Affinity Networks Panel Discussion: Careers and Asian Identity

- Thank you so much for being here today. My name is Katie DeBeer. I'm the Director of Strategic Alumni Engagement, and I'll be guiding our conversation with our distinguished panelists this afternoon. The format is, we'll have a little bit of a discussion moderated here, and then we'll open it up for questions from the audience. And we really are looking for your participation today, so please feel free to be actively engaged, and we'll have a microphone in the audience as well to ask questions. So Karina, Tony, Bethany, thank you so much for being here today and sharing your experience with our students and alumni who are here for Asian Alumni Weekend. Can I ask you first just to introduce yourselves, maybe three or four minutes each, talk a little bit about your experience at Amherst and the work that you're doing now.

- Okay, hello. Is this on?

- I think that they're on. Are you guys hearing, are we hearing everything okay?

- Does this, okay.

- Okay.

- Awesome.

- [Audience Member] Could you pull the microphone-

- A little closer? Hello, is that better? Okay, awesome. Hi, everyone, my name is Karina. I graduated two years ago, Class of 2021. I studied math, physics and astronomy here. Had a great experience and learned a lot. Professors Follette and Pflueger were my advisors. Was here through the COVID era, so definitely had a very unique Amherst experience. But overall, came out with great people, great mentors, and I'm very thankful to be here today and to have experienced four years here. In terms of work, I am currently a data associate at Bridgewater Associates, which is a macro-hedge fund in Connecticut. I'm based out of New York, so I do the reverse commute, which is not great at six in the morning, but I think it's worth it. And over there, I'm basically on a team that manages all of the data that flows in and out of the company. So everything from data quality to analytics to engineering. I am basically like the subject matter expert at a certain subset of the data that we use to make our investment decisions. I didn't study econ or finance, so it's definitely been a steep learning curve, but I'm learning a lot and I'm really enjoying the experience, and have great coworkers and mentors. Before this, I spent a year at NERA Economic Consulting in their antitrust and competition policy practice, working on some regulatory work for mergers and other sort of litigation dealing with company contracts, joint ventures, contract violations and damages. And then right now I'm, yeah, based out of New York, originally from Queens and New Jersey. Spent some time growing up in India. I guess other things about me, I really enjoy yoga and dance, and after work, I often find myself at a yoga and dance class, which has helped me really integrate into New York City and make a lot of friends there. And yeah, that's me.

- [Katie] Thank you. Tony?

- You want me to go ahead? Hello, I guess I'm here because they needed somebody from the last century. Amherst was very different then from what it is now. I was the only Asian American in my class, and in 1972, we had one other Asian in my freshman class who was from South Korea who dropped out after a year because he was so lost. We ended up with a graduating class with me still the only Asian American. The other was a student who transferred in from Japan in our junior year. It wasn't a whole lot different at Harvard Law School, 'cause I started there in the fall of 1972. And in a class of 510, I was one of two Asian Americans and one of only four Asians. The world has vastly changed and for the better, although some of the issues, my guess just from work experience as well as the pressures that students are facing today, I don't think have changed as much as they could have or should have. And some of the workplace issues that you'll find I think are as important and as oppressive in their own way as they were back then. After Harvard, I went back to Honolulu and started practicing law there. And my practice has always been roughly a business corporate practice. I counsel public companies that were based in Hawaii and some based in the Mainland, and did a lot of mergers and acquisitions work. I was in Hawaii at a time when the Japanese, in the 1980s, basically were making all their capital investments in the U.S., and in particular in Hawaii when they dropped, and these numbers are smaller because the dollar was worth more, but close to $16 billion on an economy where there was fewer than a million people. And if the conversation goes in that direction, I can elaborate more on why I chose to practice in the field I did. And what was sort of unusual at the time, given that then as now, there still is not a great proliferation of Asian Americans doing sort of high level corporate finance work. You'll see a lot of, in stages of development, Asian American lawyers who will go into politics and even judgeships, but there are still substantial bars and barriers to both within corporations and outside corporations as well as in hierarchies in higher education. But that's a part of the conversation, I'll leave that.

- Hi, everyone. My name is Bethany Li. I graduated from Amherst in 2003. And when I came to Amherst, I was coming from, my parents and grandparents had opened up a dry cleaners in the Boston suburbs, and so I'd grown up in a primarily white community. And so for me coming to Amherst, there were actually more Asian students than I had been used to, which was very different from some of the friends that I was meeting from California who were like, what are you talking about? There are no Asians here. So it was interesting. It was just interesting, beginning to understand that experience a little bit. And I think maybe for many in my generation, Amherst and just being in college was the place where I was beginning to understand a little bit more what it mean to be an Asian American. I think beforehand, I understood that I was Chinese, I was forced to go to Chinese school, I pretty much grew up in Chinatown, and so I understood all of that. But I understood it from a very different perspective than I think when I got to school here, and started also interacting with other students from a variety of circumstances where I remember, I don't think it, it probably doesn't, I don't know if it exists any more, but I remember there was, I know there was an Asian Students Association, which I assume still exists in some sense. At that point, I remember one of my friends, who's a Filipino student, she, along with Cambodian and Vietnamese students, were starting what they called PISCES, which was, I don't remember what the acronym stands for any more, but the Southeast Asian Student Association. So I was just being exposed to a lot of, just a lot of perspectives that I had not previously been exposed to. And it was really interesting, and it was really fun because for me, aside from Chinese school, it was really the first space where I'd been around a lot of Asian American students. And I remember, we were just talking about whether or not ASA is political, and I think student organizations are really interesting, because they are what they are based on who's running them. And I remember when I was running it my sophomore year, well, I remember when just being involved with other friends working in the Asian Students Association, we started talking a lot about race and what that meant, and how that related with other students of color. And I have to go back and look for, I don't know if it's like Amherst student articles or something and I don't remember any more. But what I remember doing is, the students of color organizations staged a kind of protest because I don't know what Valentine is like now, but I remember, at that point, in some sense, it was kind of segregated, right? So there was a whole spot where it was all the athletes sat there. So I'm seeing that maybe all the athletes still sit there. So and there were spots where I think more the students of color sat, right? So there were kind of like these different areas. And I don't remember what precipitated this any more, but I remember all of the students of color organizations decided, hey, for a week, let's get there really early and let's all sit, kind of as a political statement, where the athletes normally sit. And it caused a hubbub, right? Just that tiny act of resistance caused this hubbub and conversation on campus in a way that hadn't previously been happening. So to me, it was a really interesting environment to explore what it meant to be Asian American. I was just talking with students at our table about what it meant to kind of get involved more politically. And I ended up in different internships that exposed me even more to the Asian American community in a variety of ways just across the United States, and all of these different political issues. And I ended up really liking it. And anyways, after college, I ended up kind of going up and down 95, in some sense. I never made it past Washington, D.C., I guess. And I mean, right now, I'm the Legal Director at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, AALDEF, which is a national civil rights organization in New York that works on a variety of issues, including voting rights, immigrant's rights, worker's rights, tenants displacement, all these types of issues. And I actually remember I started my career at AALDEF, my legal career, at AALDEF. I actually just went back there recently as the Legal Director. And when I went to AALDEF originally, I remember thinking, is this how I wanna be pigeonholed in the Asian American field, in the Asian American community? And I thought about it some more, and I was like, you know, we complain all the time about how people don't serve our community. And I can speak Cantonese, I can speak Mandarin, so why am I not serving our community? And what I found in the years that I've practiced is that I don't think being there or having been in different Asian American worlds has necessarily, has pigeonholed me. I think I've gotten a chance to do a variety of areas of law with a variety of communities, including kind of randomly, veterans law and all these different issues that intersect with civil rights. So I'll end it there for now.

- Perfect, thank you. I think, Karina, in starting the conversation, you mentioned some of the mentors you had here on campus. I know for a lot of alumni I've heard stories of really significant relationships that started here or happened in the workplace after. I'd love to hear from each of you sort of the role that mentors have played. Certainly, if they are Amherst personalities, feel free to shout them out in this room. But is there advice for our students who are here today about seeking mentors, creating those relationships, and what they should be looking to get out of that?

- Yeah, I can start with mentorship at Amherst, because I think it takes so many different forms. There's informal mentorship that happens with students where I've had upperclassmen mentor me, and then as I became an upperclassman, I got to mentor new students. I didn't graduate too long ago, so coming here, I've actually been able to reconnect with some of those underclassmen that I had mentored and now they're seniors. And getting to see all of the amazing work that they've done has made me really proud, and I'm glad that I got to be part of their experience. In terms of, I've had great opportunities with professors here. As I mentioned, my major advisors really inspired my passion for data work, and it's definitely a passion that I've carried through to the work I do now, and it's something that I hope to take forward with me to a career in data. Not only the skills that you learn here on the technical side, but also being able to understand how data work, and things like AI and machine learning that are all popping up are really going to intersect with society today. And I think what they've really taught me was it's going to be important not only to understand the technical side of data, but also to be able to communicate it, to be able to understand the ethics of it, to be able to understand how you, as an individual contributor in the field, are going to impact a larger network of people and technology that's rapidly growing right now. So I think having the quantitative mentorship, but also having people who really put things in perspective for me that have served me well so far was great to be exposed to, especially at a liberal arts institution where they have a great balance of what you can learn. I did a lot of Asian American-related work. I had incredible opportunities to do research with Professor Odo, who was probably my favorite professor here, and it was an honor to work with him. There was a small research team when I was here that worked on research around the Harvard v. SFFA case around Asian Americans in affirmative action. We actually have a podcast as a result of that, so you can find it; it's called "Veritas." It's on wherever you find your podcasts. Small plug. But working with Professor Odo and then Professor Dhingra, who is doing a lot of research on the sociology of particularly Indian Americans and my generation growing up here. So I definitely understand my relationship with my identity having grown up with it, but getting to come here and looking at it from a more academic and systemic perspective really helped me not only gain research skills, but also understand my own experience in sort of a high level way and connect to so many different communities that I initially never thought to see myself as a part of, especially a part of the larger Asian American community. So those two people have been excellent mentors as well. And those sort of just came up from conversations. I think just striking a conversation with someone is the best way to connect with mentors. I did a lot of work with the South Asian Students Association. I ran it my sophomore year. So just through conversations of members of ASA and other institutions getting connections to these professors, and then just being like, "Hey, can I stop by your office "and ask about your research?" And next thing you know they're like, "How many hours a week can you work for me?" So I found that sometimes a small conversation can really set you up for incredible opportunities. And especially Amherst alums and professors are very, very willing to help. All you have to do is say hello, and they're ready to be there for you, which I have definitely taken advantage of. And then, at work, Anthony mentioned this, but there is definitely a barrier to Asians and Asian Americans being really high up at certain corporations. And I've been lucky enough in my current role to have connected with a South Asian woman who has worked at my company for 13 years, has worked throughout many different departments, has so much knowledge and experience, and has sort of taken me under my wing. So often finding people in higher-up positions that share an identity with you can really benefit you. So don't be afraid to reach out to those people. We actually met at a dinner series that she was running, where employees can meet with partners at her level. And I was only in month two, but I decided, you know what? Let me go, let me connect. I know that I'm relatively new here, but I'm not gonna let that stop me from getting to meet people, like these are people that I hope to be in 10 years, and that's where we met. So it never hurts to start early. Don't allow lack of experience or things to hold you back from reaching out to people that you see as role models. Because often I've had this conversation with my mentor and she's like, "I wish I had someone like me "when I was in your position just starting here." And she was like, "I'm really glad that you reached out, "even though you are relatively new. "And I think more people need to do that "and to not be afraid to ask for the help that they need." So that's my advice and my experience. And mentorship has really gotten me to where I am today, and Amherst's alum helped me get my first job, and I'm still in touch with her today and we've become good friends. So just really don't be afraid to reach out and ask for your help when you need it, because that is something that I've worked on over the years. And I know that it's kind of difficult, especially if like, I definitely had the experience of being conditioned where asking for help reflects on me in a negative way, meaning that I couldn't do it independently. But building a career and building a life requires a network of people, and getting the best possible people to be on your side will only benefit you at the end of the day. And as someone who has mentored underclassmen and hope to mentor more people, it's also a very fulfilling experience to see people succeed and be a part of their story. So you're never too young to ask for mentors and to be a mentor, I think would be my final answer there.

- [Katie] Thank you. Tony, Bethany, anything to add on the topic of mentorship?

- Only this, that ideally, in the small liberal arts college environment, which Amherst still is, all of your relationships with all of your teachers, in some sense, are, you know, the word today is mentorship, but back then, I guess it was just being a teacher. And especially if you stand out for some reason, and as I said, I was the only Asian American student in my class, so I can come back 30 years later for a reunion and back at 30 years, there were still professors here who were teaching in my day. There aren't any more, but they would still remember who I was, and they'd, in many cases, remember my name, which was pretty stunning, given the number of students that had passed through. But I don't think that they thought of what they were doing as teachers in the sense that we characterize it now as mentorship. They were always available if you wanted to talk with them. And I think there's also something that's maybe a little different in today's environment than it was back then. We clearly were not as focused on the notion of what vocational avenues were open to us when we left, because the idea was that you came here and you basically were educated so that you developed skill sets that taught you basically to read quickly, analyze problems quickly, and synthesize answers the best you can, knowing full well that the subject matter didn't really matter, and that the subject matter, in many cases, would be different by the time you actually confronted a particular issue. The idea was that you would have the skills to tackle any issue, and those things would carry forth somehow in your later professional life. To the extent that, you know, I've obviously trained lawyers in my career, but I've also done something because of, you know, I've lived in Hawaii for 50, 60 years, and because Amherst doesn't always go out to Hawaii to recruit, but was desirous of having students from Hawaii, the Admissions Office would contact me almost every year about going out and finding students, as well as helping them get students to matriculate. And one of the things I used to tell students in Hawaii was that the size of the college that you go to also matters not just when you're a student, but with respect to what happens later in life. If you want to continue to be involved in that college in some manner, or you want to see what is happening in the future with generations as well as in higher education, going to a small college does matter, because your capability of influencing some of those decisions and your ability to do some things will vary. The likelihood that you're gonna be able to move Harvard University is different than moving Amherst College. And Karina just talked about Franklin Odo and Pawan Dhingra, and I've been working very diligently with Franklin and now with Pawan to try to advance Asian American studies at Amherst. And it's a fruitful partnership, because I'm at the stage in my life where I can be a little outrageous and push people, and there's continuing to be now senior faculty to, in Pawan's case, Associate Provost and Associate Dean of the Faculty. And we share ideas and try to advance agendas that we both share. And in that sense, I'm older than he is, but we're sort of mentoring each other through this process.

- I don't think they called it mentorship when I was here either.

- [Tony] Oh, good.

- And I don't think I realized then, just thinking back at both Amherst and also law school, what it means to have Asian American professors and administrators in institutions like these. Because I think while there were a lot of, in my opinion at that point, Asian American students at Amherst, there were not a lot of Asian American professors. And that made a huge difference, I think, in terms of my experience. I remember thinking that I was gonna go into political science. I don't know what that meant. I just knew that I didn't like math or science. And so I took what they said you were supposed to take for your first course or in your freshman year. And I hated it, because I didn't understand the way in which the professor was interacting with students. It just was kinda, it was just foreign to me. And I didn't take another political science course until I ended up in, I think, I don't know if she's still here, and I'm not sure if I'm remembering her name, I think it was Amrita Basu.

- [Karina] I love her. I took one of her classes on post-colonial nationalism and it completely changed my perspective.

- And that was one of the first classes I took where I felt like I wanted to say something and I had something to say. In many other classes that I was in, I felt like if I were to talk, I was going to talk just for the sake of talking, because I could tell I was supposed to talk, but I wasn't sure what exactly it was that I was supposed to say to sound intellectual. And so that made an impression on me. But not only that, I think in lieu of there being a lot of Asian American professors at that point, Dean Rebecca Lee, she, I think, just covers so much, she covered so much of the history of Asian American students at Amherst. I'm choking up a little bit, because I learned kind of a little bit after that she had passed away. And to me, she was someone that, she sought out Asian American students, connected with them, made sure that they babysat her kids. And that, to me, made a difference in terms of my time at Amherst and what it meant to feel like I was at home a little bit more. I think her husband, though, came back, right?

- [Karina] Yeah, um-hum.

- And I mean, I think I found out a few years after that she had passed away. And she was just, she was like a mom to, I think, so many people, from the '90s and forward. And to me, when you celebrate Asian American students in history at Amherst, she is someone that is to be celebrated, because she is someone that actually held, I think, the history of pushing for Asian American studies at Amherst for so long. So anyways, just in terms of mentors, I think it's so important to see people like you in faculty and administration in places like these.

- Thank you. I do wanna make sure we have time for questions from our audience. But first, we've talked quite a bit about the campus experience, and I'd love to hear sort of, as professionals, in what ways does your Asian identity, how is that incorporated in the workplace, and have you found that your employers or organizations helped to honor that, or have they failed to do so?

- Yeah, before I get to that, I do want to add on to what you just said of, I think, and there's definitely much more to go in terms of that, but I also share the experience of working with faculty and other staff that are Asian and Asian American, and making me feel at home, have put in the extra time and effort to mentor, I guess it's called mentorship now, to mentor me and get involved with even the student organizations as faculty partners. So I just wanted to echo that, that that is very important.

- And also, I mean, when you mentioned Franklin Odo, I actually had heard of him. When I was doing internships, he was, I think, still at the Smithsonian in D.C.

- Um-hum, um-hum.

- And so I'd heard of him as a result of that, and I had heard relatively recently that he was at Amherst teaching. And prior to going back to AALDEF, I was running the Asian Outreach Center at Greater Boston Legal Services, and that program partners with a lot of different community groups, Asian American community groups, across the state. And Franklin was incredible at connecting with me on affirmative action issues as well as this data disaggregation, data equity bill that has been going through Massachusetts, and made sure to get his students out to the hearing that we had in Boston on that bill. And so I just thought that was incredible and really just another example of what it means to have Asian-American professors who truly understand the issues that are affecting the Asian American community.

- And I'll go back to the question at hand. My firm and, I think, finance and a lot of more technical fields in general definitely lack a representation of Asian and Asian American, not only leaders, but also just in terms of numbers of who has access to these opportunities. And I think my firm is starting to make more of an effort of recruiting more diverse candidates. But I think my institution and a lot of other institutions are starting to realize that recruiting and retention are two very different things. So even though I've seen strides with having a more diverse community at the office and contributors to the work, it's also alarming the rate at which minorities are just leaving their jobs, even though they're very qualified and they're there for a reason, just because the retention piece is not there. We have an Asian American network, which is great to see the representation. They'll honor some of the holidays that are celebrated. So, in that sense, it feels really nice to know that on those certain days that I'm working and it's a special occasion for me for those to be recognized. So I think on the surface level, there's a lot of that work happening. But I think at a deeper level, I think, through conversations that I've had with other minorities at my job, I've had opportunities to talk to one of two people in our DEI Department about just a lack of support and content with the workplace being in a predominantly white field on my entire team. I'm the only South Asian and one of two Asians in our team, and basically across all of the other teams that we collaborate with. So it, in some ways, can feel isolating, and I don't think at an institutional level there's recognition of that yet, how having mentors that share your identity and coworkers that share your identity really shape your experience. So unfortunately, it's not where it needs to be, part of it just because they haven't allocated the resources to it, part of it just there being a lack of people there to do the work. And I think in a lot of firms there's an expectation, as there was, and probably still is, at Amherst, that the responsibility often falls on minorities, people of color to be doing the diversity work on top of their job responsibilities and not having it be recognized or compensated for. And I found myself and some of my coworkers inadvertently falling into that space of being like, hey, this is an issue I see; how can I help? And I really enjoy doing that work, and I enjoyed it at Amherst, and it's something that I carry with me, but it's something that I have to think about outside of my responsibilities that a lot of my peers don't. And I think, in that sense, it's hard at an institutional level to do the work and not have it recognized. But of the small community that I have at work of Asian Americans, I think we make a lot of effort to connect with each other and to support each other through just being there for each other at a peer-to-peer level. And then also through mentorship and mentors that I've gained who can connect me to the people that I need to meet in order to further my career and to do some of the DEI work that I want to do and get recognized for. So there's definitely a long way to go at the company that I'm at, but I think there are definitely strides. I feel the same way about Amherst, and I think a majority of institutions here in the U.S.

- I'd add this, that the world is better than when I was a student. When I started law school in the fall of 1972, I've already told you there were four Asians in my class of 500 at Harvard Law School. There were also only 20% women. And at Amherst, there were no women. And so the world has progressed, but it hasn't progressed as much as it should have. The way I characterize it today is that at least in institutions that have some self-respect and have a public relations profile to worry about, you're not gonna find any examples of overt racism or discrimination, but the not-so-overt and the much more subtle is still there just simply reflected in the numbers of high level administrators and people in responsibility. And it comes in different ways. Let me use just some anecdotes. When I was a law student and going back to my apartment, I used to run into kids playing street hockey. And I literally, in the fall of 1972, continued to get racial taunts, which, in Boston, I guess, is not surprising in 1972. You're probably not gonna get racial taunts today. But I also remember that one of my very best friends from Amherst, who literally meant well, but at a subsequent reunion a few years ago, but many years later, and I had a conversation, and he actually said to me, "Well, we really don't think of you as different. "You're almost white." I just threw out my arms and said, "Okay." It was obviously well-intended. There's no malice in the comment. But clearly, there had never been any sort of consciousness on his part. And then I can also tell you more recently when I had my 50th reunion a year ago here, and the college puts out, for the 25th and the 50th reunion, it literally publishes, prints, a book of essays given by members of the class. And I remember one of my classmates, a very close classmate of mine, saying to me, and he's a sort of person you would have thought would have been sensitive over the years. He has taught forever and ever, and is a full professor at Swarthmore, but he actually said to me, "I just realized, number one, had no idea "that you even had any of these thoughts about "being different and isolated." And then he said, "I realized that one of the nicknames that we gave you," he said, "was a racist nickname." And he said, "You said nothing about it." And he said, "I feel so embarrassed." And I looked at him and I said, "Well, you should be embarrassed, "but let's not dwell on it too much." And he said, "But why didn't you say anything?" And I said, "I was one of 300," meaning representing 1/3 of 1% of this class, "what was I supposed to do, "knowing full well that I'd have to live with you "for the next four years?" And I said, "Ponder that. "I hope you remember that." And so part of having a career in fields that are, you know, not terribly populated with a lot of people who look like you is just, sometimes you just have to develop a very thick skin. Knowing that, in the end, you try to look for, well, good intentions in any event, and understanding that progress doesn't always come very quickly, but it does happen.

- In the workplace, I had a slightly different experience because I started my legal career at AALDEF, which was predominantly Asian American attorneys and advocates, and so we were cooking Spam for lunch in our office. But I've also been in workplaces where, actually I've been in all public interest workplaces, and people think of kind of the social justice, public interest field as a place that promotes social justice, when, in fact, I think these are also workplaces that perpetuate similar marginalization. And in one of my prior jobs, I think just even pushing for the organization, the legal services organization, to recognize that Asian Americans are a community that has legal needs, even 50 years after this program had started, was difficult, right? And I think there's not overt Asian community doesn't need help, but it plays out in how resources are distributed, in how different programs are prioritized. And that's kind of, I think, subtly how you understand what it means for these institutions, even institutions that promote social justice, how they think about what it means to be distributing resources to different communities. And sometimes, just to turn back to Amherst in thinking about Asian American studies, I mean, I remember, as a student, pushing for Asian American studies. I remember having whole meetings about what it would mean to be pushing for Asian American studies, and joining the, I think at that point, what was the five college Asian American Studies Certificate Committee, right? And with the idea that there should be Asian American studies at Amherst, and at that point, the excuse was always, "Well, there aren't enough professors "and Asian American Studies professors who teach that." And the response was always, "Well, why don't you hire more?"

- [Karina] It's the same conversation.

- Yeah, so here we are, however many years later. And so, I mean, when you talk about how institutions maybe not overtly, but subtly impose oppressive systems in the structures that we create and the structures that we inhabit, I think it's important to examine that way.

- [Katie] Thank you. I think now we'll turn it to some questions from the audience. My colleague Fritz is walking around with a microphone, so if anyone has a question and you wanna pop up or raise your hand. I know the questions are out there.

- Hi, on the more career development side, I-

- Louder.

- A little louder, sorry.

- Louder.

- Hello?

- Yes.

- Okay, I'll stand up. Hi, so I wanted to ask a question more on the career development side. I was wondering what kind of led you guys to maybe switch jobs? Were you actively looking for opportunities to do so? Was it something that popped up and kind of, did you imagine your career trajectory to be the way that it is?

- Did you hear that?

- I think, yeah. Did you imagine the career trajectory to be the way it is, right? Or did the opportunities just pop up, right, I think.

- You wanna answer? You know the question. Is that what, I think that's what, yeah.

- It was hard to hear.

- Yeah. We'll have Bethany repeat the question, 'cause we all had a little problem listening.

- You were asking about our career trajectories, all right, and how it happened, did it just happen? Did we plan? Yeah, okay.

- Okay.

- I didn't really plan. I think I was saying, I was sitting at your table, I was saying earlier that things kinda just happened, and I just took whatever opportunities that happened to pop up that sounded interesting. And, I mean, so I'm trying to think. Right after college actually, so I was supposed to go to Beijing actually either on a Fulbright or go to New York to work at the Brennan Center for Justice. And it's funny, because I actually feel like that decision did end up leading me to wherever I am now, in some sense. 'Cause first, I love New York. But also, I almost feel like if I'd ended up in Beijing, I might have ended up on a kind of more international path. I think I ended up on a more domestic civil rights path. Not purposely; it just happened that way. And then I didn't really plan after that, I guess. I think I just tried to figure out what I liked, and actually I thought this was good advice from a professor at some point. She said, "What gives you energy?" And I've kind of used that to direct what I wanna do at different points where I've had choices. And at some point, I thought I wanted to do clinical teaching. And at the moment that I had to make a decision, it was go into legal services or take a teaching position. And I realized that I was talking about the legal services position with much more energy and excitement, and that's kind of what helped to direct me into the different spaces that I ended up in.

- You know, you have to get up every morning, and so where it leads you is you find the things that actually get you motivated enough to wanna spring out of bed in the morning, and go and tackle them. Because the way I look at it, if you sort of dread having to get up and go to work, then you shouldn't be doing what you're doing. What you should be doing is looking forward to the day. In my case, it started with location. I was walking back to my apartment in Cambridge one night and saw a woman who had fallen into a snow bank. And if I hadn't come along and helped her up, she might have gotten frostbite. And I thought to myself, good God, this is a horrible place to grow old.

- That's true; I don't know why I'm laughing.

- So there you are in Boston, right? And one of the things you also realize is that if though a law degree is supposed to give you all this great flexibility and everything else, that's true to some extent, because it does open up avenues in terms of different, it gives you skill sets that you may wander and become an administrator, or you may actually practice law or you become a politician. But if you're really focused on practicing law, you go someplace and you tend to stay because you develop a reputation. Clients are there, you feel comfortable about knowing how you can get results for people. And so once you make those sorts of decisions, they kind of take you forward. And as to what happens, I spoke earlier about the wave of Japanese investment in Hawaii, and I might not have done as much mergers and acquisitions work had it not been for that. But that's the world overtaking the circumstance, just as what Karina's outfit is doing depends on macroeconomic trends. And so this year, as already, I'm sure that there's a ton of research going on at Bridgewater with respect to what happens this year and next, and what the trends are gonna be, because we all know that working remotely, having self-driving vehicles and so forth is gonna change the urban landscape, and that's gonna have a profound effect on how cities are built and how real estate is utilized, and all of those things. So there's no way you're gonna predict that. Last year, and some of you heard me talk about this yesterday, I was coming to my 50th reunion here, and I had to write an introductory essay for that book I just referred to. And one of the things I wrote to my class as the introductory letter was that on the day we graduated in 1972, the Class of 1922 was gathering for its 50th reunion. Those members of the Class of 1922, by 1972, had lived through two world wars, a great depression. When they were born in 1900, the Wright Brothers hadn't done their little exercise at Kitty Hawk. But by 1972, people were flying around in 747s. There's no way you're gonna predict the future, and there's no way you can anticipate what's gonna happen. When I was a student here, the FORTRAN computer that we used, the IBM computer, took the entire basement of Converse. It has less memory than my iPhone, okay? And in my message to my class, I also said, "I have no idea where artificial intelligence "is gonna take us. "I can't even begin to imagine where it's gonna take us." But I don't know what your careers are gonna look like when AI is really in AI. I mean, right now, it's already scaring a lot of people in the academic community. Lawyers don't care, because they've copied decisions and you know, they plagiarize. You know, that's part of what lawyers do, is we crib each other's work, right? And you take decisions and you feel comfortable, and you actually put the real words right into a middle of a contract. But I don't know how academic treatises are gonna be written in the future, especially when it's so easy to use AI. And presumably, AI can also detect people who are plagiarizing, so you won't have to worry about that either. I don't know; anyway.

- I guess I have a very different perspective being a recent grad, so I can talk a little bit about my journey so far. So when I was graduating, I was thinking about what I wanted to do, and I was like, I really enjoy the quantitative and data work that I've been doing in the Math and Physics Departments, but I've also enjoyed the opportunities that I've had doing research with Professor Odo, Professor Dhingra, really interacting with ideas around society. And I was like, what can I do that combines both of those? And I'm like, I'll give economics a shot. So I started to apply to a bunch of Econ RA positions. And the first thing that I did was reach out to alums at these institutions. I'm still in touch with one or two of them. They've invited me over to their houses, and I've met their spouses and kids. So I would say if there's anything, any position that you're looking at, reach out to alumni because they're very willing to help. So I was applying for those. And then one day I got an email from the Career Center from an alum, being like, "Hey, my group is hiring at NERA. "If anyone has any experience coding in Python, "can you reach out to so-and-so?" So I did, and the opportunity sort of came to me, and it ended up being very fruitful. So definitely alums. And then the current position that I'm in also came through, it sort of was just opened in front of me through a LinkedIn DM from a recruiter. So update your LinkedIn, keep an eye on your D<s, because you do not know where it will take you. And I think part of it is the training that I've had at Amherst and the way I've been able to portray it on a resume on LinkedIn. And then also, interacting with alumni. When I was recruiting for this job, also one of the first things that I did was send an email to every single Amherst alum that worked there. There were like maybe four or five, so it's not a lot. We're few and far between at Bridgewater. But again, very helpful. So I think my major piece of advice that I think I've reiterated before is reach out to alumni. Reach out to me if you want to do this kind of work. And then also, I very much echo what's been said is you really can't predict what's gonna happen. I never thought I would work in finance. I thought I was gonna be a researcher. And I'm really, really glad that I fell into this position and that this opportunity came to me, because I'm learning so much more. I learn something new every day at my job. And I don't have a clear path of what I wanna do. I've sort of been going with the flow. The reason I chose Amherst was because I didn't know what I wanna study. And then now I'm just like, I just wanna keep every door open and learn as much as possible. So even if an opportunity doesn't fit in whatever you think your five or 10-year plan is, don't close yourself off from it. Because every new opportunity you take on will teach you something you never knew. You learn a lot about yourself, and you learn about what gives you energy to wake up in the morning. There are certain aspects of my job that I love, and there are certainly aspects that I dread. So having this opportunity has really helped me work through those, and start to help me see what my future could look like. But I'm also trying to remember not to be attached to that plan, because you, again, never know what's going to happen. You don't know where the world is gonna take you. You don't know who you're gonna meet, who's going to influence you. So I would say definitely actively work towards whatever idea you have in mind of where you see your career going, but keep an open mind, because there's so much out there that, as a student, I didn't know were even career paths that I've gotten to explore and learn about. So definitely keep an open mind.