Akın Deniz Heper
Yale-NUS College
Singapore (1.3° N, 103.8° E)

featuring Zeynep Dereli Korkut, Postdoctoral Fellow, Houston Methodist Research Institute, Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

Zeynep Dereli Korkut is a postdoctoral fellow at Houston Methodist Research Institute, where she specializes in cancer research and currently works on an image-based proteomics platform to predict drug response in cancer. While earning her doctorate at the City University of New York, she developed the Z-Chip, a device that allows for ex vivo drug testing (i.e., drug testing on tissue rather than a living patient). She co-founded VivoZ Biolabs LLC, a New York company based on marketing the Z-Chip, and entered the business world for a while, though nowadays she mostly focuses on her current position in Houston.

Throughout our interview, I personally connected with much of what Ms. Dereli Korkut told me shaped her journey. We discussed how she got to her current position in research and business, starting with her parents and academic life before she got to the United States. Her parents opened up the possibility of attending university abroad and encouraged her toward intellectual growth, which is my experience with my parents as well—their effect in making me reach out, outside of the limits of my home country, is undeniable. Similarly, she talked about not having had a single mentor but rather a number of experienced people she could take lessons from. This is, again, my experience; while I cannot deny the role of some people in my decisions, I cannot reduce everything down to a single person or even a few people. Many people have shaped me by providing a variety of perspectives, not by telling me what I should or should not do. As such, no single one would have had an effect without the existence of another.

Ms. Dereli Korkut’s account of how VivoZ Biolabs LLC started also reminded me of many of the projects I have worked on. In many cases, my contribution or the end result of the project was not something I had been planning on doing, but rather things that I ended up doing by taking the opportunities presented to me. Her account gave me a sense of ease about this, as the typical examples of very successful people are that they are driven and goal-oriented individuals who have had a specific idea of what they wanted to do since childhood—which is very much in contrast with who I am. I was reminded that it is okay to take one thing at a time and figure out where you will end up as you go.

Overall, Ms. Dereli Korkut’s experience really resonated with me. Her experience with her family, her perspective in making choices, and her focus on happiness over material gains are things I believe I share with her. I also agree with her advice that internships not only create strong resumes but also help students decide what to focus on, academically and vocationally. Ms. Dereli Korkut’s story shows that taking opportunities as you see them and working to do your best at each turn will bring you success, happiness, and self-satisfaction.

Highlights from the Interview

How did you get to where you are? How would you describe your educational background and career path?

I studied molecular biology and genetics in college. It was very popular at the time. I didn’t have any idea about the details of them or any other field, but what I knew was that I really wanted to do research. Whatever it is that I would study, I wanted to do research, and I wanted to stay in academic life. Those were the two criteria for me.

I had great teachers, but some of them were not well prepared for the world needs of our field. They were keeping the courses very rigid, so we were all worried about our grades and our GPA, which I didn’t like at all. But over those years, I always went abroad to participate in internships at different labs. Internships are the best thing to really see what you want to do, and whether you like it or not. Or whether it fits to you. You may like it, but it may not fit to you. I mean it depends on you—whether you like something, you really work hard, and you’re okay to give your all—because you like it. If your own personality and abilities fit with your level of the thing, then it gives amazing results.

In 2005, I moved to New York City. I completed my PhD in biomedical engineering at the University of New York. My research was on BioMEMS technologies. I’m not sure whether you’ve ever heard of that. I am more of an engineer and designer and developer. I started to design microbiology devices for anti-cancer drug screening. It was a very successful time for me. I was able to publish a few papers, and we had a patent for the product that I developed, and we founded a biotechnology company as the result. For two years I worked with the company. I was leading the company actually, because there was no one else, just me and my [doctorate] advisors. There were two of them. We were looking for investors and funding, and we were able to find those, basic level funding. The company is still active in New York City, but I am a partner now. I’m not directly working for the company, as I needed to move to Houston because of my husband’s new position at MD Anderson Cancer institute. In my current position at Houston Methodist Research Institute, I work on glioblastoma, one type of brain tumor, which is lethal, and I am trying to characterize patient glioblastoma samples. I’m trying to develop new models to do direct testing on them. I’m again trying to develop a new technology which is called image-based proteomics platform to get as much information possible for all of the slide cultures of GBMs.

Did you have someone you looked up to? A mentor or someone whose advice really helped you get to where you are?

Not one person, I would say. But in high school or in college or during PhD, there were different people who were kind of … not mentoring… because it was not something formal. You admire them. You like the way they live, and then if you’re in communication with them, whatever they say, you filter it out for yourself the way you want. I had a couple of people like that during my lifetime actually. This is a very nice question, because if you want to do research, you will definitely have a mentor. Your official, formal mentor is very, very critical for your future. And unfortunately, sometimes you are not able to select one. If you ever have chance to select your mentors, please be careful. Ask the previous mentees, and see the pedigree of their environment. Where do those people move on to after their relationship with that mentor? Because some mentors can be very destructive. Some mentors can be very supportive. And it all depends on people’s own self-confidence. So definitely be picky about a selecting mentor, if you have the chance. Sometimes, because you are getting accepted to a specific project and if the mentor is there, you cannot say that you do not want this mentor, but that’s very important.

Before we talk about what you do right now, I want to ask you about Vivoz Biolabs. That was the company that you cofounded, based on a patent which was, in rough terms, ex vivo mimicking the human environment in order to test cancer drugs. Can you elaborate on what made you go in that direction? What made you want to specialize on ex vivo environment creation? How did that lead to a company?

It was completely unplanned. When I started my PhD, I would have never thought that I would form a company at the end based on the project I did. When the device we developed worked very well, the university technology office approached us to support us, they told us, “Why don’t you transfer your technology from research to the marketplace? And then people can use it if they need.” At that time, there were some grants coming out from the National Science Foundation and the National Health Institute. They were all really pushing in that direction. We applied for those grants and we got them. They took us to trainings for some time. Stanford, UCSF, NYU, short-term trainings, and I really enjoyed it. Some people enjoy more basic science—they are trying to understand the nature or understand different phenomena—but I’m not like that. I like to work on applicable things. I like to design and have a product at the end. I like to see if it works or not. After those trainings, they told us don’t finalize the project or technology without knowing what outside world needs—because you can start with something and you can end up with another thing if you really know what people need. So at that time, we started to see a lot of other things in the field. We were interviewing with them; I enjoyed that part a lot as well. At the end of that short period of training, because that training’s purpose was to let us know whether we could build a company or not, we said ok we can have an initial goal for a company. I’m glad that I did because I learned a lot. It gave me another perspective, broadened it, and there’s no one way of doing something. The Vivoz Biolab is active now. When I work on something, I still think of having a company or having a product from that. I feel more confident now, because I know how to start it. I like to work with people who are nice and smart. I learn a lot from them. We had few grants and publications in a short period of time. There was huge media coverage about our product, and then we won an award for this product.

How was the transition from research to the commercial market for you?

It was fitting to my personality very well. For me, it was easy transition. But for some people—they don’t want to do that, they don’t like to be in contact with people as much. They are more introverted. But for me, it was very natural. I didn’t have any strategy or any plan for that, it happened.

Can you tell me more about what you’re doing right now?

I work in a hospital research institute. They have collaborators at University of Washington in Seattle. I started on the more biological part of the project, which is good. I learned a lot about the human brain and human tumors. I designed a new project for imaging and computational imaging base, for being able to predict, because GBM is a very heterogeneous tumor from person to person or within the person. It doesn’t give you any specific character that you can target at it. So that’s why it’s a very difficult case. With the technique I’m trying to develop, I’m hopeful that I could get as much information from one slice of GBM. Maybe in the future, we can automate it, using our tissue screening platform, but not in the short term.

Is your work more towards diagnostics rather than anti-drug testing nowadays?

Not diagnostics. It is kind of—people can use it for diagnostics, maybe. But our purpose is to really understand the GBM tissues and combine it with all the information to be able to understand which drugs will work. Make drug predictions computationally.

My next question is about the future of your field. There is definitely a future in research, but how do you think that will change? With cancer research, going forward, what do you think is the direction? Is it more nanotechnology or is it more the biochemical side of things? Do you think there will be a completely new set of skills that we can’t predict yet?

A lot of biological researchers and even engineers are starting to work on cancer because there is more funding for that. Some of them are sincerely trying to find a cure, some of them are just trying to stay active, I guess. Or that’s how I feel. And most of the people are following the same path, working on molecular biology. They are going deep down to the cellular mechanisms, or even smaller molecular mechanisms, trying to understand the molecular mechanisms. To find new agents, to target them. But another group, more importantly, is more concentrated on technology, which is very helpful I guess, but I’m sure it has to be a combination of those different fields. I’m thinking whatever we work on now may be helpful, but some people are going to come up with a totally different approach, a different concept, like the way in 1950 when they found the structure of DNA. It changed the field completely. I’m waiting for something like that, honestly. I don’t know what it is because it seems like 90 percent of people focus on one thing, and they are very small things. They cannot see the big picture. Research is something like that, the accumulation of the previous studies. When you do some research, it has to be based on previous publications or literature, which means it’s not that much independent. So if the previous publications are in the wrong direction, it shifts your direction towards them. So, I’m waiting for something very new and evolutionary, but we will see.

One thing that has been going around in media about cancer treatment has been CRISPR technology. What do you think about that, being from the field?

CRISPR technology is a very important technology. It already changed the direction of a lot of things in the research. Personally, in my view, it is not going to be the one that will revolutionize cancer research. It will give a lot of input for sure, but it’s not different than finding the PCR or cloning technologies of years ago. You know what I’m trying to say? When they came out with PCR technology, it was also very important. It all changed the direction of research, but it couldn’t solve the problem and couldn’t find the perfect treatment. CRISPR is a kind of technology, a technology that can go that way, but it is not itself the solution. But it is a very, very important technique.

Do you think cancer research, things like the device that you designed, do you think that they’re moving the bar towards cheaper, more available options, or do you think that the move is more towards higher accuracy or new ways of approaching more options?

I don’t know. I think the first thing is the validation and accuracy. I mean, it can be cheap. That is okay. But if it is not working, it has no meaning for being cheap. So it really needs to be validated and accurate. What I mean by validation is not only in animals but with, of course, patient validations. That’s the most important criteria for me. 

What advice do you have for people interested in your field?

There’s one thing—it’s not about my field or other fields—just go and see. Do internships as much as possible. Go, see and listen yourself. You can always change something you don’t like. The other thing is you will face a lot of different people. Some will be very helpful, some of them will be very harsh. Don’t let them change your mind about what you want. Because it’s going to pass. The only thing will not change is you and the relation with your own project or your own field. Always listen to yourself, whether you want it, or you can’t do it. And go do internships as much as possible. Make contact with people in the field that you want to learn from. If you can afford it, you can go to the very big labs as an intern. Maybe they don’t pay you, maybe you can work for free for a few months. It’s easier to get into big labs if you are free. But, of course, first ask for stipend. If they’re not offering still go and do it. Don’t think about it too much. That’s what I would recommend.

(Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee.)

Callum Parks
Rice University
Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

featuring Thomas Burnett, Assistant Director of Public Engagement, John Templeton Foundation, Philadelphia (39.9° N, 75.1° W)

Thomas Burnett is the assistant director of public engagement at the John Templeton Foundation. Mr. Burnett graduated from Rice University in 2000 with a BA in philosophy. Upon graduation he attended UC-Berkeley and did doctoral studies in the history of science. Mr. Burnett has worked in a variety of roles. He has been a high school teacher, a science writer, editor, and a communications associate. These experiences led him to his current position at the John Templeton Foundation. In his job, he helps translate the complicated “science-speak” into publicly understandable information. He describes his job as “identifying thought-provoking, underappreciated, and potentially beneficial findings from recent research in order to enhance public engagement with science and the Big Questions.”

During my interview with Mr. Burnett, we discussed his current position, including how his education and skills fit with it, how the media we consume is created, and the impact technology has on our lives. Mr. Burnett has a tendency to turn basic interview questions into something more, building on his ideas and at times surprising himself. His philosophy background stands out; his thought process is unique.

Mr. Burnett’s views on technology’s current impact resonate with me the most. He believes we currently possess the most powerful tools for investigation in history, but with this there are consequences. He mentions how we constantly bombard ourselves with distractions, and that this endless cycle of “being busy” could be preventing us from necessary introspection and asking the questions that need to be asked. Mr. Burnett believes true boredom could be the catalyst of philosophical revolution. This fascinates me. When I told Mr. Burnett that I had never seen things that way, he responded, “Neither have I actually. I just made that up right now.” I laughed.

The second point that resonates with me is the function of the science journalism industry. Growing up with interests in STEM, I read article after article but never considered the origination of the article. I always assumed a journalist read a scientific paper and then wrote about it. I know now that this is typically not the case. Individuals like Mr. Burnett read published papers, pick out what is important, and pass this information to news outlets who cover the story. Understanding the creation process behind the media I consume helps me better appreciate the effort put into it and I can better understand the information presented.

Highlights from the Interview

When did you envision yourself as the assistant director of public engagement at the John Templeton Foundation?

Honestly not until I saw the job posting, because I didn’t think a job like that actually existed. Essentially, my position draws from basically all areas of my interest that I had cultivated over the last twenty years, which is what made the position so surprising. I have a degree in philosophy from Rice; it drew on that. I did graduate studies in history of science; it drew on that. I’ve done a lot of studies in natural sciences; it drew from that. There’s theology—I drew on that. And then also communications, more generally speaking. So all those different threads tied together was this job description. It’s pretty interesting that there’s a job in which I didn’t have to make up anything about how I could see myself fit into the job because pretty much everything I had done for the past two decades fit. It was a very unusual opportunity and that’s the reason why I was willing to move from Washington, D.C. to Philly to take the job. Otherwise it would have taken a lot to get me out of that city. Pretty much only this job could have done that.

What does your position entail?

The Templeton Foundation funds a lot of research in different academic areas—the natural sciences, social sciences, philosophy, and theology. So you can imagine how much research you can do with around eighty or ninety million dollars a year. A lot of research gets done. It’s a lot of publications, a lot of books, a lot of articles—a huge volume of scholarly material. Some of it’s good, some of it’s so-so, some of it’s spectacular. But if you don’t have someone who looks at it all to assess whether it’s interesting or not, then it just kind of sits there in scholarly communities kicking around in journals and various things that are behind a paywall that nobody else knows about. So something the Templeton Foundation wants is not just to invest in scholarship, but for these new discoveries to be shared more broadly so normal humans can appreciate the kinds of things that we learn about. My role is to investigate what’s going on in the research world and then to help unearth the kinds of stories that would be of interest to people that read the Washington Post or the Atlantic or many other different media outlets in which they’re looking for good stories, for good information, or for insights. To be able to bring those kinds of stories to where they are, serving as that bridge between the academic world and the media world—that’s a very tenuous and long, long bridge, and so you need intermediaries, and I play an intermediary role.

Do you think there are any misconceptions about this job?

Most people are surprised that this job exists because what tends to happen is that you can find a job in academia or you can find a job in media space, but there aren’t as many opportunities for someone to be tasked to engage in content as much. I guess there are people in communications departments or communications offices, but what’s interesting about them is that for folks that just work in straight communications, they don’t engage with the content so much. What it winds up being is when you describe press releases or things that are formulaic, you don’t really tell the story if you don’t know the content well enough. So I guess part of my job is to engage with the content on a deeper level so that I can identify the more human, some of the more dramatic gripping elements of it that go beyond what you would be able to say in a press release. There’s something so different from a story compared to information. That storytelling role that has to get out of the technical jargon and into plain English, that’s the space in which I work.

What skills do you find yourself utilizing the most when you’re doing these interpretations or going about your job?

It is very reading intensive. There’s a lot of analysis, a lot of writing. I write a lot of emails, and that sounds boring…but if you think of it more as a nineteenth century style and the Republic of Letters and the European Enlightenment, I identify people who are either really talented scientists or really talented journalists or editors—like big names, people you’d recognize. Usually when you email people, you never get a reply. Like if you were in PR and you email a bunch of people with your press release, your response rate approaches to zero. But if you really know your subject that you are contacting, and you communicate with them about something that they’re interested in, and you can clearly demonstrate that you have something of value, then you’re more likely to get a response. The boring way is to say that I sit around, and I write a lot of emails to people that I don’t know; the more exciting way is that I reach out to people who are themselves outstanding storytellers through this sort of professional networking to create these channels of communication where we’re swapping story ideas. It’s kind of like going fishing. You’re throwing out bait all the time, and you can’t control how consistently you catch your fish. So my job is sort of inherently risky in the sense that on any given week, I have no idea whether my effort will amount for anything. Over the course of a year, I have noticed that things do work out, but all that can be said is that I’ve probably written to two hundred people this year, and there’s maybe fifteen or sixteen really interesting articles or podcast episodes or stories that come out. I’d call my job media relations. That’s a big part of it. I’m actively commissioning literature reviews and digging into academic research. What’s unusual about this job is that I can do both.

How did your college years prepare you for what you’re doing now?

It prepared me in the sense that I gave myself a liberal arts education. I actually went to Rice University to be a physics major, and I wound up with a degree in philosophy. The way that that happened was that when I was there, I recognized that a lot of the questions I had—well a lot of questions I have—were not technical questions. Technical questions are interesting, but there are other fundamental human questions or existential questions that are really bothering me. So I flipped my major from physics to philosophy. If you get a degree in philosophy, they spend all of your time trying to teach you how to think more clearly, to analyze arguments, to read and dissect what other people are thinking and saying. So philosophy taught me how to think. I also took courses in history and English that taught me how to write. I took a fair number of biology classes. My physics…I regret to this day that I didn’t take quantum mechanics. It’s a handicap, honestly, for me in my job that I haven’t taken quantum mechanics. So that, I guess, is my biggest regret in college, which regrets being what they are is not so bad. I got an all-around education so that I learned broadly enough that I could ask questions about things I was ignorant about. And that I think is key to my job—no one that I work with knows all the stuff, but if you have enough of a foundation and you can ask good question to people who are experts, then they can teach you lots of stuff really quickly.

Learning how to learn is the most important thing. The knowledge itself can build but you need a foundation. Graduate school is where you figure out how to teach yourself, and teaching yourself is really hard. That’s the difference between undergrad and grad school. In undergrad, you’re the student, and then in grad school you have to figure out how to go your own way.

What kind of projects do you work on? What’s a brief example of one of the projects you’re working on right now?

The Templeton Foundation made a series of grants related to a biology topic on the evolution of cooperation. There are probably about five different grants with total funding of, I don’t know, twelve million dollars. And those different project leaders conducted their research, and they published things, and then there you have it. Their grants were done, they move on, and they do other things. So my project was to then look at what got published and discern, is there interesting material in here? If the answer is yes, I’ll go out and hire someone to read all the publications. This is somebody who has expertise, so that all those publications at least make more or less sense to them. It’s their kind of language and subculture. So someone will write a review of that literature. That might be eight books and a hundred and twenty articles. They’ll write me, I guess, a fifty or sixty page report of the synthesis—what is this all about, what’s interesting here—and they’ll organize it. The structure of the report is super-duper important, and then there’s the details. So I will then read that and look at that and from that think, is there anything interesting that a journalist or an editor would like here? So I read it through the lens of media space, and I might find three or four different story ideas that they might like. And then I pitch those story ideas. Imagine several levels of distillation—from a large number of academic scholarly publications distilled into a technical report, and from that turned into story pitches, and the story pitches then might turn into articles at some point. I identify the best three or four people to email first, but then I might email another twenty or twenty-five people just to get as much as I can out of the material that I have. And then I find another topic and I do the same thing. So it’s a cycle starting with a big base of literature on a given topic and then you turn the wheel that turns into a report, report turns into story ideas, and the story ideas might turn into a story. If I do that about eight times per year, then that’s considered to be successful.

That’s awesome. That’s so cool actually.

Yeah, it’s neat. Each time it’s completely starting over because it’s a topic that is utterly different than the one before so it’s very mentally exhausting because I don’t build any momentum. I mean, I do over the course of one thing, but one thing ends, and I have to just scrub my brain empty and gear up a bunch of energy and then launch the next one.

What would be your favorite topic?

I like the evolution of cooperation. I also really like the psychology of intellectual humility. It is a fascinating topic.

Can you describe it?

The idea behind intellectual humility is this: as humans we have a skill for learning and understanding the world around us, whether it’s through language or sensory perception or logic. Humans are like learning machines. At least we have the potential to learn. But at the same time we have to recognize that we’re limited as well. Each person has one brain. That brain has many abilities, but it can only do so much. 

If you run into conflict with somebody that disagrees with you, if you are more aware of your own limitations, you have the potential for self-correction better than if you think, wow, anyone who disagrees with me is stupid. That would be the opposite of humility. It’s a neat topic. I think it applies to many spheres of life. It for sure applies to academia, it applies to politics, it applies to religion, it applies to relationships—like in marriages and friendships—it applies in office environments. It has wide applicability, but it’s a topic that is not highly valued.

In today’s space, self-promotion is the thing. And humility is the opposite of that. So there’s a tension between what might be best for us in a sense of character or wisdom and what might be best for us in terms of short-term financial gains or winning arguments and that sort of thing. I think it’s an undervalued and underappreciated concept, so that’s a reason that I’ve worked hard on it on my job.

What do you think makes the John Templeton Foundation a great place to work?

Its mission. Ultimately, the Templeton Foundation is interested in advancing human knowledge in every direction, to the degree that it can. What that involves is funding across a wide variety of areas that don’t look like they necessarily have much in common.

We do a really broad spectrum of things, with the recognition that the really big questions of life, the things that are really, really special, just cannot be answered by a single discipline. While single disciplines are extremely important, and you need a type of expertise, you’ve got to be able to work across disciplines to get a sort of vantage point, and almost a…like a community skill set to really go after the big fish.

The Templeton Foundation is committed to bringing together people from different traditions, whether it’s science or humanities or theology, and getting people talk to each other. Really interesting insights happen in those cases, and the hardest questions that humans can ask require that kind of community.

How do you think science and technology are reshaping this work? Do you think it’s making it easier or harder?

There’s greater specialization than ever, there’s more powerful tools than ever. And so when you bring good questions to the table—I think we live in an age in which when you have well-formulated questions, you have more tools than ever at your disposal to try to answer them. But I don’t know if the age that we live in helps us in terms of formulating questions or in terms of deciding which questions to explore or to privilege over other kinds of questions. I’m not so sure if we have an advantage…perhaps we’re at a disadvantage if we’re so busy and consumed with all our activities. What if boredom is essential to coming up with the most creative questions or perplexing topics to study? In that case, we’re in trouble because no one’s ever bored because we have many different ways to distract ourselves. I think we have better tools than ever, so in that sense, science and technology really help us, but perhaps we’re not in the context where we’re bringing new questions or a sense of urgency of exploring certain kinds of questions because we don’t give ourselves the time or the stimulation that we need in order to ask questions.

I never thought about it that way.

Neither have I actually. I just made that up right now.

That was actually really insightful.

That kind of thinking—where going to graduate school for eight years or whatever, gives you these technical skills, but you’re going to have to draw from somewhere else. Where do your questions come from? Why do you get bothered? Why do some questions interest you and other ones just leave you kind of flat? I don’t entirely know, but in my study of the long intellectual tradition of humanity, there’s always been people who are good question askers. That has not changed. What has changed is that the tools that we have to investigate them, but the tools themselves don’t ask questions. You have to supply those yourself, that’s kind of where creativity comes in.

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

That’s a very good question. I guess there is an industry called private philanthropy, and I am not a good person to address that, because I have not worked in philanthropy at all until this job. So there are people who kind of know these larger trends…Well, let me just give you some hearsay. So there’s a whole lot of money going into philanthropy now from a small number of people in the tech world. Who the philanthropists are changes and is reflective of the days in which you live. Back in the days of Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mallon, there’s railroad and oil titans that built their empires and subsequent foundations. And there’s people that work in totally different fields—they are software developers, and they have billions of dollars. I think who has the money is really going to affect where this money gets spent. So I think that’s going to make a difference. Our founder, John Templeton, was more like Warren Buffett. He broadly knew business across many, many sectors, but somebody who developed a company in San Jose and then sold it for three billion dollars is going to have a very different vantage point than Sir John who is looking across dozens of different industries for where good investments were. The people who found the foundations are going to have their imprint on what philanthropy looks like. So that’s certainly going to change as the way that our economy works, and the way that money gets made, it makes philanthropy look different. That’s about as specific as I can be, because I’m way new to the area and quite ignorant. 

What advice would you give a student interested in your field?

Here’s how I’m going to answer it. I’m going to say that my field is the liberal arts, because that it is the liberal arts that got me to where I am. And I would tell liberal arts students that liberal arts is not about trying to get a particular job after college. It’s about building a foundation and a skill set that would be valuable to jobs you’ve never considered before, probably even jobs that don’t exist right now.

Many people who go to college are generally curious people that want to learn. They are fascinated by humans, they’re fascinated by nature, they’re fascinated by space. For those people, it really does not matter what job you get right out of college. What matters is during the four years you’re there that you learn how to read well, to write well, to think well, to network, to be comfortable in strange places. It’s a combination of building your intellect and building your social skills and building your character. You are developing assets that would be valuable in a number of different venues that you can’t envision at all while you’re doing it or in the world we live in. The world changes too fast. There are notable exceptions. There are professions like medicine, law, engineering, architecture, music that require a training regimen. But anything in the business world, anything in the nonprofit world, those things require—if you’ve developed your intellect, your social skills, and your character, that’s the way to prepare for those jobs.

So that’s my advice. I was a liberal arts person in undergrad, and I have a lot of liberal arts friends who just were beside themselves with not knowing what to do. There are not clear paths for liberal arts students, but if you’re okay with not clear paths, there are very interesting paths that you can explore if you develop your intellect, social skills, and character during your college years. 

(Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee.)