to share personal opinions and learnings and does not constitute the interviewee’s current or former employer(s)’ position on any of the topics discussed.

Sarah Sowell
Rice University
Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

featuring Jaclyn Youngblood, Chief of Staff, City of Boston, Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, Boston (42.3° N, 71.0° W)

Bilge Arslan
Yale-NUS College
Singapore (1.3° N, 103.8° E)

featuring Jasmeet Sidhu, MasterClass, supervising creative producer/director, San Francisco (37.7° N, 122.4° W)