Conversations on Careers and Professional Life: Recent Episodes

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Episode summary: Five Pacific Northwest climate tech investors — recorded live at Pacific Northwest Climate Week 2026 — break down where climate tech venture capital is actually flowing this year, why Seattle still trails Silicon Valley on VC dollars, and what they're really evaluating when a founder walks into the room. The conversation applies directly to anyone raising capital, building a company, or job searching in a market where AI has made it easy to look good on paper and harder to stand out.

Guest bios:

​Gabriel Scheer is Senior Director, Investments and Innovation, at Elemental Impact. Gabriel leads the transportation, energy, built environment and water portfolios - supporting 76 companies across those verticals. In addition to pipeline development and due diligence, he has directly overseen over 40 new and follow-on investments, deploying more than $30M in catalytic capital. He serves as a board observer for Artyc PBC, Mythos AI, Dimensional Energy, and Found Energy and has helped to co-design and manage more than 30 first-of-a-kind and early commercial projects in communities in Africa, Europe, and North America. Previously, Gabriel was on the founding team of Lime, where he led global data policy and transit partnerships and developed go-to-market strategies in North America. As the founder of two companies, he also contributed to the book "Smart Cities, Smart Mobility."

​Ben Shwab Eidelson is a co-founder and partner at Stepchange Ventures, an early-stage venture fund backing companies building software to accelerate energy abundance and upgrade critical infrastructure. Ben also co-hosts the Stepchange Show, a long-form podcast that tells the stories of human progress through the lens of transformative technologies, systems, and infrastructure. The Stepchange Show recently covered the history of data centers and the power grid, and has had over 250,000 downloads. Prior to Stepchange, Ben was a product leader and repeat founder, building two software companies—one acquired by Google and the second by Stripe. When not nerding out on infrastructure, Ben can be found with his wife chasing their 3 kids around local Seattle playgrounds.

​Susan Su is a climate tech investor and capital formation advisor to companies and funds across the energy transition. She built Toba Capital's climate investment practice from the ground up, spanning direct deals, fund-of-funds commitments, and co-investments, and currently serves as an advisor to the fund. She is a founding board member of the Carbon Business Council and serves on the Mission Alignment Committee at Prime Coalition, where she reviews catalytic capital investments for mission integrity. Susan is also the founder of Climate Money, a newsletter and podcast covering the business of decarbonization.

​Jonathan Azoff spent 20 years in silicon valley building rapid growth startups, including multiple exits to the likes of Zillow and Disney. He served as a fractional CTO to public companies (TNY.AX), and formerly led engineering teams at growth stage fintechs like Carta, Cardless and Pomelo. In his second act, he transitioned to the investor side of the table, joining the board of climate tech incubator Sweet Farm, and starting the deep tech venture firm SNØCAP with his two founding partners. He is one of the main individual investors behind The 9Zero Climate Innovation Hub, and is responsible for bringing the club to Seattle, where he lives now. He's an uncompromising advocate of great storytelling, having fun while doing good, and not taking himself seriously.

​Dr. Christine E. Boyle is General Partner at Burnt Island Ventures, a water-specialist venture capital fund, where she works with innovators to bring the next generation of water technologies to market. She was the CEO and founder of Valor Water, which sold to Xylem in 2018. At Xylem she served as VP of Digital Product Development following the acquisition. She serves on the boards of Aclarity Water, Subeca, Previsico, EPOCH Blue, and Waterly. Dr. Boyle is also a member of the Cal-Nevada American Water Works Association Board and a trustee of the American Water Works Association Management and Leadership Division. In Dr. Boyle's free time she plays league tennis, boats, and travels to post-socialist nations.

What you'll learn:

• How the 2026 climate tech VC numbers break down nationally — and why concentration in a handful of mega-deals is squeezing the middle of the funding stack
• Why Seattle ranks #6 nationally in VC dollars despite sitting on some of the country's deepest personal wealth
• What investors are actually screening for beyond the pitch deck, from response time to how a founder treats their own team
• How the hyperscaler-driven data center and energy boom is reshaping where capital flows, and what history (the 1970s WPPSS nuclear default) suggests about the risk
• Why human referral has become the deciding factor in both fundraising and hiring now that AI has made outreach nearly free
• What's missing from the Pacific Northwest climate tech ecosystem, according to the people funding it

Key moments:

• The panel debates whether nuclear, batteries, and data centers are "sucking up" regional capital or building a foundation the rest of the ecosystem can draw from
• Susan Su asks the other panelists to describe how their investment committees actually make decisions, not what they tell founders in a rejection email
• Christine Boyle and Ben Eidelson describe the informal signals — professionalism, stress response, pace of learning — that shape a funding decision
• The group discusses AI-generated pitch decks and why differentiation now matters more than polish

Resources mentioned:

• CTVC/Currence H1 2026 funding report
• Silicon Valley Bank, 2025 climate tech report
• PNW Battery Collaborative
• E8 Angels
• 9Zero (Seattle climate tech community hub) and its "Give, Get, Get" investor-list program
• Elemental Impact's Data Center Innovation Initiative (with Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft)
• Climate Surge, an initiative from Climate Solutions
• "Climate Money" podcast (Susan Su)
• The Stepchange Show podcast (Ben Eidelson)

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Archit Gupta went from never having written a line of code to building AI tools that grade hundreds of student cases and a Socratic AI tutor for a graduate class — in one year.

Archit is graduated from Foster's MSBA (Master of Science in Business Analytics) in June, and served on the committee that planned Foster's first AI Spark Day. Before Foster, he worked in M&A at KPMG, founded a consumer fintech startup focused on retail investors, and held product roles at a Singapore-based fintech. He entered the program with no software background and built AI-assisted grading and tutoring tools at UW with Professor Leonard Boussioux. He also founded a student club to pass institutional knowledge between Foster's one-year specialty master's cohorts.

• How to get past the AI "cold start" when you've never touched a command prompt
• How to use AI for grading at scale while staying FERPA-compliant (anonymization + open-source models + human in the loop)
• Why a Socratic AI tutor can protect learning where an unrestricted LLM undermines it
• How to design an A/B test that measures retention, not just scores
• Why "everything that can be automated need not be automated" — and how to tell the difference
• What rapid iteration looks like when you don't need an engineering team

Resources mentioned: n8n; Claude Code; open-source / frontier LLMs; FERPA; Ryan Holiday's newsletter; Foster's AI Spark Day.

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First-year Foster MBA (Class of '27) Tejash Bagri explains how he turned a stalled application into an interview by building a go-to-market prototype before reaching out — and what that says about standing out when every candidate has the same AI tools. A practical case study for anyone in a competitive recruiting process.

Tejash was part of the core organizing team for Foster's inaugural AI Spark Day and leads the school's AI and Data Analytics Society. Before his MBA, he worked as chief of staff for a group of organizations in a startup environment, where he built AI-driven workflows for research, marketing, and hiring. He reached the final sixteen of Foster's Dempsey Startup Competition and is building a product focused on AI literacy in the classroom.

What you'll learn * How to use a prototype to get past a resume screen when everyone's resume looks optimized * Why AI fluency only matters once it sits on top of real functional or industry expertise * Why you should identify the two or three areas where you're genuinely above average — and build from there * A staged model for AI maturity, and where most people stall * Where to keep the human visibly in control during a live interview

Resources mentioned * Luma and Meetup (for finding local industry events) * Lovable, Replit, Databricks, Claude Code (build/prototyping tools) * Company 10-K filings as interview-prep research * Ethan Mollick's "jagged edge" framing of AI capability

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AI Ready: Ahmad Ghabboun Ahmad Ghabboun built a Demo Day–winning AI product during his MSIS program — after arriving with no plans to work in AI at all. He breaks down how his mindset shifted, how his design background made him a stronger prompter, and how to build AI fluency that actually holds up in interviews. Useful for students and early-career professionals trying to get AI-ready without faking it.

Ahmad Ghabboun is a Master of Science in Information Systems (MSIS) 2026 Graduate at the UW Foster School of Business. Before Foster, he spent roughly fifteen years in UX and product design, building web applications for startups. At Foster he built several generative-AI tools in his coursework, including Synapse, which won Best Business and Tech Product at the MSIS Demo Day. He is targeting product management and technical product roles.

What you'll learn * Why naming the specific AI model you use — and justifying it — matters more in interviews than saying "I use AI" * How a design background translates into sharper, more technical prompts * How to keep a human in the loop so AI assists your judgment instead of replacing it * Why AI's tendency to agree with you makes human and second-model pushback essential * How to stay current with fast-moving tools without trying to learn everything * The difference between a productivity mindset and a learning mindset in school

Key moments * The third-quarter AI classes that moved AI from "not on my list" to his career focus * The origin of Synapse: manually juggling answers across Gemini, Claude, and a third model * How Synapse runs a dual-model validation and a judge step to flag gaps for technical PMs * Why interview proctoring now detects AI use — and what a "perfect" AI answer signals to interviewers * Ethan Mollick's "jagged edge" and why it shifts with every model release

Resources mentioned Lovable; Replit; Gemini; Claude; ChatGPT; Jira; Azure DevOps; GitHub; Ethan Mollick's "jagged frontier" of AI capability.

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Hannah Hoffmaster went from a self-described two-out-of-seven in technical skill to building multi-agent AI tools in a single year at Foster. This episode is for anyone — technical or not — trying to understand what genuine AI fluency looks like and how to build it.

Hannah Hoffmaster is a student completing the one-year MSIS program at the University of Washington Foster School of Business. She came to the program with some knowledge of statistics and R, but little coding experience. Through her coursework — including Prof. Leo Bousioux's AI and Generative AI in Business class — she developed the ability to design and build AI-powered tools, including a charity comparison platform and an ADHD-focused scheduling app. She describes experimenting with AI as something she now does for fun.

We covered alot of ground in this episode:

• How to think about AI as a build tool when you have no coding background
• Why "trust but verify" is the core discipline of working with AI, and how to operationalize it
• How to design a multi-agent workflow around the parts of a task you don't want to do
• What a deliberate, build-first job search looks like in a fast-moving field
• How to stay current as tools change — by building, researching versions, and talking to peers
• Why holding your career goals loosely can be an advantage in an uncertain market

Resources mentioned: GiveWise (Hannah's project); Offload and the "Nudge" chatbot (Hannah's project); Claude Code; Supabase; GitHub; Vercel; Lovable; ChatGPT; Gemini; Codex; Prof. Leo Bousioux's AI and Generative AI in Business course; Foster's AI club.

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On this episode, I speak wtih Léonard Boussioux — Assistant Professor, Foster School of Business; Adjunct, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, UW. PhD, MIT (machine learning & operations research). Co-founder of Universal AI. "Professor Leo," as his students call him, is a leader in AI education, research, experimentation, and adoption. He and I are on the Foster AI Taskforce, and sat down for this conversation in August of 2025.

Leo rejects the career advice you've heard your entire life: pick a lane, specialize, go deep. His counter-argument is that AI now lets you be — in his words — a specialist of everything. In this conversation, we dig into what that actually means for MBA students, career switchers, and anyone trying to figure out how to use AI without offloading their thinking to it.

We cover how Leo teaches non-coders to ship working products in a single class session, how he uses six different AI models to plan a vacation (and why), the new category of jobs emerging around human-AI collaboration, and why the people who panic about AI are usually the ones who haven't played with it yet.

3 Key Takeaways 1. Drive the AI. Don't delegate to it. The students who get worse at thinking are the ones who treat AI as a ghostwriter. The ones who get sharper treat it as a collaborator — pushing it in specific directions, rejecting outputs, iterating.

1. Build something this weekend. Reading about AI is not learning AI. Leo's students — most with zero coding background — ship working websites and games in a single class. Vibe coding tools like Lovable have collapsed the gap between idea and prototype to minutes. If you're an MBA recruiting into product, strategy, or consulting, the ability to prototype your own thinking is now a baseline skill, not a bonus.

2. The new jobs are at the human-AI seam. Automation creates a new category of work: deciding where humans belong in the loop, designing the workflows, catching the 5% of edge cases that have outsized consequences. Moderator, orchestrator, AI workflow consultant — these roles barely existed two years ago. Position yourself there. Learn more about Leo at https://leobix.com, or on LinkedIn.

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Nathan Fitzgerald didn't come up through tech. He spent years as a lobbyist, moved into marketing, got laid off in 2024, and treated that moment as a forcing function: how do I build a skill set that doesn't become obsolete?

That question led him to Foster's MSIS program — and to a clear-eyed view of what AI can and can't do.

In this conversation, Nathan talks about what it actually looks like to learn AI tools from scratch when you're mid-career. We discuss the concept of cognitive offloading — the risk that you let AI do the thinking for you and end up unable to defend your own work. He talks about using PRDs as a prompting strategy, managing AI like a distributed workforce, and how he built a scrollytelling website for a job interview that he couldn't have made any other way.

Nathan's perspective is useful because he's not a tech native. He's someone who had to figure out where he brings value when the tools are doing more and more of the work — and he has concrete answers.

Key Takeaways Cognitive offloading is a real risk. If AI writes the paper, you can't defend the paper. Nathan's rule: learn independently, then bring that knowledge to the tools.

Treat AI like a workforce, not a single tool. Break projects into tasks, write a PRD before you start prompting, and think of yourself as the manager. The pre-work is what keeps the output on track.

Portfolio over résumé. You can now show your thinking, not just describe it. Nathan built a full website to demonstrate his communications framework for a single job interview. That raises the bar for what "prepared" means.

AI ready means today, not ever. When asked if Foster made him AI ready, Nathan's answer: "I am — for today." Not a destination. A posture.

About Nathan Fitzgerald Nathan Fitzgerald is a graduate student in the UW Foster School of Business MSIS program. Before Foster, he worked in government affairs and marketing, most recently before a 2024 layoff that prompted his return to graduate school.

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Conversations on Careers and Professional Life is hosted by Gregory Heller and produced at the UW Foster School of Business.

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Anshula Singh came into Foster's MBA program with five years of software engineering experience — building products at Salesforce and ServiceNow, working with machine learning, helping train early LLMs from the inside. She wasn't new to AI. She was already watching it closely.

In her second winter quarter, she took Software Entrepreneurship — a course where students pitch ideas on day two, form teams, and spend ten weeks building a company. Anshula's team built Authscript, an AI platform to automate prior authorization forms in healthcare. They got far enough to pitch in front of VCs.

Then new federal legislation made their product obsolete almost overnight.

In this conversation, Anshula talks about what it takes to build an AI startup under time pressure, what the experience taught her about when to use AI and when not to, and her advice for business students figuring out where they fit in a landscape that keeps shifting.

Key Takeaways Know when to kill the idea. Find your idea killer early — before you're burning capital defending a thesis that no longer holds.

Customer discovery still beats AI research. The most valuable insights came from talking to people. AI supported the market sizing; the real signal came from humans in the room.

Make AI work with how you already work. Don't reinvent yourself for the tool. Figure out where AI makes you more productive in your existing workflow, and start there.

Keep your own voice. As models improve, your distinct perspective becomes more important, not less.

AI is ambient infrastructure. The question isn't whether it changes your work — it will. The question is how you position yourself within that change.

About Anshula Singh Anshula Singh is an MBA candidate at the UW Foster School of Business. Prior to Foster, she spent five years as a software engineer at Salesforce and ServiceNow, where she worked on machine learning applications and contributed to early large language model development.

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Conversations on Careers and Professional Life is hosted by Gregory Heller and produced at the UW Foster School of Business.

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Two questions are on every student's mind right now: How will AI affect the job I'm trying to get? And how do I show up actually ready to use it?

AI Ready — a miniseries from Conversations on Careers and Professional Life -- will feature students from Foster's MBA and graduate programs talking honestly about how they're learning to work with AI. In the classroom. In recruiting. In the work they're already doing.

Foster launched an AI strategy this year built around a straightforward premise: graduates should leave ready to use AI as a real professional tool. That means a required AI bootcamp, a hackathon, and courses designed around practical AI applications in business.

I wanted to hear from the students themselves — what's actually landing, what surprised them, and what they think employers need to understand about this generation of graduates.

Coming This Season Conversations with Foster students and faculty on:

• Building real AI products with no prior technical background
• Using AI in startup development and pitch competitions
• What cognitive offloading actually costs you — and how to avoid it
• Keeping humans in the loop when the tools keep getting better
• What "AI ready" looks like in practice, not just on paper

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Ted Jordan spent 24 years at Microsoft as a global program and account manager before becoming a consultant, professional speaker, and guest lecturer at UW Foster School of Business. His talk — From Outsider to Ally — reframes how we think about networking: less about tactics, more about making the other person feel seen.

In this conversation, Ted shares the specific approaches he used to build relationships inside one of the world's most complex organizations — and what he teaches MBA students about doing the same.

What we cover

• The subject line that gets a response every time
• Why curiosity is more valuable than a great question list
• How to turn a single conversation into an ongoing relationship
• The unsolicited message that makes you unforgettable to a hiring manager
• What new interns and first-year employees consistently get wrong
• Why your network becomes your sales force when you're in transition
• How Ted got his job at Microsoft — from a lunch invite and a three-word email

Key takeaways

1. Signal that you see someone as an expert — before you ask for anything
2. Follow the thread, not your script
3. Close the loop: act on advice, then report back
4. Your immediate colleagues are your most underused network
5. Depth beats breadth — stay long enough to become indispensable

Connect with Ted LinkedIn — Ted Jordan or visit TedJordanTalks.com to learn more about Ted.

Conversations on Careers and Professional Life is hosted by Gregory Heller, career coach and communication instructor at UW Foster School of Business.

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Layoffs are back in the headlines. Job postings are down. Hiring cycles are longer.

What does that mean for MBA students and other professionals navigating today's market?

In this episode, I speak with Steve Jaffe, author of The Layoff Journey: From Dismissal to Discovery. Drawing on his experience of four layoffs across a 25-year marketing career, Steve maps job loss—and prolonged job search—to the seven stages of grief.

This conversation is both practical and deeply human.

You'll learn:

• Why career disruptions are emotional, not just logistical — and how naming the grief process reduces shame.
• How to separate your identity from your job title before you're forced to.
• Why networking before you need it is the ultimate resilience strategy in a market shaped by AI screening and hidden job opportunities.
• How hope and small daily wins compound over time, especially during a long job search.

Whether you've been laid off, are facing a challenging search, or simply want to future-proof your career, this episode offers a grounded framework for building resilience that lasts.

Learn more about Steve and his book at TheSteveJaffe.com. Check out previous episodes on Resilience and Stress with Polo DeCano, Self-Compassion with Jane Compson, Gratitude with Ryan Fehr, Self-Compassion with Andy Hafenbrack, and plenty of episodes that talk about networking.

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In this episode I break down the difference between slide decks and slide docs—and talk about designing intentionally for each.

Many presentation problems don't stem from weak ideas or poor analysis. They come from using the wrong artifact for the job. Slides overloaded with text are often treated as presentations when they're really documents meant to be read. The result? Confused audiences, long meetings, and diluted messages.

I explain why slide decks and slide docs serve fundamentally different purposes—and why trying to make one file do both almost always fails.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why slide decks are spoken artifacts designed to support your voice, not replace it
• How slide docs function as read artifacts that must stand on their own without explanation
• A simple rule of thumb to help you choose the right format before you start building

Whether you're preparing for class presentations, team meetings, interviews, or client-facing work, understanding this distinction will immediately improve your clarity and credibility.

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Data doesn't persuade. Insight does.

In this episode, I break down what effective data visualization really means—and why most charts fail to do their job. This isn't about making slides look prettier. It's about helping your audience think clearly, decide faster, and trust your analysis.

Drawing on lessons from Edward Tufte's work and Good Charts by Scott Berinato, Gregory explains how to move from cluttered, confusing visuals to charts that make the point unmistakable.

You'll learn:

• Why every chart should answer one clear question—and how to define it before you design
• How to match chart types to intent, so your audience doesn't have to work to understand your message
• What it really means to simplify ruthlessly, including what to remove, mute, or highlight
• Why message-driven titles dramatically improve comprehension
• How context, annotation, and design for the room turn data into evidence

Whether you're preparing for class presentations, internship updates, or executive decks, this episode will help you stop using charts as decoration—and start using them as tools for influence.

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The Glance Test is a simple but powerful rule for slide design: if your audience can't understand the point of a slide within a few seconds, the slide isn't doing its job.

In this episode, I explain why slides that demand too much reading or decoding cause audiences to stop listening—and how the Glance Test helps protect attention during live presentations. You'll learn how strong, message-driven titles anchor understanding, why visual simplicity matters more than precision, and how to design slides that support your voice rather than compete with it.

The episode also explores the difference between slides meant to be spoken versus read, where detail really belongs, and how passing the Glance Test leads to calmer delivery, clearer pacing, and more persuasive presentations. If your slides feel busy or your audience seems distracted, this episode offers a practical framework to fix both.

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Many presentations fall apart not because the ideas are weak, but because the slides are doing too much at once. When a single slide contains multiple messages, charts, or competing points, the audience stops listening and starts decoding.

In this episode, I explain why the "one idea per slide" principle is so effective—and why it's one of the fastest ways to improve clarity in presentations. You'll learn what "one idea" actually means, how strong sentence-based titles do most of the work, and how to use visuals that reinforce your message rather than compete with it. The episode also covers where detailed analysis belongs (the appendix) and how to use the three-second Glance Test to ensure your slides support your voice, not replace it.

If you want your slide decks to feel calmer, clearer, and more persuasive, this episode offers a simple rule that makes a big difference.

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Foster Alumni Share What They Listen For When They Interview Job Candidates Every fall and winter, MBA students gear up for behavioral interviews with an understandable mix of anticipation and anxiety. We spend hours coaching them on frameworks, stories, and delivery. But nothing beats hearing directly from the people on the other side of the table.

On this encore episode of Conversations on Careers and Professional Life, I brought together four Foster MBA alumni—now at Accenture, Google, Walmart, and Goldman Sachs—to share what they actually listen for when evaluating candidates. I spoke with each of them separately, but their messages converged with remarkable clarity.

Here are the big themes.

1. Preparation isn't optional—it's the floor, not the ceiling. Every alum highlighted the same point: the "Tell me about yourself" question is guaranteed. If you can't deliver a clear, structured, thoughtful answer, it signals a lack of intention.

Adam Schmidt (Accenture) put it plainly: "This is a question you know is coming." Preparation demonstrates respect for the interviewer's time and respect for your own story. It's the discipline before the performance.

1. Authenticity beats perfection. Several alumni talked about sensing whether an answer felt honest, grounded, and human. Authenticity arises from knowing your stories well enough that you can speak naturally—not recite.

Skylar Brown (Goldman Sachs) shared that authenticity often shows up in how candidates pause, think, and connect their experiences to the role. Over-scripted answers flatten your personality; thoughtful ones reveal how you'll show up as a colleague.

Stoic reminder: focus on what is within your control—your preparation and your presence—not the outcome.

1. Your impact matters more than the résumé lines. At Google, Sam Eid looks for patterns that reveal how a candidate operates on a team. One of his sharpest insights: candidates who talk only in "I" form look self-centered, but candidates who talk only in "we" form leave interviewers wondering what they actually did.

He advises framing a story around:

• The opportunity or challenge
• What the team achieved
• Your specific contribution
• What wouldn't have happened without you

That last piece is gold. It's also how Google evaluates internal performance.

1. "Why this company?" must show you've done real homework. The alumni were unanimous: generic answers tank candidates. You should be able to articulate:

2. What differentiates the company

3. How its mission or values connect to you
4. Who you've spoken with and what you learned
5. Why this role aligns with your future trajectory

Claire Herting (Nintendo, ex-Walmart) noted that specific, thought-out answers signal maturity and genuine motivation—not simply chasing the brand name.

1. Cultural fit isn't code for conformity—it's awareness. Companies want to see that you understand the environment you're entering and how you'd contribute to it.

Whether it's humility, customer obsession, collaboration, or intellectual curiosity, your stories should reflect the behaviors that matter most at that organization. Not by forcing it, but by choosing experiences that naturally align.

1. The biggest mistakes happen before the interview. One of the most useful insights came from Skylar Brown: many candidates cast too wide a net. When you're interviewing for 20–40 roles you don't genuinely want, your answers sound hollow.

Depth beats breadth. Focus creates authenticity.

The bottom line Across industries and roles, alumni interviewers value the same things:

• Clear thinking
• Genuine enthusiasm
• Self-awareness
• A structured approach to storytelling
• A real understanding of the company and role

Behavioral interviews aren't about trick questions—they're about surfacing who you are, how you work with others, and how you make an impact.

If you're preparing for interviews this season, the wisdom from these alumni is a powerful compass.

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In this episode of Conversations on Careers & Professional Life, we go inside the Autumn Quarter Integrated Case Competition at the Foster School of Business—a one-week sprint where MBA teams analyze an acquisition case, submit a written recommendation, and deliver a 25-minute presentation to faculty, alumni, and industry judges.

I speak with three students from finalist teams:

• Nat Fernandes (Class of 2027) – whose team placed third, emphasizing early alignment and organized execution.
• Josh Gonzales (Class of 2027) – part of the second-place team, highlighting team cohesion built from day one and the importance of energetic delivery.
• Andrew Parriot (Class of 2027) – from the winning team, reflecting on iteration, practice, and transforming earlier missteps into strength.

We discuss: • How teams approached analysis, collaboration, and slide design • The value of early relationship-building and role clarity • The pressure and payoff of presenting to the entire class • What these students learned about communication, strategy, and themselves along the way

A great listen for prospective MBAs, current students preparing for next year, and anyone curious about how high-performing teams deliver under tight deadlines.

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On this episode I share a principle that shows up again and again in great communication but is often overlooked by professionals: you have to earn attention before you earn understanding.

Too many presentations, meetings, and messages begin with dense context, background, or data. But audiences don't start in "information-processing mode." They start in attention mode — scanning for relevance. If the opening doesn't grab them, the content that follows doesn't land.

The core idea of this episode is simple but transformative: Engage first. Then inform.

Attention Is the Gatekeeper We live in a world of constant distraction. Phones buzz, inboxes refill, and meetings stack back-to-back. You can't assume your audience is ready to absorb information the moment you begin.

That's why starting with engagement is essential. As the episode puts it, if the first thing your audience hears is a spreadsheet, a data table, or a wall of bullets, "their brains will tune out before the thinking begins."

Engagement isn't entertainment — it's a form of cognitive kindness. It tells your audience: Stay with me. This matters.

What Engagement Really Means Engagement doesn't require charisma or theatrics. Instead, it's about delivering an emotional or intellectual spark that primes the brain for meaning.

In the episode, you highlight several practical ways to create that spark:

• Start with a story — even a single sentence can establish stakes or human connection.
• Lead with a recommendation — clarity itself is engaging.
• Share a surprising fact — novelty triggers curiosity.
• Pose a thought-provoking question — questions pull the audience mentally into the conversation.
• Create simple tension — the gap between "where things are" and "where things could be."

These techniques aren't gimmicks. They are proven attention triggers that open the door for the logic and evidence that come next.

Why Engagement Works The episode lays out the psychology clearly: engagement activates emotion, and emotion primes the brain for comprehension.

This echoes Aristotle's frameworks — Pathos sets the stage for Logos. When your audience feels something — interest, tension, surprise — they become more open to understanding and retaining information.

Engagement isn't a bonus. It's the bridge between attention and insight.

Then Inform: Delivering the Content Once you've earned attention, now you can deliver the substance. The episode reinforces a familiar structure for this phase:

1. Lead with the key recommendation
2. Share the top supporting reasons
3. Present only the evidence necessary to make the case
4. Clarify implications, risks, or next steps
5. Make a clear request or action

This sequence works because the mind prefers clarity before detail, destination before map. Engagement at the start makes this structure even more powerful: the brain is now on board and ready to follow.

Avoiding Gimmicks Importantly, the episode emphasizes what not to do. Engaging first is not about jokes, theatrics, or forced "TED-ification." The goal isn't to "perform."

The goal is to help your audience stay with you long enough to understand you.

Engagement is the runway. Information is the flight. Both matter, but one must come first.

A Leadership Habit Professionals who learn to engage first don't just communicate more effectively — they lead more effectively. Audiences trust them faster, stay with them longer, and remember their message more clearly.

Before your next email, meeting, or presentation, try asking:

• What's my hook?
• Why will this matter to my audience right now?
• What moment will pull them in before I deliver the data?

If you start there, the rest of your communication will feel smoother, clearer, and more compelling.

Because if you want people to listen, you have to earn their attention. Only then can you earn their understanding.

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Structure isn't a formatting exercise. It's the foundation of every clear, persuasive communication. Whether you're giving a presentation, writing an email, or leading a meeting, structure is the difference between an idea that gets ignored and an idea that creates action.

In the latest episode of Conversations on Careers and Professional Life, we explore why structure matters so profoundly — and how leaders, students, and professionals can use it to communicate with more clarity and impact.

Why Structure Matters Human beings aren't wired to process information in random fragments. We make sense of the world through stories — beginnings, middles, and ends.

As you put it in the episode, we're not "data digesters"; we're storytellers. And when communication wanders, attention wanders with it.

A clear structure reduces cognitive friction. It guides your audience through the idea. It shows respect for their time and sets you apart as someone who thinks and leads with intention.

The Universal Arc: Beginning → Middle → End The classic story shape applies perfectly to business communication:

• Beginning: What's the point?
• Middle: Why does it matter?
• End: What should we do?

In practice, this means starting with your main idea — the recommendation, insight, or conclusion — and only then walking people through the reasoning.

This mirrors the Pyramid Principle, but it also aligns with how executives think: give me the destination first, then show me the path.

A Simple Structure That Works Everywhere: What → So What → Now What You referenced Matt Abrahams' framework from Think Faster, Talk Smarter:

• What: The headline or central idea
• So What: The significance — why it matters
• Now What: The implication or action

This structure keeps communication focused and future-oriented. It helps audiences quickly understand context, importance, and next steps. And when you use it, people stop interrupting with "What's your point?" because you've already answered it.

Slide Structure: One Idea, One Message Every slide should tell a mini-story:

• A clear title that states the point, not a topic
• A single idea supported by one graph, chart, or set of bullets
• Visuals that reinforce your narrative rather than compete with it

The slide is scaffolding — not the building. Your voice delivers the narrative; the slide supports it.

Meeting Structure: Avoid the Rudderless Hour Unstructured meetings drift. Structured meetings decide.

A simple three-bullet agenda can turn an hour-long discussion into a 20-minute decision. Before any meeting, ask:

1. What's the goal?
2. What's the sequence that gets us there?
3. What decisions or actions do we need?

Structure creates momentum, momentum creates clarity, and clarity creates action.

Editing as Structural Discipline Editing is structuring. This is where Chekhov's Gun becomes a communication tool: remove anything that doesn't serve the message.

Ask: If I cut this sentence, slide, or data point, does the meaning change? If not, remove it.

Editing isn't erasing work — it's generosity. It gives your audience time and brings clarity. Remember the ABCs!

A Simple Method for Structuring Anything 1. Identify your main point. 2. List two or three reasons that support it. 3. Add only the evidence necessary to prove those reasons. 4. Arrange it in a natural sequence — then cut everything else.

It's deceptively simple, but rarely done well — and that's why it stands out.

The Leadership Signal Ultimately, structure is more than communication mechanics. It's a leadership signal. Structured communicators show that they think clearly, respect their audience, and understand how decisions get made.

The episode closes with a reminder worth repeating:

Structure isn't just a communication tool. It's a mark of how you think. And it matters more than most people realize.

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On this episode, I cover the ABCs of professional communication, just as I teach them to my MBA students.

One of the simplest ways to elevate your professional communication—whether you're writing an email, pitching a strategy, or presenting to senior leaders—is to filter your message through three words: Active, Brief, and Clear.

They sound basic, almost obvious. But in practice, they create a powerful discipline that separates high-quality communicators from everyone else.

Active: Own the Message Active communication is energetic, direct, and accountable. It starts with the choice to use active voice—"We analyzed the data" instead of "The data was analyzed"—but it goes beyond grammar.

Being active signals leadership. It tells your audience who is responsible, what action is being taken, and why it matters. It brings confidence to your tone, clarity to your reasoning, and momentum to your message.

Brief: Respect Attention Being brief isn't about cutting until your message feels hollow. It's about stripping away anything that dilutes the point.

In a world full of competing priorities and overloaded inboxes, brevity is a form of respect. Shorter sentences, concrete words, clear slide titles, and focused agendas make your message easier to absorb—and easier to act on.

Brevity doesn't mean simplicity of thought; it means simplicity of delivery. You're curating the signal, not broadcasting the whole noise.

Clear: Make Understanding Effortless Clarity is the culmination of the first two principles. When your message is active and brief, clarity emerges naturally—but it still needs intention.

Clear communication uses plain language, not jargon. It uses structure—beginning, middle, end—to guide your audience. It uses formatting and visual hierarchy to make information scannable. Above all, it ensures that your audience never wonders: What does this mean, and what should I do with it?

Clarity is not optional. It's the price of admission for influencing decisions.

Why ABC Matters When communication is active, brief, and clear, it's easier to trust—and harder to misunderstand. Your audience feels more confident in you. They're more likely to remember your message. And they're far more likely to act.

Whether you're writing a memo, drafting a slide deck, or speaking in a meeting, the ABCs give you a repeatable way to refine your thinking and elevate your delivery.

Active shows ownership. Brief shows respect. Clear shows mastery.

Together, they define the core of effective business communication.

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Logos, Ethos, Pathos: The Ancient Keys to Modern Persuasion In this episode of Conversations on Communication, I explore three timeless principles that sit at the heart of all persuasive communication: Logos, Ethos, and Pathos.

They come from Aristotle, but their power is as relevant today in an MBA classroom, a boardroom, or a client meeting as it was in ancient Athens. When you learn to apply these three deliberately, your messages become sharper, more credible, and more emotionally resonant.

Logos: The Logic of Your Argument Logos is the appeal to logic — the structure and reasoning that makes your audience think, "Yes, that makes sense."

It's not only about data; it's about connection. Logos ensures that every statement you make clearly links to the conclusion you want your audience to draw. Facts, analysis, and evidence give your message weight, but they need to form a coherent chain of reasoning.

In business, Logos often appears through charts, models, and financial analysis. But data alone doesn't persuade — logic does. The strongest communicators make the relationship between evidence and recommendation unmistakable.

"We recommend expanding into Austin because customer adoption is 25% higher and logistics costs are 30% lower than comparable markets."

That single "because" captures the essence of Logos.

A final note: too much data can obscure your message. Your job isn't to share everything you know; it's to make the most important facts impossible to ignore.

Ethos: The Credibility of the Speaker Ethos is the appeal to credibility and character. It answers the question, "Why should I trust you?"

Your Ethos comes from more than your credentials. It's built through tone, preparation, and consistency. It's how you show that you've done your homework, that you understand the audience's world, and that your insights come from care as well as competence.

You build Ethos when you say,

"We didn't have complete customer data for the past two quarters, so we supplemented it with qualitative interviews to strengthen our understanding."

That blend of honesty and diligence communicates credibility.

Ethos is also shaped by how you sound and carry yourself. A steady pace, deliberate pauses, and confident posture project competence. Silence, used well, communicates confidence. People decide whether to trust you long before they evaluate your argument — so make sure your delivery earns that trust.

Pathos: The Emotion of Connection Pathos is the emotional appeal — the part of communication that makes people care.

Logic makes people think, but emotion makes them act.

Pathos doesn't mean manipulation; it means connecting your message to human values, hopes, or fears. It's about showing why your recommendation matters beyond the numbers.

"This expansion could help 10,000 small businesses reach new customers and create jobs in underserved communities."

The data might stay the same, but the emotional frame transforms how people receive it.

Stories, metaphors, and anecdotes are natural vehicles for Pathos. Humans are wired for narrative — it's how we remember and share meaning. A story can make your data come alive, and it helps your audience see themselves in your message.

People may forget your exact words, but they'll remember how you made them feel.

Bringing It All Together The most persuasive communicators blend all three:

• Logos gives your message clarity and structure.
• Ethos builds credibility and trust.
• Pathos creates connection and motivation.

Together, they form the foundation of influence.

You can think of persuasion as an equation:

Influence = (Evidence + Economics + Emotion) ÷ Context

Your evidence is Logos. Economics speaks to both logic and motivation — the bridge between head and heart. Emotion is Pathos. And Context — the audience, timing, and tone — determines whether your message lands.

Lead with logic. Reinforce with credibility. Connect with emotion.

Key Takeaway Before your next big meeting or presentation, ask yourself:

• Is my argument logical? (Logos)
• Am I credible and authentic? (Ethos)
• Have I made my audience care? (Pathos)

If you can answer yes to all three, you're not just informing — you're persuading. And that's the difference between being heard and being remembered.

Resources * Aristotle, Rhetoric * Nancy Duarte, Resonate, Slide:ology, HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations * Scott Berinato, Good Charts * Steve J. Martin, Influence At Work * HBR: "The Science of Strong Business Writing," by Bill Birchard

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In this episode of Conversations on Careers and Professional Life, I explire one of the most powerful frameworks for structuring clear, persuasive business communication: the Minto Pyramid Principle.

The framework, created by Barbara Minto at McKinsey, is a simple but transformative way to organize ideas. Think of your communication as a pyramid:

• At the top is your main point — your recommendation, your answer, your "so what."
• Beneath that are the supporting arguments — the key reasons your audience should agree with or believe your main point.
• At the base are the evidence and details — the facts, data, and analysis that give those arguments weight.

The beauty of the Pyramid Principle is that it works at every level. Your entire presentation can follow it, each section within your presentation can follow it, and even each individual slide can follow it. Every idea should ladder up neatly to the one above it.

Why does this matter? Because most presentations and meetings fail not because the ideas are bad, but because the structure is confusing. When you cram multiple ideas into a single slide, include disconnected data, or bury the lead, your audience can't follow the story.

If everything is important, nothing is important.

The Pyramid Principle forces you to make choices. It asks: What's the single most important point I want my audience to remember if they leave after five minutes? That's the point that belongs at the top of the pyramid. Everything else exists to serve that idea—or it doesn't belong.

Here's how to apply it. Start with your answer—your key recommendation. Imagine that the most senior person in the room gets a phone call and leaves six minutes into your presentation. If they walk out then, will they know what you're recommending? Don't make your audience wait until slide 17 to find out your point. Put it right up front.

Then, support it with your major premises—ideally three. There's a reason consultants love the "rule of three." Research shows that once you go beyond three supporting points, credibility actually drops. Four or five reasons feel like overkill; three feels complete.

For example:

"We recommend launching the pilot in Austin—because customer adoption is highest, operational costs are lowest, and the competitive landscape is still open."

That single sentence is a mini pyramid: a clear main point supported by three reasons. Each reason could then become a section, a slide, or even a paragraph of an email—each with its own evidence and analysis.

Finally, check that every piece of content—every chart, bullet, and image—supports one of those reasons. If it doesn't, cut it. Anton Chekhov said, "If there's a gun on the wall in Act I, it must go off by Act III. If it's not going to be fired, take it down." The same is true for your slides: if it doesn't serve your main point, it shouldn't be there.

Common pitfalls?

• Starting with background or methodology. You want to show your process, but your audience doesn't care how you got there until they know where you're going. Start with the destination.
• Overloading slides. Each slide should have one key message, and the title should say it, not label it. Instead of "Customer Survey Results," say, "Customers are willing to pay 20% more for faster delivery."
• Forgetting your audience. The Pyramid Principle works best when grounded in AIM—Audience, Intent, Message. Who are you talking to? What do they care about? What action do you want them to take?

Before you build your next deck, don't start in PowerPoint. Start with a piece of paper. Write your main point at the top, your three strongest supporting arguments underneath, and then only the data or visuals that prove those points.

When you've done that, you've built a story pyramid that's clear, concise, and persuasive.

Remember—slides don't cost anything. Use as many as you need, but only one idea per slide.

Start with the answer. Support it with logic. End with confidence.

That's the Minto Pyramid Principle—and it's how you turn information into influence.

Resources Mentioned * Barbara Minto, The Pyramid Principle * Nancy Duarte, Resonate and Slide:ology * Scott Berinato, Good Charts * HBR: "How to Give a Killer Presentation," by Chris Anderson

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The AIM Framework: The Compass for Every Communication" Welcome to Conversations on Careers and Professional Life, on this series, I'm going to turn lessons from my MBA course, Professional Communication into practical insights you can use every day.

I'm Gregory Heller, and today we're diving into one of the simplest—but most powerful—tools in communication, professional or otherwise: the AIM Framework, outlined by Lynn Russell and Mary Munter.

AIM stands for Audience, Intent, and Message.

It's a framework I teach in the very first session of my Professional Communication course, and it's one that I come back to again and again—because it works in every context: from team meetings to emails, from case competitions to C-suite presentations.

Let's start with the "A"—Audience.

Before you draft a slide, write an email, or step into a meeting, ask yourself: Who am I communicating with?

What do they already know? What do they care about? What do they need to hear—not what do I need to say?

As communicators, it's tempting to start with our own perspective: what we want to share, the details we think are important. But effective communication begins with empathy.

When I teach this to my MBA students, I often remind them: if you're presenting to your project sponsor, that's one audience. But at your final presentation, you might have ten new people in the room—the sponsor's boss, colleagues, maybe other stakeholders.

You need to know who those people are and what matters to them.

At work, the same principle applies. A CFO and a Head of Marketing might look at the same data and see completely different stories. If you haven't thought about your audience, you're leaving understanding—and influence—up to chance.

So before you even open PowerPoint or start writing, take five minutes to analyze your audience. Who are they? What's their level of expertise? What are they motivated by? And how do they prefer to receive information—visually, verbally, through numbers, through stories?

That's the first step: know your audience.

Next is "I"—Intent.

Intent is your purpose. It's your North Star.

What do you want your audience to do, say, or think after you communicate?

It sounds simple, but this is where so many messages go off course.

If you don't know your intent, you can't design your message.

Do you want approval? Understanding? Action? Alignment?

Think of intent as the destination for your message. You can't land the plane if you don't know where the runway is.

When I talk with students about this, I often use an example:

Imagine your boss calls you at 5:30 in the morning about a project problem. You're half-awake and you start talking before you've thought through what you want to say. That's when our thinking outruns our speaking—and that's when we say things we wish we hadn't.

Intent brings focus.

Before responding, pause. Take a breath. Ask yourself: What outcome am I trying to achieve here?

The most confident communicators don't speak first—they think first.

So that's step two: be intentional about your purpose.

Finally, the "M"—Message.

Only after you understand your audience and your intent can you craft the right message.

Too often, we do this backwards. We start by writing the email, designing the slide deck, or outlining the talk—and then try to retrofit it to the audience.

But when you've done the first two steps, your message becomes sharper and simpler. You know what to include—and, just as importantly, what to leave out.

This is where clarity, concision, and structure come in. Every message should have a clear beginning, middle, and end. As I tell my students, "If you can't say what you're trying to say in one iPhone screen of text, it's probably too long."

And remember the ABCs of communication: Active, Brief, and Clear.

Active—use direct, strong language.

Brief—say only what's necessary.

Clear—make sure there's no ambiguity about your point.

The message isn't just what you say, it's also how you say it: the tone, the channel, the timing, even the visuals you use to reinforce your point. Sometimes the best message is a phone call instead of a Slack message. Sometimes it's a short memo instead of a slide deck. The medium is part of the message.

So that's the AIM framework:

Audience, Intent, Message.

It's deceptively simple—but that's its power.

When you apply AIM before every important communication, you'll find that your writing becomes tighter, your presentations more persuasive, and your meetings more productive.

You'll waste less time explaining and more time connecting.

So next time you sit down to prepare a talk, an email, or a meeting agenda—stop and ask yourself three questions:

Who am I talking to?

Why am I talking to them?

And what's the clearest way to get them to act?

That's AIM in action—and it's the foundation of every great communicator.

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On this episode, I talk about something that comes up all the time in my coaching sessions with MBA students—and that’s networking. I've talked about it before on the podcast on episode 1202 "Reframe the way you think about networking and asking for help" I'll drop a link in the show notes. I encourage you to go back and give that one a listen.

As generative AI has proliferated on both sides of the job search with candidates using it to submit more and more customized applications, and recruiters using it to filter through piles of hundreds or thousands of applicants, relationships are once again increasingly important in learning about opportunities before they are public, and securing interview invites.

So many job seekers have what I call the hunter/gatherer mindset in their job search: they scour job boards for opportunities, and submit applications. I would encourage anyone in an active job search -- or anyone who thinks they might be in an active job search in the next 6 to 18 months, to adopt what I call the gardener mindset.

Let’s dig in. (no pun intended)

If you’re like many MBA students—or honestly, professionals at any stage—you may have a complicated relationship with networking.

You know you’re supposed to do it. You’ve heard it's important.

But maybe it feels awkward. Transactional. A little sleezy even. I picture Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho with his heavy-bond embossed business card.

Maybe you don’t want to “bother” people. Or maybe you're waiting until you have a clear goal or ask before reaching out.

I get it. That hesitation is totally normal.

But here’s the thing—networking is not a one-time transaction. It’s not about reaching out only when you need something. It’s not just about collecting contacts on linkedin like pokemon cards.

Networking—effective, sustainable, authentic networking—is about building relationships over time.

That’s where the gardener mindset comes in.

Imagine you're a gardener.

You don’t just toss seeds into the dirt one day and expect to harvest a salad the next.

You prepare the soil. You plant a variety of seeds. You water them. You protect them from frost. You wait. You come back to check on them. Sometimes they sprout. Sometimes they don’t. Different plants mature on different schedules. Some may require years before you are ready to harvest anything.

The same is true for relationships in your professional life.

When you meet someone at an event, or reach out for a coffee chat—you’re planting a seed. Having that conversation is watering it.

Following up with an authentic note is watering it.

Another follow up after you took some advice they gave you… is watering it

Sharing an article or podcast with them, or an update on your journey—that’s watering it.

When you refer someone else to them, or cheer on their LinkedIn update—that’s tending the garden.

You’re not always sure which seeds will grow or when they’ll bloom. But if you keep showing up, nurturing those relationships, you’ll start to see the garden take shape.

And here’s the beautiful thing: relationships compound over time.

Opportunities, referrals, mentorship—they often emerge from the people you’ve been in touch with for years, not just weeks. But you have to invest in those relationships before you “need” them.

So how do you network like a gardener?

It's like the old saying, when's the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago. When's the second best time? Today. So Here are a few quick tips:

1. Start early. Plant the seeds now. Just like a health garden will be diverse, you need a diverse strategy: reach out to current contacts, reconnect with old contacts, attend events to make new contacts.
2. Be curious, not transactional. Ask questions about their path. Their decision points. What they’ve learned. I love Steve Dalton's TIARA framework for informational interviews, that stands for asking questions about Trends, Insights, Advice, Recommendations, and Assignments they are working on. Listen to my conversation with Steven, I'll drop a link in the show notes.
3. Follow up thoughtfully. A quick note saying “Thanks again, I found your advice helpful” and specifically name what was helpful! A personal message -- it doesn't have to be long -- will go a long way.
4. Give back when you can. Share an article. Introduce someone. Celebrate their wins. Ask them if there is anything you can do for them in return. That kind of reciprocity can build rapport.
5. Track your outreach. Not to be mechanical—but to stay organized. Relationships grow with attention. Especially when you are in a more active phase of your search, develop a system for tracking your contacts. This can be as simple as a spreadsheet, or something more robust like a CRM.

Networking isn’t about having the perfect pitch--or heavy bond, embossed business card. It’s about building trust, credibility, and rapport.

It’s about investing in people and communities over time—knowing that some of those relationships will blossom into opportunities in ways you can’t predict right now.

So as you move through your MBA, or any career transition, I invite you to think like a gardener.

Be patient. Be intentional. Keep planting. Keep watering.

And trust that the harvest will come.

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On this episode, I speak with Lorraine Rise, career coach, founder and CEO of Career UpRising and host of the Career UpRising podcast. With a background in federal recruiting, Lorraine has spent a decade empowering mid- and late-career professionals through career pivots and values-driven job searches.

We explore:

1. Redefining Networking Learn how shifting from transactional outreach to authentic relationship-building can unlock access to the hidden job market—especially valuable for MBA students and early-career professionals.
2. Values‑Driven Job Search Lorraine shares her framework for aligning job searches with personal values and company culture—essential for sustained career satisfaction and resilience.
3. Smart Use of Generative AI in The Career Search and Preparation From using tools like Perplexity for in-depth employer research to leveraging AI-enabled editing tools (not full writing), Lorraine explains how to stay human and personalized in your job applications.

🗝️ Top Takeaways * Cultivate Deep Networks Investing in meaningful relationships leads to job opportunities that don’t appear on public platforms. * Anchor Your Career in Purpose A values-aligned job search ensures long-term engagement and less burnout. * Augment with AI, Don’t Automate Use tools like Perplexity to research roles and AI editors to refine application materials—while preserving your unique voice

🔗 Resources & Links * Career UpRising Podcast – Lorraine’s podcast, and my appearance on her show. * Career UpRising Website * Lorraine on LinkedIn * Perplexity AI

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It’s May, and for many of you, that means graduation. Whether you’re finishing your MBA or completing another academic journey, this is a moment filled with possibility—and uncertainty. Especially in today’s job market, it’s natural to feel some anxiety about what comes next.

To support you in your job search, I want to point you to a few episodes from the back catalog that offer practical tools and strategies to help you navigate this transition.

First up: Steve Dalton, author of The 2-Hour Job Search. In our conversation, he breaks down a step-by-step approach to landing interviews efficiently—even in a tough market.

If you’re looking to up your LinkedIn game, check out my interview with Jeremy Schifeling, co-author of Linked: Conquer LinkedIn, Get Your Dream Job, Own Your Future. He shares insider tips from his time at LinkedIn and how to stand out online.

Jeremy also returned to the podcast more recently to talk about how job seekers can use generative AI tools like ChatGPT to improve résumés, write better outreach messages, and streamline the job search.

Along those lines, Ryan Dickerson, an executive career coach, joined me to discuss how AI can support career transitions, especially for experienced professionals looking to pivot or reenter the workforce.

And finally, don’t miss my conversation with Priyanka Natrajan, a Foster MBA who used the AI-powered platform Yoodli to practice for internship interviews. It's a great example of how technology can help you build confidence and polish your communication skills.

You can find all these episodes at conversationsoncareers.com or by searching for Conversations on Careers and Professional Life in your favorite podcast app.

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Episode Summary: Navigating Career Transitions with Ryan Dickerson In this episode of Conversations on Careers and Professional Life, I speak with Ryan Dickerson, founder of Good Fit Careers, about his innovative approach to career coaching. Ryan leverages generative AI tools like ChatGPT to help executives craft compelling resumes, prepare for interviews, and navigate career transitions. The conversation covers the importance of patience during job searches, building empathy for hiring managers, and the power of relational networking over transactional interactions.

Ryan also shares his strategies for reframing career narratives to highlight problem-solving abilities and deliverables, rather than simply focusing on personal achievements. Additionally, the episode delves into how AI assists Ryan’s coaching process, helping clients break down their professional journeys into actionable, digestible insights.

Key Topics: * AI-powered career coaching and resume optimization * The value and importance of patience in career transitions * Developing empathy for hiring managers * Reframing career narratives * Effective networking: Relational vs. transactional approaches * Preparing for interviews by focusing on concrete outcomes

Resources Mentioned:

• Good Fit Careers For Ryan's Coaching practice and podcast
• Follow Ryan on LinkedIn
• Tools: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity.ai
  • Listen to my conversation with Jeremy Schifeling, founder of the Job Search Insiders, about using AI in the career search.
• Networking guides: The 2-Hour Job Search and The 20-Minute Networking Meeting
  • Listen to my conversations with Steve Dalton about the 2-Hour Job Search

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In this episode of Conversations on Careers and Professional Life, I share some advice on reframing how you think about “networking” and asking for help.

• Move beyond the idea of collecting contacts
• Focus on building genuine relationships and learning from others
• Nurture connections over time for mutual benefit
• Understand that asking for help can actually benefit the person helping you
• Overcome the fear of being a burden when seeking assistance
• Strengthen relationships by showing trust and vulnerability
• Recognize that your network includes all communities you're part of
• Look for professional opportunities in unexpected places (e.g., school events, volunteer activities)

"Real networking is about building relationships. It's about getting to know people, learning from them, and creating genuine connections."

Action Steps for Listeners

• Reflect on recent interactions: What can you learn from someone you've met recently? What could you offer them?
• Practice asking for help: Reach out to someone in your network for assistance this week
• Map your communities: List all the different groups you're a part of and consider how they might connect to your professional life

Check out out the books, Designing Your Life or Designing Your Work Life by Bill Burnet and Dave Evans, All You Have to Do is Ask by Wayne Baker, and Give and Take by Adam Grant.

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Leveraging Generative AI in Your Career Search with Jeremy Schifeling

Jeremy Schifeling, founder of The Job Insiders and author of Career Coach GPT and Linked: Conquer LinkedIn, Get Your Dream Job, Own Your Future shares his insights on how job seekers can leverage generative AI tools like ChatGPT in the job search process.

Jeremy and I have known each other for seven years and recently co-presented a session at the Career Services Employer Alliance Global Conference on how graduate business school career services can leverage generative AI in their work.

In this episode, Jeremy returns for a second conversation to discuss how business school students, job seekers, and professionals can use AI to tailor their resumes, cover letters, and interview prep, while staying authentic in their communication. Listen to my first conversation with Jeremy about his book, Linked, from May 2022.

Key Takeaways:

1. Get Hands-On with Generative AI: Jeremy emphasizes that AI tools like ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, Gemini and Copilot are easy to use, even for non-technical individuals. By interacting with these platforms, job seekers can quickly familiarize themselves with their capabilities—whether for refining resumes, helping to draft cover letters, or even brainstorming career paths based on personality tests like Myers-Briggs or CliftonStrengths.
2. Crafting Effective Prompts: Jeremy and talk about the importance of specificity in AI prompts as well as using meta prompting techniques. While a generic prompt like "write a cover letter" might yield basic results, being more precise—such as asking for insights into missing keywords or requesting tailored interview questions based on a job description—will lead to better outcomes. He also encourages users to iteratively refine outputs, ensuring the final result feels authentic and personalized.
3. Beyond Job Searching—Building Long-Term Skills: The skills you develop using generative AI tools can extend to developing AI literacy that is rapidly becoming a key asset in many industries. Understanding how to harness these tools for tasks like data analysis or marketing can make professionals more competitive in the long run.

Practical AI Tools and Strategies:

• Role-Playing Interviews with ChatGPT: Use AI to simulate job interviews, ask follow-up questions, and even offer feedback on your responses, preparing you for tough, real-life interview scenarios.
• Mining Job Descriptions for Insights: Paste multiple job descriptions into AI tools to uncover common skills, which can help you craft a LinkedIn profile that resonates across different career paths.
• Maintaining Authenticity: While AI can help draft resumes and cover letters, Jeremy advises against over-reliance on AI-generated content. Ensuring your voice comes through is essential, as recruiters are becoming savvy to AI-generated applications. Craft prompts that include your first drafts, or career highlights, feed your final drafts back into the chat so the bot can learn from the changes you make.

Resources Mentioned:

• ChatGPT
• Books by Jeremy Schifeling:
• Career Coach GPT

• Linked: Conquer LinkedIn, Get Your Dream Job, Own Your Future

• Ethan Mollick’s book "Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI"

• Yoodli for interview preparation.

Where to Find Jeremy Schifeling:

• Website: The Job Insiders (UW Foster MBA students get free lifetime access to Jeremy’s Masterclass Library)
• LinkedIn: Jeremy Schifeling

Listen Now and learn how to enhance your job search and career development with the power of generative AI!

For more episodes and show notes, visit Conversations on Careers and Professional Life. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or your preferred platform!

#JobSearchTips #AIinCareers #GenerativeAI #CareerDevelopment #MBACareers #LinkedInTips #AIForJobSearch #InterviewPrep #BusinessSchool

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In this special live episode recorded as part of #PNWClimateWeek and the Bloomberg Green Festival at the KEXP Gathering Space, Gregory Heller and Jonathan Azoff sit down with Lauren Selig, a film producer, investor, entrepreneur, and board member of the XPRIZE Foundation. , Lauren shares her journey from journalism to film production and investment, highlighting the importance of intuition, mentorship, and environmental consciousness in her diverse career. Tune in to discover how Lauren’s innovative projects are making a significant impact on climate tech and sustainability.

• Shake and Bake Productions
• XPRIZE Foundation
• Vaxxinity
• Colossal
• Pacific Northwest Climate Week, Climate Capitalism author Talk with Akshat Rathi and UW Foster Dean Frank Hodge
• Bloomberg Green Festival

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In this episode we continue our conversation with Adital Ella, founder of Criaterra Earth Technologies. Adital shares valuable advice for those aspiring to enter the climate tech industry, drawing from her own experiences as an entrepreneur and innovator.

Key points discussed:

• How to approach climate tech companies as a job seeker, even without a scientific background
• The importance of demonstrating genuine passion and alignment with a company's mission
• Strategies for growth within an organization, including starting in junior roles and working up
• Adital's personal journey from industrial design student to climate tech entrepreneur
• The value of following one's intuition and inner calling in career decisions
• Balancing innovation and business acumen in a growing climate tech company

Adital's story provides a roadmap for those looking to make a meaningful impact in the fight against climate change. She emphasizes the importance of authenticity, collaboration, and personal growth in building a successful career in this rapidly evolving field.

This episode offers invaluable insights for anyone considering a career shift into climate tech, as well as entrepreneurs looking to build and scale sustainable businesses. Adital's experiences highlight the unique challenges and rewards of working at the intersection of innovation, sustainability, and business.

This episode is made possible in part with support from SNØCAP.vc.

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In this episode, we talk with Adital Ella, founder of Criaterra Earth Technologies, an Israeli company pioneering sustainable, low carbob building materials. Adital shares her journey from sustainable furniture designer to climate tech entrepreneur, offering insights into the development of Criaterra's beautiful and sustainable tiles and building materials.

Key points discussed:

• Criaterra's innovative building material, which sequesters carbon and reduces energy use by up to 82% compared to traditional manufacturing processes
• The importance of balancing environmental benefits with aesthetics and market appeal in sustainable product design
• Challenges and strategies for scaling a climate-focused building materials company
• Advice for aspiring climate tech entrepreneurs on navigating the business and investment landscape

Adital's story highlights the potential for design-driven innovation in addressing climate change, demonstrating how creative thinking can lead to practical solutions for reducing the construction industry's carbon footprint.

Whether you're interested in sustainable architecture, climate tech entrepreneurship, or the future of green building materials, this episode offers valuable insights into the intersection of design, sustainability, and business in the fight against climate change.

This is part 1 of a 2-part conversation. In part 2, Adital offers more advice on pursuing a career in sustainability.

This episode is made possible in part with support from SNØCAP.vc.

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In the second part of the conversation, Scott Case, co-founder and CEO of Recurrent shares his career journey and lessons learned. Scott has worked at small companies, big companies, and started two companies himself. He shares some lessons learned at his first startup, EnergySavvy.

Scott then offers advice for people looking to enter the clean technology or energy revolution space. He suggests that recent graduates should gain experience by working for a large company in the industry they want to decarbonize, learn about the processes, and then identify high-leverage ways to disrupt the industry through a startup.

For those who prefer working at a startup right away, Scott recommends finding a small company where they can make a significant impact, learning about the company and how they can add value. He also shares the qualities he looks for when hiring, such as adaptability and a willingness to take on various roles.

This episode is made possible in part with support from SNØCAP.vc.

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Gregory Heller and Jonathan Azoff talk with Scott Case, the co-founder and CEO of Recurrent, a Seattle-based startup that offers independent evaluations of used electric vehicle batteries. Case discusses his journey as a second-time entrepreneur, having previously founded Energy Savvy, a company that helped energy utilities connect with customers for home energy efficiency upgrades.

Case explains that Recurrent was founded in June 2020 to address the growing need for transparency in the used electric vehicle (EV) market. As more EVs enter the used car market, buyers are increasingly concerned about battery health and range. Recurrent's product aims to provide answers to these questions by analyzing data from connected EVs and comparing it to a large sample of similar vehicles.

This episode is made possible in part with support from SNØCAP.vc.

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In the second part of the conversation, Josh Mastromatto, co-founder of Rego, shares insights on how his experience as an athlete has shaped his approach to building a startup. He emphasizes the importance of focusing on what you can control, learning quickly, and surrounding yourself with people who can help you improve. Josh shares what he looks for an values when hiring. As a first-time founder, Josh's biggest learning curve was navigating the fundraising process, and he shares the importance of reaching out to experts, identifying patterns, and continuously acquiring knowledge through books and audiobooks tailored to the current stage of the business. This is part 2 of a conversation with Josh Mastromatto. Find part 1 in the podcast feed.

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In this episode of "Conversations on Careers in Climate Tech," Gregory Heller and Jonathan Azoff are joined by Josh Mastromatto, co-founder of Rego, a startup addressing waste management in urban apartment buildings during move-out periods. Rego aims to reduce waste by diverting discarded items from landfills to more sustainable destinations where they can be reused. Part 1 of a this two part discussion covers the the inspiration behind the startup, the pivot from their original idea, fundraising and growth. Josh also shares the challenges of being a first-time founder and the support received from accelerators. The episode concludes with insights into Rego's potential growth and impact on sustainability in waste management.

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Gregory Heller and co-host Jonathan Azoff continue their conversation with Steven Zhang, the founder of ClimateTechList.com, a comprehensive job site dedicated to climate technology roles for both technical and non-technical professionals.

Gregory, Jonathan and Steven discuss strategies for job seekers aiming to enter the climate tech industry. They talk about Fred Wilson’s “bits versus atoms” framework, emphasize systems thinking, and explore the sector’s diverse roles. The conversation highlights the need for a systematic job search approach, the value of networking, and the importance of aligning personal values with career choices. They also discuss leveraging one’s current position for environmental initiatives and provide resources for job seekers. The episode is a resourceful guide for those looking to make an impact in the climate tech space.

Also mentioned in this conversation:

• WorkOnClimate.org
• Project Drawdown’s Climate Solutions At Work / Every Job Is A Climate Job resources

This is the second part of a two part conversation. This first part focuses on Steven’s journey to creating ClimateTechList.com. You may want to listen to the first part before this.

The Conversations on Careers in Climate Tech mini series is made possible in part with support from SNØCAP.vc.

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On this episode first episode of the “Conversations on Careers in Climate Tech” mini series, Gregory Heller and co-host Jonathan Azoff speak with Steven Zhang, the founder of ClimateTechList.com, a comprehensive job site dedicated to climate technology roles for both technical and non-technical professionals.

We explore what drove Steven to create the listing, the technology behind it, and how he orchestrated his own pivot to working in climate tech. Steven talks about the importance of networking and informational interviews to map out the industry landscape. We cover the complexities of the climate tech job market, where job titles aren’t as standard is in more established industries.

This is part 1 of a 2 part conversation. This first part focuses on Steven’s journey to creating ClimateTechList.com. Part 2 includes more advice to jobs seekers.

The Conversations on Careers in Climate Tech mini series is made possible in part with support from SNØCAP.vc.

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In this episode I am joined by cohost Jonathan Azoff of SNØCAP, and we talk with Gabriel Scheer, Director of Innovation for Mobility and Energy at ElementalExcelerator. Recorded on December 12th, 2023, the conversation covers Gabriel's fresh insights from his first attendance at COP28, offering valuable perspectives for MBA students and professionals interested in climate innovation and sustainable careers.

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Gregory Heller speaks with Jonathan Azoff, an experienced tech leader who transitioned into a mentor and investor role with a focus on sustainability. Jonathan is a GP at SNØCAP a VC firm that invests in early-stage, profit-oriented platforms that directly and indirectly solve the climate crisis. Jonathan's journey began with a strong interest in environmentalism and computing in high school, leading him to Silicon Valley. He worked in various tech companies like Disney, Zillow, and WeWork before moving into roles more aligned with his passion for sustainability, including involvement in a nonprofit focused on agriculture, food systems, and waste systems. Jonathan talks about the intersection of technology, sustainability, and business, emphasizing the importance of grit, luck, and a strong business foundation in successful ventures, especially in the evolving field of climate tech.

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Gregory Heller interviews Alexandra Iljadica, an investor with BHP Ventures, in this episode of "Conversations on Careers and Professional Life." Alexandra discusses her journey from running a youth-focused nonprofit in Australia to becoming a key figure in venture capital with a focus on sustainability. She talks about her path through various roles, including setting up the 5G Innovation Lab at T-Mobile, and emphasizes the importance of networking and relationship-building in career progression.

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On this episode, Gregory Heller interviews David Woodson, the Executive Director for Campus Energy Utilities and Operations at the University of Washington. Woodson shares his journey from and undergraduate at UW to his current role as leader in sustainability with a proven record of making an impact. David highlighted the importance of being adaptable and ready to learn in any job. His journey exemplifies the value of being open to various roles and responsibilities, which can lead to unforeseen career paths.

David mentioned two books during our conversation:

• The Goal
• Leadership Moments

He also the International District Energy Association as a resource for anyone interested in sustainability at the district or campus level.

Learn more about David and the work he is doing on the University Of Washington campus in Seattle. Find out more about sustainability on the UW Campus here.

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Gregory talks with Charlie Donovan, a visiting professor of sustainable finance at the Foster School of Business. The discussion revolves around the integration of climate change and sustainability into finance and business education, drawing on Donovan's experience in teaching and in the industry. Key topics include the importance of understanding climate risks in finance, the transformation of industries due to climate change, the skills gap in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing, and sustainable finance. The episode also covers a student study tour to Costa Rica led by Donovan, focusing on sustainability efforts and community-led development.

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This episode features a conversation with Angela Shelley, the Assistant Director of MBA Global Programs at the Foster School of Business Global Business Center. We had an enlightening discussion about the global study tour program at the Foster School of Business, its objectives, and the transformative impact it has on students' career trajectories.

Learn more about the Global Business Center, and the MBA Global Programs.

The Global Study Tour Program: An Overview The global study tour program is an innovative initiative designed to expose MBA students to global business. The program takes students on a two-week journey to different countries, immersing them in local businesses and cultural experiences. These tours are led by faculty members, often accompanied by a staff member, and offer pre-departure sessions to equip students with necessary information and preparation for the trip.

These sessions cover a wide range of topics, from culture and history to the nuances of doing business in the destination country. While the study tours are optional for credits, they can fulfill requirements for the international perspective, the global business program certificate, and some ESG specializations.

The Study Tour Destinations: A Changing Landscape The locations of the study tours change every year, with two exceptions. The Asian Capital Markets course includes a study tour to China and Japan every other year. The Global Consulting India project happens annually, providing consulting services to the Self Employed Women's Association in India. This consulting experience extends beyond the trip, as students continue to work on their projects both in India and back home in Seattle.

The Impact of Study Tours on Career Trajectories Angela shared some insightful observations about the impact of study tours on students' career trajectories. While she didn't have specific stories to share, she noted a recurring theme of students being inspired to do more in global business after participating in study tours.

For instance, some students have shifted their thinking about sustainability, realizing that it should be implemented from the beginning rather than added on later. Angela also shared about a student who was inspired to pursue a career in global business after a trip to Israel and reached out to her for guidance on how to get started.

The Global Business Program Certificate: A Gateway to Exclusive Opportunities Angela advises students to sign up for the Global Business Program Certificate, which encourages a more global experience and provides access to exclusive opportunities. She also mentioned other programs and events offered throughout the year, such as the Taiwan Business Conference and the Global Business Forum.

The Benefits and Opportunities of Participating in a Global Business Center Study Tour Angela emphasized the importance of being open to new ideas and ways of doing business. One of the main advantages of these study tours is the chance to engage with difference and gain exposure to new perspectives.

She also highlighted the networking aspect of the study tours. Students have the opportunity to form deep connections with their peers, faculty members, and professionals in the industry. These relationships can be valuable for future collaborations and career opportunities.

Preparing for a Study Tour: Angela's Advice Angela suggests being excited about engaging with difference and being open to new opportunities. She encourages students to take advantage of the network they can build during the tour and to make the most of unique experiences that may not be available in their everyday lives.

In conclusion, Angela highlights the transformative impact that study tours can have on students' personal and professional lives. She encourages interested students to reach out to her or other MBA classmates who have participated in the tours for more information.

So, if you're an MBA student looking to make the most of the study tour experience, take Angela's advice: take advantage of the opportunities available, stay connected through the Global Business Program Certificate, and be open to new perspectives and career possibilities.

The content in this post was generated using PodSqueeze.ai.

This episode was produced with editing and engineering support from Amelia Ngyuen, a student in the Communication Leadership Master Program at the University of Washington, and made possible in part with funding from SnoCap, a Venture Capital firm investing in early-stage, platforms that directly and indirectly solve the climate crisis.

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On this episode, I speak with UW Foster Class of 2024 MBA Priyanka Natrajan about how she used Yoodli.ai to help her prepare for internship interviews. Yoodli is an AI powered speech coaching platform that will record and analyze your speech, transcribe it, provide objective metrics like speed, use of filler words or week words, and can even provide AI powered suggestions for rephrasing your speech. Yoodli has specific features for practicing interview questions (either from their own question bank, or questions you provide), and will analyze your answer and can ask follow up questions.

This episode was edited and engineered with support from Amelia Nguyen, a graduate student in the UW Communications Leadership Program.

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As you navigate the challenging waters of internship and job searches, your resume and cover letter become your primary ambassadors. But what if I told you there's a tool that can give you an edge? Enter GenerativeAI. Today, we'll dive into how this technology can refine your application materials.

First off, let's talk about the basics. GenerativeAI can be a game-changer in improving the grammar and syntax of your documents. We've all been there – after hours of editing, a pesky grammatical error slips through. With GenerativeAI, those mistakes can be caught and corrected.

But it's not just about grammar. Imagine tailoring your resume's language to mirror a job description or even a company's core values. GenerativeAI can help align your documents in such a way that they resonate more deeply with your prospective employers. It's like having a personal editor who knows exactly what the company is looking for!

However, with great power comes great responsibility. It's crucial to remember that while GenerativeAI is a powerful tool, it's just that – a tool. Ethically, you must ensure that the content it generates genuinely represents your skills, experiences, and qualifications. It can be tempting to let the AI do all the heavy lifting, but authenticity is key. Your resume and cover letter should be genuine reflections of who you are and what you bring to the table.

This brings us to some potential pitfalls. GenerativeAI, as advanced as it is, can sometimes get a little... creative. It might suggest details or skills that sound impressive but aren't accurate. And like all technologies, it can sometimes exhibit biases based on the data it's been trained on. It's essential to review and vet any suggestions it makes critically.

Now, I know some of you might be wondering about the technical side of things. The good news? You don't need to be a tech whiz to leverage GenerativeAI. There are user-friendly platforms out there designed for non-techies. So, whether you're a marketing major or diving deep into finance, this tool is accessible to you.

Before we wrap up, I want to leave you with a challenge. Before you find yourself in the thick of the application season, give GenerativeAI a try. Review your resume or cover letters with it. Experiment, play around, and most importantly, learn how to prompt it effectively. The better your prompts, the more tailored and useful the AI's suggestions will be.

Remember, in today's competitive job market, every edge counts. But no tool, no matter how advanced, can replace the unique experiences, insights, and values you bring. Use GenerativeAI as a complement to your skills, not a replacement.

So, MBA students, are you ready to give your application materials a boost? Dive into the world of GenerativeAI, and let's make those resumes and cover letters shine!

This episode was written with assistance from ChatGPT 4.0, and my voice was synthesized using ElevenLabs.

AI Career Resources:

Follow Jeremy Schifeling on LinkedIn. Without a doubt, Jeremy is at the vanguard of using Generative AI for career search and prep. He is posting great content, tutorials, tools, and even wrote an e-book about using ChatGPT as your career coach.

Check out Alexandra Samuel's newsletters. This one has some great advice for using ChatGPT to write cover letters.

There are a wide variety of apps and services that have emerged for various career search related tasks from writing cover letters, to developing your resume, to preparing for interviews. I have not used any of them enough to endorse them, other than Yoodli.ai for interview prep. Listen to my podcasts with Yoodli's co-founder Varun Puri, and Yoodli user Priyanka Natrajan (coming soon).

My advice, is to start with the feely available tools from the likes of OpenAI, or Anthropic's Claude, and look for recommended prompts.

Have you tried meta prompting? (HT Matt Westgate and his book, Go Prompt Yourself), before your prompts, add, "What additional information, details or context would help you effectively run this prompt?" This will drastically up your prompting game!

Here are a few that I like to use for developing interview questions:

Act like a hiring manager interviewing a candidate for [insert job] and [company]. Our company values are [insert text from company website]. I would like you to come up with a dozen behavioral interview questions based on the following job description. [insert relevant portions of the job description].

Are you struggling with your resume?

Act like a career coach. Help me revise my resume to better match the following job description [insert job description]. Stand by for my resume. [Insert accomplishment statements from your resume]. ** My recommendation is do do this on statement at a time.

OR, as Jeremy Schifeling has shown on his videos, give chat GPT a job description, ask it to identify the job related key words in that description, then give it your resume and ask which keywords are missing. Then you can ask it to help you rewrite specific accomplishment statements using the missing keywords.

Most people don't know what to write in a cover letter. And some people think you can just say to ChatGPT, "Write me letter for the following job description." This will yield garbage. Add a meta prompt to the front, and then also include relevant information about yourself, your degrees, a few professional highlights, maybe a line or two about why you are really excited about the job. Ask your Generative AI to return a cover letter that is no more than 325 words. Then be sure to edit it. Once you have a letter you feel good about, give that back to ChatGPT so it can learn from you. Check out ALexandra Samuel's newsletter (linked above) for some great cover letter prompts.

How did I make this episode?

I prompted ChatGPT 4.0:

1. I am looking for is a plain text description of the text so I can use it to guide further writing. I don't want you to write anything other than a description of the style and voice of the text. How would you describe the style and voice of the following text sample [insert script from another podcast].
2. What additional information, context or details would you need to effectively run the following prompt? PROMPT: Using the writing style and voice that you have identified, please write a 500 word script for a podcast about how to effectively use GenerativeAI to improve cover letters and resumes.
3. I answered the 8 questions ChatGPT provided, which yielded the following prompt:
4. Using the direct, prescriptive, analytical, conversational, structured, credible, and empathetic writing style and voice identified earlier, craft a 500-word script for a 6 to 10-minute podcast aimed at MBA students engaged in an internship or job search. The podcast should focus on how to effectively use GenerativeAI to improve cover letters and resumes. Highlight the capabilities of GenerativeAI in improving grammar and syntax, as well as aligning language with that of a job description or a company's values/principles. Address the ethical considerations, emphasizing the importance of ensuring that the AI-generated content accurately reflects the individual's genuine work experience, skills, and qualifications. Discuss the potential pitfalls, such as the AI's tendency to fabricate information or exhibit biases. Conclude with a call to action, encouraging listeners to experiment with GenerativeAI for their resume or cover letter reviews and emphasizing the importance of refining their prompts to obtain optimal results.
5. I ran the prompt, took the script, did some light editing, and then fed it into ElevenLabs where I had already created a voice clone using some podcast monologues I'd already recorded and released.

The video above was generated using HeyGen, after using Insight FaceSwap to swap my face onto a still image from MaxHeadroom.

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On this episode, I speak with Sean Dew, Foster MBA Class of 2024, about his experience as a ClimateCAP Fellow. ClimateCAP is an organization that focuses on sustainability in business and the MBA program experience across MBA programs. ClimateCAP also hosts an annual conference that brings together MBA students and alumni to discuss various topics related to climate change and business.

The fellowship provides support for sustainability projects and fosters a sense of community- among the fellows. Sean’s project involves installing solar-powered refrigeration units in homes in the Hopi and Navajo Nation. The fellowship has helped Sean grow his network with other Fellows and by attending a related energy conference in Boulder, CO.

Applications for the next cohort of the ClimateCAP fellowship are open now through November 1st at 5PM EST. You can learn more about the ClimateCAP Fellowship and the ClimateCAP summit at ClimateCAP.org

Some other resources we mentioned during out conversation:

• MBA-Edge (and Fuqua’s EDGE Center)
• Bloomberg Green
• Canary Media
• Book: Savages, by Joe Kane
• PNW Climate Week
• WorkOnClimate.org

Find more episodes on Careers in Sustainability and Impact.

Are you looking for a job in Climate Tech? Check out the ClimateTechList.

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On this episode, I speak with Varun Puri, Co-Founder of Yoodli.ai. I'm a big fan of Yoodli and have been using it basically since the day it became available. Many of my students in the MBA program are using it to practice for job interviews and other presentations. Full disclosure, I'm on the Yoodli Speech Coaches Advisory Board. I receive no compensation for this. I do it because I believe in the product and the power of public speaking skills to improve people's career opportunities.

Born and raised in India, Varun moved to the US for college and later joined Google. At Google, he wore many hats, from running special projects for Sergey Brin to being a product manager at Google X. Despite his fulfilling career at Google, Varun's passion for his innovative idea led him to take a leap of faith and start Yoodli.ai.

Yoodli.ai is an AI-powered speech coach that provides real-time feedback on speaking skills. It focuses on three key areas: delivery, content, and peer collaboration. As Varun demonstrated during our podcast interview, Yoodli.ai can alert users in real-time to adjust their speaking pace.

The platform has received an overwhelming response, with users worldwide comparing it to Grammarly and Duolingo for speech coaching. This comparison underscores Yoodli.ai's effectiveness in enhancing speaking skills.

Yoodli.ai has developed an everyday communication coach feature. This feature, available as an app, can be installed on a computer and used during calls. It provides real-time feedback on speaking habits, such as speaking too quickly or for too long. This feature allows users to improve their communication skills without having to set aside dedicated practice time.

Varun draws inspiration from fitness apps like Apple Health, which encourage progress in everyday activities, and aims to do the same for speaking.

Making Public Speaking Fun and Engaging

Yoodli.ai also incorporates games to make the learning experience fun and engaging. The goal is to demystify public speaking and make it enjoyable, much like improv games.

Varun and I discussed the importance of practice in feeling comfortable and confident when it comes to public speaking and storytelling. Yoodli.ai provides “exposure therapy” and low-risk practice opportunities for individuals to improve their communication skills.

Varun emphasized that mid-career professionals, particularly those seeking promotions or leadership roles, can benefit greatly from the platform. He shared examples of users who have found success with Yoodli, including a non-native English speaker looking to improve their confidence in meetings.

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Music is Arps by Chad Crouch with permission under Creative Commons License

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I speak with Class of 2022 Foster MBA grad, Xiajin "XJ" Cai. XJ is originally from China, and started her MBA at Foster in the Fall of 2020, while classes and most activities were being conducted remotely. I was impressed with the way she engaged not only in the Foster community, through clubs, and recruiting activities, but also participated in case competitions beyond Foster. I wanted to have her on the show to talk about her experiences as an international student, how she handled internship and full time recruiting, and the experience and skills she gained through case competitions.

• Learn SQL or other programming languages with online education sites like Coursera, EdX, or OpenCourseWare from MIT
• The After Hours podcast from the Ted Radio Collective
• Look for resources on mock interviews, case interviews, google mock interviews + consulting firm name, find videos about how they are conducted.
• AT&T She Counts case competition, read about XJ and her teammate on the Foster Blog
• MyVisaJobs.com and H1BGrader.com to find companies that have sponsored H1B Visas previously.

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In late 2022, I had the opportunity to speak with four Foster School of Business MBA Alumni who are now on the other side of the interview table about what they are listening for from candidates in behavioral interviews.

This episode features:

• Adam Schmidt at Accenture
• Sam Ead at Google
• Claire Herting at Walmart
• Skyler Brown at Goldman Sachs

I talked to each one separately, but as you will hear, in this compilation of their answers -- across industries and roles, there are some very clear trends: authenticity, enthusiasm, preparation.

For more advice on preparing for internship interviews and job interviews, check out more episodes with interview tips.

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Photo by Blondinrikard Fröberg on Flickr under CC by/2.0 As a job candidate, it’s up to you to shine the spotlight on the skills and experiences you've had that are relevant to the job or company you are interviewing for. Too often, candidates prepare scripted answers and don't adapt them to the specific interview questions, company or interviewer. On this episode, I share some advice on effectively communicating during job interviews.

Take a moment It is not enough to have a dozen well-rehearsed stories that illustrate examples in response to the interview questions you anticipate. Invariably, you will get asked a question that you haven’t prepared for. In a few seconds you will have to decide which story fits the question best and start your answer. The danger is that you will tell the story as you've prepared it without tailoring it to your audience or the exact question. Interviewers remember when a response doesn't answer their question. But they don’t remember that you took an extra few seconds before starting your response.

Focus on what your audience wants to hear The AIM framework from Lynn Russell and Mary Munter is a great tool to employ when preparing any communication, including job interview responses. The acronym stands for Audience, Intent, Message. The audience is the person or people receiving the communication. The intent is both your intent: what you want to happen, and the intent you want to create in your audience. The message is both the delivery mechanism and the content.

When preparing for any interview, take the time to really think about your audience. Are you speaking with the recruiter, or the hiring manager? These are two different audiences, and your intent will be different. For the recruiter, your intent is to communicate that you are a strong candidate with relevant skills; you want to advance to the next round of interviews. The recruiter needs to believe that you are the right choice for the role she is trying to fill. For the hiring manager, your intent is to communicate that you have the relevant skills, right fit with the team, and ability to do the job; in this case, you want to get the offer. The hiring manager needs to believe that you are capable of doing the job, fitting in with the team, and growing to be a valuable asset to the company.

Start with “the end in mind” Reminding yourself of your intent before preparing, and before your actual performance (the interview) will help you shine the spotlight on the right facets of your experiences and respond appropriately to questions that you did not expect.

This starts with the most common interview question: Tell me about yourself. The interviewer wants to know just the relevant details about what you've done that led you to this company and this role at this moment. For example, the fact that you used to build Contact Relationship Management systems for nonprofit organizations may have nothing to do with the work you do today. Your ability to analyze voter data and cut turf for political canvassers? Irrelevant. Scrum Master and Scrum Product Owner certifications? Who cares. But throughout your career, maybe you’ve always been committed to helping the people around you and your clients communicate more effectively. BINGO. I might be talking about myself here...

When answering behavioral interview questions ("Tell me about a time when…") don't get sucked into the trap of sharing a very procedural (and generic) explanation of the situation, and what you did filled with every detail you can think of. Think about your intent: why are you telling this story? What does it demonstrate about how you think and work? What skill or competency does it demonstrate that is relevant to the role or company you are interviewing for?

It’s all about structure and focus And remember that the human you are talking to is hardwired to look for structure. Stories have a beginning, middle and end. Gustav Freytag mapped out the classic narrative arch: Introduction, Initial incident, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, Resolution, Denouement over 160 years ago. People retain structured information 40% more reliably and accurately than information that is not structured.

When you are answering a question, make sure that the content fits into a structure and is relevant to the audience and the question. There are many interview answer structures or frameworks: STAR is the most common: Situation Task Action Result, but I like CAR: Context (or Challenge) Action Result. These are not the only two that are out there: sometimes you want to add a learning or a take-away (CARL or CART) at the end, or a summary at the beginning (SCAR).

Consider the level of detail, language and analogies that may be relevant to your audience. For example: if you are interviewing for a data analytics role, you might focus on the part of the story where you extracted insights from data. If you are interviewing for a role that focuses on interaction with customers and clients, you might focus on that part of the story where you determined what your client (internal or external) really wanted to know from the data and how you delivered the insights on-time. If you are interviewing for a role that requires cross functional collaboration, you might focus on how you worked with multiple teams to pull together the dataset you needed.

Think of these as different facets of a multi sided die. The die is the experience or story, but depending on what question you are asked and what role you are interviewing for, you will expose different facets.

That’s how you can shine the spotlight on the parts of your experience that are most relevant to your audience and, ultimately, land the job!

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Leadership Coach Melissa Schneider graduated from the Sloan School of Management at MIT with her MBA during the Global Financial Crisis. On this episode, she talks about the power of her network in charting her career path from Product Manager or Marketing Executive at Intuit, LinkedIn and GoDaddy before changing careers into coaching. Learn more about Melissa Schneider and her coaching practice at https://melissaschneider.co/

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My sleep hasn't been great for years. I never have trouble falling asleep, but I wake after about 5 hours and then have trouble getting back to sleep. I average about 7 hours of sleep a night, sometimes more, sometimes less (an improvement over a few years ago). A few years back, after hearing author Matt Walker talk about his book, Why We Sleep on a podcast (watch his TED Talk), I went down the rabbit hole (not for the first time) on ways to improve my sleep. I'm happy to report, that it many ways, it has gotten better and my relationship to sleep has as well. I write this as a preface for why the topic of this episode is so important to me. Sleep is important for mental and physical health, and for the quality of our work product, our relationships, and the broader work environment as we'll here from my guest, Professor Christopher Barnes.

Christopher Barnes is a Professor of Management and the Michael G. Foster Endowed Professor of Management at the Foster School of Business. His recent research over the past few years focuses on sleep and its impact on work, ethics, decision making and work place engagement. His research has been featured in the Foster Business Magazine, Harvard Business Review, and a TEDx Talk

I've long wanted to have Professor Barnes on the podcast, somewhat selfishly, because of my own interest in -- and challenges with sleep. In April of 2022, I invited him to present to faculty and staff as part of my work on the Health, Wellness and Professional Development Committee at Foster, and after that, I knew I what he had to say would be important to my listeners.

We discussed how sleep hygiene can improve sleep:

• Stick to a schedule for wake time and bed time.
• Avoid alcohol, caffein and nicotine too close to be time, up to 12 hours prior for caffein.
• Use your bed for just two things, sleep and sex.
• Don't stare into your smart device screen before bedtime,
• We briefly touch on his research on Blue-light filtering glasses, and we discussed one reputable supplier, Swanwick Sleep.
• I'll add: keep your bedroom dark and cool. Consider lowering the lighting in your house in the hour or two before bed
• Get bright (preferably natural) light upon waking. For those of us in the PNW, you might want to get a "happy light" for these dark winter months, and use it for 20 minutes upon waking. (I have one from Verilux.)

Some other important resources:

If you suffer from insomnia or sleeplessness, the best experts now recommend avoiding sleeping pills. From my reading, the jury is out on Melatonin except at low doses for short periods of time (like around dealing with a time change). One reason why sedatives and melatonin aren't great is that while they will bring on sleep, they disrupt the best kind of sleep for your brain, deep wave sleep. I learned about this from Matt Walker, so if you want to learn more, follow the links in the first paragraph, or check out this three-part podcast.

The gold standard is now Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia, or CBT-I. You can even get apps and online programs to that deliver CBT-I therapy, some are actually FDA Approved. Chris mentioned Sleepio. There is also a free email based program from Insomnia Coach that I found helpful. There are some supplements that can help with sleep, but you should talk to your doctor about taking anything regularly for help with sleep, whether it is over the counter, or prescription.

Chris also mentioned Arrianna Huffington's book, The Sleep Revolution (you can watch a talk she gave for Talks At Google, or read an interview with her), Dr. Nathaniel Watson (also at UW) and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

There is also a great recorded talk from the Whole U Speaker Series with Dr. Michael Vitiello on Getting a Good Night's Sleep.

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This episode features a conversation with Nivedita Kumar, Foster MBA '22. Prior to coming to Foster, Nivi worked at Philips as a technical sales manager and then in a variety of roles culminating in Program Manager at Swiggy, a local delivery startup in India. Nivi interned in a Program Manager role at Amazon during the summer of 2021 and then recruited for full time roles throughout her second year in the MBA program landing a full time role at Microsoft as a Product Manager.

Nivi shared the importance of building a strong network with fellow classmates, Foster alumni and others, and how this network was instrumental to her getting interviews and the role she is in now.

Some of the resources we mentioned during the show include:

• Exponent: online courses and prep for product management
• Inspired: How TO Create Products Customers Love, by Marty Cagan
• The Lean Product Playbook, by Dan Olsen
• Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, by Nir Eyal

Podcasts:

• Product Podcast from Product School
• Product Thinking with Melissa Perri
• The Product Experience from mind the PRODUCT

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Jeff Perry, Foster Hybrid MBA '20, and founder of More Than Engineering, talks about his transition from engineer to coach of engineers and offers advice for how engineers can articulate their experience and value when switching careers. Visit ConversationsOnCareers.com for full episode show notes. Find additional resources at https://www.engineeringcareeraccelerator.com/uw

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Portia Obeng is a social media strategist with over 10 years of experience in social media strategy and content management. Her current focus is supporting individuals and organizations in their use of LinkedIn and Instagram. Our conversation focuses on how anyone, but especially job seekers can use LinkedIn to build their person brand. This is episode complements last season's conversation with Jeremy Schifeling about his book Linked, and using LinkedIn for job search.

We talk about:

• Why you should pay attention to LinkedIn even if you are happy with the job you're in, and why companies should want their employees to be active on LinkedIn.
• How to get started with interacting and making content on LinkedIn from:
• Making comments that add value on other people's posts.
• Commenting on your own company's posts
• Writing LinkedIn articles
• Making images with Canva both for posts and for your profile banner image

Portia's top advice for updating your profile:

• Get a good profile photo and make sure it is set to visible to all people
• If you need a new photo, book a photo shoot with Shoott, or AirBNB Experience, or get a friend to help out. Be sure to smile. Don't be afraid to be bold and show your personality. Natural (and indirect) light is your friend. You can read an article I wrote with four tips for taking a LinkedIn Profile Photo.
• Update your headline and use key words for the role you want.
• Her formula for the about section: What you do, how you do it, and why you're so good at it. Highlight your results.
• Update your LinkedIn Banners with and image made on Canva. The banner is a free billboard to advertise your value proposition

We also talk about getting recommendation from colleagues or clients for your LinkedIn Profile.

Portia recommended the Brown Ambition Podcast and an older show called Joblogues, and the following influencers on LinkedIn

• Cassey Ademola

• Lisa Orbé-Austin

• Tinu A and the Luxury Career Club

You can find and follow Portia on LinkedIn.

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On this episode, I share advice from three members of the Foster MBA class of 2022 on the career search and interviewing. Hear from Elizabeth Daly, Tyson Colledge, and Christine Pham on the importance of knowing your story, and how they prepared for MBA interviews.

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On this episode, I share some advice from three members of the Foster MBA class of 2022 on how to have a successful internship. Hear from Tyson Colledge, Elizabeth Daly and Christine Pham on the importance of networking, asking questions, and trying new things. 

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Microsoft Program Manager and Foster Evening MBA alum Mikaela Winter talks about pursuing a career in energy and sustainability. Full show notes at https://conversationsoncareers.com/2022/06/01/mikaela-winter-on-her-path-to-a-career-in-sustainability-at-microsoft/

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I speak with Jeremy Schifeling. Jeremy is co-author of the book Linked: Conquer LinkedIn, Get Your dream job. Own your future with Omar Garriot.

We talk about his practical and actionable advice for using LinkedIn to level up your job search.

Full episode show notes at https://conversationsoncareers.com/2022/05/13/conquer-linkedin-with-jeremy-shifeling/

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UW Foster School of Business Assistant Professor of Management Kira Schabram joined me to talk about her research into callings, compassion and burnout. Burnout has a clinical diagnostic framework. It is not just feeling exhausted. Burnout is when exhaustion is accompanied by feelings of inefficacy or cynicism.

Interventions that can help an individual experiencing burnout include small acts of compassion (and self-compassion) and self-care. Self-care can help combat burnout that is characterized by exhaustion and cynicism, and acts of compassion can help combat burnout characterized by exhaustion and inefficacy.

The Maslach Burnout Inventory(TM) can be used to diagnose burnout.

Programs designed to help pull people out of burnout often fail, and individuals experiencing burnout often find it hard to engage in such programs. If you suspect someone is suffering from burnout, taking an action to help them, ie bring them a meal, or do something for them, but don't ask what they need, because that shifts the onus onto the person.

Kira also talked about the importance of having a hobby or interest outside of a career that is based on a calling, or passion as a way to avoid burnout. She also shared the danger of fixating on a single path toward a "dream job" associated with a call or passion, which can cause frustration and burnout.

You can read more about Kira's work in the Foster Business Magazine.

Kira recommended the following authors and books:

• Adam Grant , Give and Take
• Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis
• Daily Rituals by Mason Curry

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Have you ever wondered when you should follow up with someone who's give you an informational interview? I'll share three tips in under six minutes to answer this common job seeker question. Visit https://conversationsoncareers.com/2022/02/15/some-quick-advice-on-following-up-after-informational-interviews/ for episode show notes.

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On this episode, I have a conversation with Mack Hopen, Foster MBA Class of 2022. Mack is an active member of the NetImpact club and a leader of the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Club at Foster. He came to Foster in pursuit of a career in the sustainability space and has some great advice for anyone else interested in such a career path.

Mack's three key points of advice for students:

1. Have a plan of how to approach your career search
2. Test out the careers through prototypes, conversations and job shadowing
3. Be valuable to those around you, be of service

During our conversation, Mack or I mentioned:

• Clean Energy Testbeds
• Foster Venture Fellows Program
• Foster's NetImpact Chapter
• The Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Club (EVCC)
• Clean Tech Alliance
• MBA Edge

Listen to more episodes with conversations on sustainability careers.

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On this episode I speak with Rachel Hester, Foster MBA 2018. Rachel went to work for Nike in a finance manager role after graduating, and in a little less than a year moved into a role in sustainability Finance. Since we recorded this conversation during the summer of 2021, Rachel has moved on from Nike and joined VMWare to work on ESG strategy and finance.

Rachel shares some excellent advice for students who are interested in pursuing a career in sustainability.

I think there are three key takeaways from my conversation with Rachel:

• Be vocal about your passion. If you want to work in sustainability especially at big company, sustainability might not be in your first role or title. But when you get that job, let anyone and everyone know what your interests are, and you can start that even while you are at Foster.
• Get sustainability experiences during your time in the program, internships, case competitions, applied projects, and things of that nature.
• Identifying your north star, developing a framework to guide the decisions you'll make during the program and stay focused on what your goal is. This is one of the reasons we take all of our students through some design thinking exercises based on the book and curriculum of Designing Your Life which comes out of the d.school at Stanford during our orientation programming.

Some links to resources we mentioned:

• My conversation with Austin Morton about his sustainability career path
• Sustainable World Radio
• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Scientific Knowledge
• Doughnut Economics (Book) DoughnutEconomics.org
• Thinking In Systems (Book)
• SASB: Sustainability Accounting Standards Board
• Sustainable World Radio
• The Formula Botanica Podcast

And a few more that we didn't:

• MBA-Edge.com
• Sustainable Career Pathways
• http://edsjobslist.com/
• http://www.greenjobsearch.org/
• https://jobs.climatebase.org/

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My guests on this episode are the authors of Back To Business and founders of The Swing Shift Nancy Jensen and Sarah Duenwald. I am joined by my colleague Elaine Newtson for a really interesting conversation about coming back to work after taking a career pause. Nancy and Sarah's company, The Swing Shift offers women programs and services to compete in the modern job search. Their book, Back To Business: Finding Your Confidence, Embracing Your Skills, and Landing Your Dream Job After A Career Pause shares the lessons and strategies they have developed through their one-on-one and cohort based work at The Swing Shift with readers everywhere. As I finished up production on this episode, I read in the September issue of Harvard Business Review that 57% of male and 74% of female Millennials anticipate taking a career break for childcare, eldercare or to support a partner in a job. Career pauses are becoming more common, and smart companies are developing programs to keep their employees engaged and pave the way for their eventual return to the company when they are ready.

We covered a lot of territory in the conversation, so the episode is longer than most, but I think it is worth the listen for anyone contemplating taking a break from work, or thinking about coming back from one. Graduate students certainly fall into this category. The Foster MBA program takes students out of the workplace for 22 months (with a 3 month internship in the middle) and many of the lessons from the Swing Shift apply, especially around networking and mindset.

The authors share their recommendations about activating your networking, keeping your LinkedIn profile current, staying in touch with hiring managers regardless of the outcome of the interview process, handling rejections, identifying family friendly workplaces (look for women in leadership roles, parental leave policies, executives who have kids, even pictures of families on an office desk are good indicators.) We talked about the importance of making a childcare plan if you are thinking about starting a family, or returning from work after taking a break to start one. Childcare (the difficulty finding it, and the cost of it) are some of the biggest obstacles to people returning to work.

On networking, my conversations with Asal Mirsalimi, and colleagues Stacy Duhon and Elaine Newtson may be interesting listens. I also had a good conversation with author Alexandra Samuel about networking during the pandemic when in-person interaction may not be a possibility.

On rejection, and reframing failure, something we cover in this episode, a conversation I had with my colleague Julie Boden may be a good supplement.

We also talked about the importance of reflection, and on this topic, I've talked with a number of guests about journaling and reflective practices, Andy Hafenbrack, Tabitha Kirkland and Ryan Fehr among them.

You can learn more about The Swing Shift and their programs at TheSwingShift.co, and follow the links from there to learn more about Back To Business.

Until October 9th, 2021, LinkedIn Learning is making 40 course on career changing available for free.

You can also watch Elaine Newtson's University Book Store book event with the authors on YouTube.

If you enjoy the podcast, please take a few moments to answer a short survey that will help me plan season 7, coming out in winter 2022.

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Evan Gray, Andrew Wen -- both members of Foster MBA class of 2022 and participants in the Foster Venture Fellows program -- and Cameron Borumand, the Founding Partner of Fuse VC join me to talk about the Foster Venture Fellows Program and more broadly about careers in venture capital.

Some of the resources we mentioned include:

• https://johngannonblog.com/
• https://www.strictlyvc.com/
• https://www.axios.com/authors/danprimack
• Acquired, the podcast from Pioneer Square Labs
• Venture Deals (book)
• Geekwire.com
• Techcrunch.com

If you enjoyed this episode and are interested in venture capital, another you might like is my conversation with Austin Guyette.

Whether this is your first or 40th episode of Conversations On Careers and Professional Life, I'd love to get your feedback. Please take a short survey.

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Style consultant Audrey Beaulac returns to discuss how the Covid-19 Pandemic, and Work From Home policies have impacted workplace fashions and style as many prepare to return to the office. We talk about online shopping, men's grooming, make-up, looking your best on Zoom (hint: it's about the lighting!) Trends in eyewear and finding great deals on clothing as the fashion retail industry continues to experience pandemic induced challenges.

You can listen to an earlier conversation with Audrey from March, 2019 on the podcast, but of the general advice still stands.

And if you have an extra minute, I'd appreciate your feedback on a short survey.

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This episode features compiled advice for incoming MBA candidates at the Foster School of Business. I solicited advice from recent alumni, a few students, and even went into my archives for a clip from my conversation with Ruchi Singh about the Foster Consulting Society.

In the coming weeks, I'll be releasing episodes that feature longer conversations with Rachel Hester, Melissa Young and Evan Gray, who all offered advice for this episode.  Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss those episodes.

I want to thank all of the people I featured on this episode of Conversations On Careers and Professional Life for taking the time to offer advice to Foster's incoming class of MBAs, in the order of their first appearance in the episode:

• Evan Gray, MBA 2022
• Rachel Hester, MBA 2018
• Melissa Young, MBA 2018
• Ruchi Singh, MBA 2020
• Rekha Mathew, MBA 2020
• Devin Doyle, MBA 2021
• Abhro Pal, MBA 2020
• Jessica Hatz, MBA 2021
• Mallory Monsma, MBA 2020

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The upcoming season of Conversations on Careers and Professional life is right around the corner.

Episodes will start to drop late August and continue through the fall quarter. I've got some great conversations to share, starting with advice from students and alumni to incoming students at the foster school.

I'll share a conversation with two 2021 MBAs, Evan Gray and Andrew Wen, and the Founding Partner of Fuse VC about the Foster Venture Fellows program, and another conversation with the founders of the Swing Shift and authors of Back To Business, Sarah Dunewald and Nancy Jensen along with my colleague Elaine Newtson about returning to the workforce after a career pause.

This season, also features some conversations with alumni including Rachel Hester, a sustainability finance manager at Nike and Melissa Young a Client Partner working in digital advertising at Facebook.

I also have a great conversation with Kira Schabram, an assistant professor of management in the Foster School, about meaningful work and burnout.

Audrey Beaulac will be back to talk about how the pandemic has changed professional attire and style as many of us will be planning our returns to the office or thinking about our wardrobes for a hybrid workplace.

I also have a short survey on the website, http://conversationsoncareers.com/survey. Your feedback will help me plan season 7 which will come out at the beginning of the new year.

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I’m a Gallup-Certified CliftonStrengths Coach, and work with MBA students at the Foster School of Business to understand their talents, invest in developing them into strengths, and then using those strengths to achieve goals and overcome challenges.

Whenever you are starting something new, as our class of 2021 grads are now, and our class of 22 students who are beginning their internships, it can be a good idea to revisit your strengths and make a plan to achieve your goals. With that in mind, let me start out by explaining that there are three components to CliftonStrengths Coaching. We call these Name It, Claim It and Aim It.

When we say Name It, we are talking about helping you identify the talents from your CliftonStrengths report that most resonate with you. Remember, the 34 talent themes are just that, THEMES. I like to think of them as buckets of related talents. Your activator will be different than my activator. When you read your talent report – whether you have just your top 5 or the full 34 – you want to read the talent descriptions and highlight the words and phrases that you connect with most.

In Claim It, you are developing an appreciation for your dominant talents. Sometimes these talents are so natural to us that we don’t even realize the role they have played in our lives – we take them for granted. Claiming them means to develop the self-awareness about power and opportunity these talents afford you. It is also about taking responsibility for investing in them and developing the talent into a strength. Remember, Talent + Investment = Strength

Aim It is all about intentionally developing your talents and understanding how to specifically use your talents to accomplish goals, overcome challenges, respond to things that happen every day. Remember, talents have both an outward presentation, how you use them, and can also act as a filter for the way you experience the world.

There are four domains of talent:

• Executing themes that help you make things happen.
• Influencing themes that help you take charge, speak up and make sure others are heard.
• Relationship building themes that help you build strong relationships that hold a team together.
• Strategic Thinking themes that help you absorb and analyze information that informs better decisions.

When you are starting something new, you can think about these four domains, and develop some goals within each and then think about how you can use your dominant talents – not limited to the talent themes within this domain – to achieve those goals.

If you need to do some naming and claiming, you can think about these 4 talent domains, and ask yourself how each of your dominant talents have helped you make things happen, take charge, speak up and make sure others are heard, build strong relationships that hold a team together, absorb and analyze information to inform better decisions. Think of specific examples from your life and work, and then think about how your themes contributed to that example.

I often suggest this as a journaling exercise adapted from the CliftonStrengths Talent Map Exercise. Each day for a week, you could start by reading the description of one of your talents in your CliftonStrengths report, maybe even listen to an episode of Gallup’s Theme Thursday Podcast to gain deeper understanding of that talent theme, and then journal answering the following questions and identifying a specific example:

• How has this theme helped you make things happen?
• How has this theme helped you take charge, speak up and make sure others are heard?
• How has this theme helped you build strong relationships that hold a team together?
• How has this theme helped absorb and analyze information that informs better decisions?

You may not have dominant talents in each domain of talent. That’s okay. I am particularly light on Executing themes. I use Influencing and Relationship building themes to make things happen. This is why the journaling exercise can be so powerful. It can help you realize that a lack of themes in a domain, doesn’t mean you lack completely lack talent in that domain. When we know how we have been successful in the past, and we understand how to use our talents across domains, we can invest in them, and we can aim them with intention.

Another activity that can help you prepare for success at the start of something new is to review the blind spots section for your top 5 (or 10 if you have your full report) talent themes. These blind spots that are common to each talent theme are ways the theme can hold you back. In essence, these are the ways your talents can show up more like a weakness. Any talent misapplied can be a weakness.

Understanding how you might misapply a talent can help you avoid getting off on the wrong foot when starting something new. I can recognize how many of the times I have failed or come up short are attributable to a misapplication of a talent, more than the absence of one.

Your talents can also be a filter for the way you experience situations. At the start of something new, be mindful of your feelings and emotions. If you are feeling negative emotions like frustration, disappointment, or even anger, check your themes. Are you experiencing something that could “offend” one of your themes? Let me give you an example: Activator is my number one theme. If I am in a meeting, and a decision to do something gets put off, I cringe a little bit, I role my eyes, I might even start to tune out. My activator wants to get things started! Delaying a decision to start something, or try something “offends” my activator.

Here’s another example, one of my dominant themes is relator. I like to work with a small team of people I am friends with and trust. My relator wants to build trust over time. Joining a new team, with people I do not know well can be challenging, especially if others on the team already know and trust each other. I need to fight two competing tendencies based on my themes, hang back until I have developed relationships and trust, or use my influencing themes to take charge (which can be a misapplication of talent). If instead I recognize what is going on, I can lean into my relator talents and my individualization talents to get to know the people on the team and build that trust more quickly.

And this is a perfect example of how you can bring what you know about yourself and your talent themes together to aim them for success.

To learn more about CliftonStrengths, visit http://gallup.com/cliftonstrengths or check out the link in the show notes.

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This is an episode of Foster Career Chats from the career services team of the Foster School of Business Undergraduate and Specialty Masters Program.  On this Episode career coach Lindsey Friessnig talks about The Art of Small Talk with Andy Rabitoy, Director of Foster Career Services for undergraduate and special masters.  If you enjoy this episode, you can find Foster Career Chats on Apple Podcasts and Spotify

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Austin Morton, Foster MBA 2019, is currently EV (Electric Vehicle) and Sustainability Program Manager at Element Fleet. It was great to speak with him about his career path and how he succeeded in achieving his goal of a post MBA career in the sustainability field which started at CLEAResult just after graduation.

Before attending Foster, Austin worked for in communication roles in environment and sustainability including with the World Resources Institute. He knew that he wanted to continue working in sustainability after graduation. While in the program, Austin participated in a variety of activities that allowed him to use his MBA skills on sustainability related projects including the Alaska Airlines Environmental Innovation Challenge, and NetImpact.

Austin is one of my first return guests having been on to talk about his experiencing attending MBArk2Boulder, you can listen to that episode where we are joined by Alli Green who also attended MBArk at Expo West. Visit MBArk for more information about MBArk2Boulder, Expo West which we mention during our conversation

Some of the other resources we discussed:

• Alaska Airlines Environmental Innovation Challenge
• Dempsey Startup Competition
• Buerk Center For Entrepreneurship
• The Energy Gang Podcast
• ACT: Advanced Clean Transportation Expo
• Wood MacKenzie which now owns Green Tech Media
• Sustainabile Career Pathways
• Bloomberg Green and Bloomberg Hyperdrive
• Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF)

Foster Faculty and Classes:

• Elizabeth Sterns's class, Cases in Sustainability
• Jeff Shulman's classes in product management and pricing
• Charlie Donovan, Visiting Professor, focusing on sustainability
• Spreadsheet Modeling 2
• Investments

If you enjoyed this podcast and are interested in an impact career, you might also enjoy my conversation with Peter Boyd from the Yale School of the Environment and Yale School of Management, and Resident Fellow at the Yale Center for Business and the Environment. My conversation with 2-Hour Job Search author Steve Dalton is also relevant to anyone engaging in a custom career search at business school.

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On this episode I speak with Austin Guyette, Foster MBA 2019. Austin is an investor with Voyager Capital, a Seattle based venture capital firm. We talk about his career journey and how he successfully landed his dream job in venture capital. Austin shared some valuable insights about the Seattle startup and venture ecosystem, and even one his biggest regrets from his time at Foster.

Some of the most important advice Austin shared during our conversation is that if you are an MBA student with a non-traditional career goal, it is important to stay focused on that goal, but also know how long your runway is. Austin used the resources of the Foster MBA Career Management team to hone his story and story-telling skill. He also used some of the professional development and career programing as a way to test his commitment to his plan -- to discern what he wanted and what he definitely did not want.

Austin shared some great resources for people interested in venture and startups during our conversation:

• Acquired (podcast)
• Invest Like the Best (podcast)
• High Growth Handbook by Elad Gil
• Venture Deals by brad Feld and Jason Mendelson
• Zero to On: Notes on Startups or How To Build The Future by Peter Thiel
• The Messy Middle by Scott Belsky

You can also read a profile of Austin Guyette on Ascend.vc.

If you are interested in learning more about the Seattle startup scene, listen to my conversation with Rebecca Lovell on episode 5.03.

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On this episode, I speak with Professor Warren Boeker, the Douglas Olesen/Battelle Chaired Professor of Management at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. I invited Professor Boeker on the show to talk about innovation and design thinking, and how MBA candidates can prepare for roles that involve innovation.

Professor Boeker's recent research has examined the dynamics of strategy formulation and execution in organizations at a corporate and business level. His other work focuses on the innovation process and organizational creativity, including idea generation, developing products into profitable businesses, and diffusing ideas throughout the organization.

We covered alot of ground in our conversation, from corporate venture capital, to the impact of the Covid Pandemic induced WFH trend on innovation and design thinking, to some of the key skills that can contribute to success in an innovation career.

We mentioned the following resources during our conversation:

• MIT Technology Review
• MIT Sloan Management Review
• Harvard Business Review
  • The After Hours Podcast
• Stanford Social Innovation Review
• The d.School at Stanford's Resources
• Designing Your Life
• IDEOU
• Wired Magazine
• Originals by Adam Grant

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On this episode, I speak with Rebecca Lovell. Rebecca holds an MBA from Foster, since she graduated her career has included roles with the City of Seattle office of economic development, Geekwire, the Northwest Entrepreneur's network, and Alliance of Angels. She teaches in the Technology Management MBA program at Foster, is a mentor for Techstars and the Female Founders Alliance and is a board director for the Washington Technology Industry Association. She also currently serves as the Chair of the national Center for American Entrepreneurship.

When Rebecca and I sat down for this conversation in late February of 2020 -- as the threat of Coronavirus was beginning to become apparent but before the pandemic was declared and so much in-person work went remote -- she was the Executive Director of Create33, a membership organization and "founder-center" for high-growth technology entrepreneurs backed by Madrona Venture Group. She has since been named the CEO of Denali Financial Consulting which provides experienced, strategic, financial and operating leadership for growing companies.

Because of the rapid shift to everything-from home, this was a conversation that got stuck in my edit queue. Rebecca and I discussed her work at Create33 along with other in-person activities and I wasn't quite sure how much would be relevant amidst the pandemic shutdowns. As I worked on editing it, I realized that so much of Rebecca's insights and advice are valuable to anyone interested in the venture and startup ecosystem here in Seattle. I did edit out some parts of the conversation that were no longer relevant.

Rebecca and I talked about her experience in the MBA program, with the venture and startup community, and advice for students interested in pursuing a career that may involve working with startups. I hope you'll enjoy my conversation on careers and professional life with Rebecca Lovell.

Rebecca shared the following events:

• Founders Live
• F-Bomb Breakfast Club
• WTIA Collaboration Institute - Ion

And we both talked about the tremendous resource that is Geekwire, especially the Geekwire 200, a list of Pacific Northwest startups that are popular and trending among key online communities, and their Recent Fundings list.

Rebecca shared so much great advice for students looking to engage with start-ups in Seattle.

• As we've heard so many of my guests say, "coffee meetings" are critical to building your network, and while we may still be a few months away from resuming in-person meetings, our students are having plenty of luck connecting with people over video conference for these informational interviews.
• Volunteering and getting involved in events that cater to the startup community, from conferences to meetups, again, many being held virtually because of the pandemic is a great way to meet and connect with people in the startup community.
• Thinking about the right time in a startup's life to engage with the company, for many tech startups, most of their hires are going to be on the engineering team until they get some seed or series a funding and have a headcount that has crossed into the double digits. And that hiring is likely going to be just-in-time.
• We also talked about how to assess startups as a prospective intern or employee, the importance of considering the type and quality of experience you will get, along with the executive mentorship opportunities, so you want to interview the company as much as they are interviewing you.

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Sam Ushio, founder of Ikigai Lab, host of the Ikigai Stories podcast and fellow Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach joins me for a conversation that will appear on both podcasts. We talk about how we both got to where we are today, the Japanese concept of Ikigai -- or your reason for being -- and moai -- a group of life long friends that support each other -- wellbeing, purpose and meaning and how it all relates to our work. Sam asks me about How students use CliftonStrengths, and whether more students are seeking out purpose driven companies or impact careers. Visit ConversationsOnCareers.com for full show notes.

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Back in 2019, I had the opportunity to attend a two-day Search Inside Yourself training lead by Tony Back and Larissa Benson sponsored by the UW Resilience Lab. It was an amazing opportunity to learn about, and have the lived experience of brining mindfulness practices into my daily life and work. I wanted to have them on the podcast to talk about Search Inside Yourself and some of the mindfulness practices that listeners can try.

I interviewed the pair remotely in March of 2020, just a few days before the Covid-19 Pandemic forced the shutdown of in-person instruction and closed the UW Campus. Due to some technical issues with the remote interview service I was using for the first time, the sound quality of the recording was less than ideal. Upon re-listening to the conversation, I decided that the content was still relevant today and did my best to clean up the audio, edit the conversation and release it here.

Tony Back is a medical doctor, the co-director of the UW Center for Excellence in Palliative Care at the UW and a UW professor of Oncology and Medicine and an adjunct professor of Bioethics and Humanities. He is also the founder of Vital Talk a training organization for clinicians seeking to advance their communication skills with seriously ill patients.

Larissa Benson is a leadership embodiment coach, the host of the Government Joy Network, Is the president of the board of the Whidbey Institute and use to lecture at the Evans School of Public Policy here at the University of Washington.

We discuss how they both came to Search Inside Yourself -- the mindfulness training program developed at Google -- how they bring mindfulness practice into their work and life, and some practices you can try in your life to be more mindful and communicate more effectively.

• Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute www.siyli.org
  • Search Inside Yourself (the book)
  • Joy On Demand (the book)
• The Inner Work of Racial Justice by Rhonda Magee (chair of SIYLI and law professor at U San Fran)
• Leadership Embodiment by Wendy Palmer
• My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem - for trauma informed healing and embodiment practices
• Rick Hanson’s online course the Foundations of Well-Being and he has tons of free resources https://www.rickhanson.net/

`If you’d like to try mindfulness on your own, you can check out apps like Calm, Headspace, Ten Percent Happier, and Waking Up all end up requiring a subscription fee after a few free sessions. Insight Timer has thousands of free meditations, Oak and Healthy Minds are also free(mium). You can also find guided meditations from the Whole U and FreeMindfulness.org.

Other resources at the university include the Whole U Meditation Series a video series that helps to reduce stress, increase calmness, and promote happiness. All of them are great, but there are two short, guided meditations on gratitude that by UW Mindfulness Manager Danny Arguetty and UW Tacoma associate professor Jane Compson. You can listen to my conversation with Jane Compson from Season 1.

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On this episode I share some tips for improving your behavioral interviewing. Find out more at http://conversationsoncareers.com

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I speak with former journalist and current technology leader Kristin Graham about business communication advice for normal times and this moment in 2020/2021 when we are working and learning remotely during the Covid-19 Pandemic. Check http://conversationsoncareers.com for the full show notes.

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Foster MBA Career Coach Julie Boden and I discuss reframing internship application rejection and put it into the broader context of an MBA career plan, and the application and review process. For more episodes, visit http://conversationsoncareers.com

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On this episode, I speak with researcher, author, and speaker, Alexandra Samuel, PhD. Alex is a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal and JSTOR. We talked about networking during the Covid Pandemic, digital wellness, and more. Find longer show notes at http://conversationsoncareers.com

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Steve Dalton, Program Director For Career Services at Duke's Fuqua School of Business and author of the 2-Hour Job Search talks about the method and how the Covid pandemic has impacted job searching with it.  Visit http://conversationsoncareers.com for full show notes.

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On this episode I sit down separately with Foster 2nd year MBA Career Coach Elaine Newtson and 1st year/evening MBA Career Coach Stacy Duhon to talk about tips and best practices for informational interviews. Students and job seekers can use informational interviews -- sometimes called "coffee chats" or "expert interviews" or "prototyping conversations" -- to learn about companies and roles. The object of these conversations is twofold:

• Gather information that will help you understand the company or role better so that you can ultimately interview better
• Build your professional network so that you might learn about opportunities before they are publicly listed, or in the best case, get a valuable internal referral to a job opening.

To achieve the first goal, you need to go into the interview prepared having done your research on the company and the individual so that you can ask good questions that both elicit the valuable information and demonstrate that you are serious and professional. Both Elaine and Stacy concur that you should not ask overly general questions or questions that you could answer with a Google search or by reading the company's website.

You also need to take good notes from your conversation. You might do this during or after the conversation. Since most of these informational interviews will be held virtually, it may be easier to take notes contemporaneously, but you should let the person you are talking to know that if they hear typing, it is because you are going to be taking notes. As you prepare for an interview with that company, or for that role at another company, it is a good idea to review all your relevant notes.

To achieve the second goal of building your professional network, you need to conduct yourself in a professional manner, from the first reach-out on LinkedIn or by email, to the reminder message you send a day or two before, to the actual conversation and then the immediate and longer term followup.

• After the meeting, be sure to followup with a thank you note. Since most people are working from home, it is probably not practical to thank the person with a physical card, but an email that thanks them for their time and might highlight 1 or two key messages you took way from the conversation is sufficient.
• If you felt a strong connection to the person, you might add that you'd like to followup with them later in the year, or if/when you are preparing for an interview at their company.
• If not already, you should connect to them on LinkedIn
• If the person suggested an article, podcast, book, class, or other activities that they thought would be valuable to you, after you have read, listened to, attended, you should drop them a note thanking them for the valuable suggestion.
• If you come across a book, article, podcast, event or similar that you think would be valuable to them, a good way to strengthen the relationship over time is to share these suggestions by email or LinkedIn message.

As always, I hope you enjoy the episode and find something valuable in it. Please consider sharing this episode with a friend, or rating or reviewing the podcast on Apple Podcasts.

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Peter Boyd, lecturer at the Yale School of the Environment and Yale School of Management, and Resident Fellow at the Yale Center for Business and the Environment joins me to discuss his webinar, "The Hunt: Charting The Path to your next career move."

Peter explains what he calls the Connected Leadership Framework's four Ps:

• Purpose
• Priorities
• Potential
• Performance

And how these factor into, and influence, the career search. I particularly like the way he talks about clarifying and personalizing your hunt with the "Two Triangles" visualization that identifies what is crucial to you about an opportunity, and what about you is crucial to the company.

To learn more about The Hunt, view the slides and access other resources including a short workbook that guides you through a variety of exercises, visit the Yale Center For Business and the Environment website.

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In part 2 of 2 of my conversation with Adam Schmidt (Foster MBA 2020) we talk about how he achieved his double career pivot (function and industry).

Visit http://conversationsoncareers.com for show notes

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Adam Schmidt (Foster MBA 2020) talks about the importance of credibility as an MBA candidate. He breaks it down with 5 stakeholder groups: fellow students, faculty & staff, alumni and employers. This is Part 1 of 2. In the second episode, Adam talks about his career pivot.

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I speak with author, speaker, consultant and friend Nikki Pava, about her career experiences, MBA and book, Green Wisdom: A Guide for Anyone to Start, Engage and Energize a Sustainability Team which profiles initiatives at a variety of companies.

Visit ConversationsOnCareers.com for the full show notes

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Ryan Fehr's work focuses on building more positive organizations - organizations that leverage things like gratitude, compassion, and forgiveness to make work more fulfilling and enjoyable. In this conversation we talk about his research into gratitude, how and why you might want to work to increase your gratitude through interventions like journaling, the gratitude letter and acts of appreciation. We also talk about the relationship between gratitude and stress and gratitude and mindfulness.

Ryan also introduced me to the idea of designing a gratitude "boot camp" which comes from a leading researcher on the subject, Robert Emmons. Both Ryan and I talked about keeping Thank You notes we've received as well as emails in place where they can be easily referenced when you need a little pick-me-up. The episode is full of great ideas for boosting your own gratitude and introducing more gratitude into your organization.

A great resource to learn more about gratitude is Greater Good Science Center at Berkeley. Their website provides detailed instructions for many of the practices Ryan and I discussed like the gratitude letter and gratitude journaling. You can learn more on their website or podcast, The Science of Happiness.

Books:

• Gratitude Works, by Robert Emmons, you can also read more from Emmons on The Greater Good Science Center.
• The Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace, by Gary Chapman and Paul White

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A short episode featuring a conversation with two Evening MBA 2019 Alumni about how they leveraged the resources of MBA Career Management at the Foster School of Business to make pivots in their careers.

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Visit ConversationsOnCareers.com for full show notes. I speak with Prof. Andy Hafenbrack about mindfulness, his research, stress, self-compassion and other related topics.

Resources mentioned on the show:

• FreeMindfulness.org
• Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright
• Search Inside Yourself by Chade Meng Tan
• Mindful Work by David Gellis
• The Mindful Elite by Jamie Kucinskas
• McMindfulness by Ron Purser
• Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics and 10% Happier by Dan Harris
• Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff and self-compassion.org

Podcasts: 10% Happier, Making Sense with Sam Harris

Apps: Calm, Headspace, Ten Percent Happier, Oak, Insight Timer, Healthy Minds (healthyminds.org)

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A conversation with Foster School of Business, Evening MBA Class of 2019 graduates Joel Graves and Dan Charbonneau about their experience competing in -- and winning -- the 2019 ACG Cup Case Competition. Learn more about the ACG Cup at http://www.acgcupnw.org.

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Foster MBA Career Coach Elaine Newtson and I have a quick discussion about strategic approaches to crafting behavior interview answers. Elaine has provided career coaching to Foster MBA Students since 2014. She brings 15+ years of corporate experience in global talent acquisition, university programs and leadership development to her coaching practice. Her pre-Foster career included leadership roles in prominent tech, global health and financial services companies. In addition to her prior HR experience, Elaine is a Gallup-Certified Strengths Based Coach and holds a Master Coach Certification from the Behavioral Coaching Institute.

In this short conversation, we talk about how students -- or any job candidate -- can up their game for behavioral job interviews.

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Rob Cottingham has 30 years of experience as a speech writer and speech coach. I’ve known Rob for nearly half that time through our attendance at the same conferences including Web Of Change and NTEN, a conference for the nonprofit sector and have always been impressed by his presentations, and communication skills writ large. Were it not for social media, I fear that I would have lost touch with someone like Rob, but thanks to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, I’ve been entertained by his Noise to Signal Cartoons and more.

Rob also has a podcast, Leadership Communications, where he shares lessons from his career as a speech writer and speech coach. We had a great conversation where he shares some of his tried and true advice for public speaking, and communicating.

• Learn more about Rob Cottingham and his podcast, Leadership Communications, at http://robcottingham.ca
• Author and public speaker Michael Port at https://www.michaelport.com/
• Nancy Duarte and her books at http://duarte.com
• Viv Groskop's podcast, How To Own The Room is available on Apple Podcasts

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Craig Murphy, Foster MBA Class of 2019, shares his experience switching from a career as an engineer in oil and gas services to a full-time role in management consulting with a general management summer internship in manufacturing. Craig talks about how he prepared for case interviews, and sharpened his behavioral interview delivery.

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You can learn more about the Foster Technology Club at http://uwfostermbaa.com

Shobhit mentioned the blog https://stratechery.com/, the A16Z Newsletter https://a16z.com/tag/newsletters/ and the podcast Planet Money. I plugged the Indicator Podcast by Planet Money, both available from NPR, and the A16Z Podcast.

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Philip Bozarth Dreher, Foster MBA 2019, pivoted from a career in architecture to career in management consulting. Philip talks about re-contextualizing his past work experience for consulting interviews, preparing for case interviews, Designing Your Life and CliftonStrengths. Philip mentions a few books at then end and the podcast EconTalk, http://www.econtalk.org/

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Asal Mirsalimi, Foster MBA 2019, on how she used the Foster MBA Career Management Office resources, and what she learned about informational interviewing during her time at Foster. Asal conducted dozens of informational interviews (or prototyping conversations as we sometimes call them) during her first year in the program, and then had 50 such interviews with colleagues at Starbucks during her summer internship.

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Three conversations about national MBA career conferences including National Black MBA Career Expo, Prospanica and National Association of Women MBA's Career Conference with Foster 2019 MBAs Jamie Young and Johnathan Duong and MBA Career Management's Bronica Sam. For more information about national career conferences, Foster students can visit you Foundations of Professional Development course on Canvas.

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Tashiya Gunesekera, Foster MBA 2019, talks about her internship and job search and switching into a career in Finance at Adobe from a "non-traditional" background that involved the Peace Corps and public sector consulting.

Among other things, we mention the following apps, and books:

• Meditation apps Calm and Headspace
• The Charisma Myth, Olivia Fox Cabane
• Better Together, Jonathan Sposato
• Radical Acceptance, Tara Brach
• How To Deal With Job Search Depression (NYT)

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Ron Rapatalo talks about his own career journey from pre-med to nonprofit education and executive search, the importance of networking and generosity, and men's styling.

Links from this episode:

• RonRapatalo.com
• The Tao Of Networking
• Adam Grant's website for podcasts and books
• Reciprocity Ring, Adam Grant's "Giving Circle"
• Akimbo, Seth Godin's podcast
• J Hilburn Clothes

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On this episode, I speak with Ruchi Singh (Foster MBA 2020), President of the Foster Consulting Society about plans for the 2019-20 academic year, preparing for internship recruiting at consulting firms, using the Career Management Office and more.

Learn more about the Foster Consulting Society.

Check out Case in Point by Marc Cosentino, Crack the Case by David Ohrvall and Case Interview Secrets by Victor Cheng.

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I speak with Li-Ann Yap, Foster MBA Class of 2019, about her experiences preparing for internship recruiting, and full time recruiting. She provides advice on dealing with the stresses of pursuing an MBA as a career changer and preparing for interviews. We also talk about conferences, case competitions, the importance of mindfulness and meditation, and of exercise to her success at Foster and in the job search. We mention the apps: Calm, Insight Timer, 10% Happier, and conferences including the Crosscut Festival in Seattle, Tech4Good and Data For Good in Seattle. Li-Ann also mentions the Rotman Accessibility, Inclusion & Universal Design MBA Conference.

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On the second season of the show, I'll share stories of current students and their internship experiences and full time job search. If you'd like to tell your story, or have heard a story that needs telling, reach out and let me know, you can email me at gheller@uw.edu. If there are other topics you'd like me to cover, or people you think I should interview, drop me a line.

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Executive Coach and Foster Mentor, Suzanne Keel-Eckmann talks about joy, self awareness, Clifton Strengths and more.

She mentions:

Leading Quietly: An Unorthodox Guide to Doing the Right Thing by Joseph L Badaracco JR

The First 90 Days by Michael D. Watkins

Conversational Intelligence by Judith Glaser

For more information on Clifton Strengths, visit https://www.gallupstrengthscenter.com/

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I speak with style strategist Audrey Beaulac about workplace fashion trends and style advice for MBAs looking to develop their signature style. Learn more about Audrey at http://www.audreybeaulacstyle.com. We mention "The Charisma Myth" by Olivia Fox Cabane. Foster MBAs can learn more on the Career Management SharePoint site.

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My guest on this episode is Dr. Tabitha Kirkland, a lecturer in  psychology at the University of Washington where she teaches a course called Happiness. We discuss happiness and a variety of practices that help increase one's happiness including mindfulness, journaling, gratitude letters, counting blessings and a few others.

We talk about the apps Headspace and 10% Happier, and the book "The Charisma Myth" by Olivia Fox Cabane. 

This episode is made possible by a Compassion and Resilience Seed Grant from the Resilience Lab. http://webster.uaa.washington.edu/resilience/

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On this episode, I speak with Class of 2019 MBA candidates Austin Morton and Alli Green about their experiences at MBArk2Boulder and MBArk at ExpoWest last year.  The first deadline for MBArk's Program at Expos West is January 20th, 2019, the second deadline is February 3rd. Learn more at http://mbark.com

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Prof. Christina Fong is my guest on this episode. Christina teaches the LEAD Course for First Year MBA students at the Foster School of Business. The 5th session of this course is on resilience and takes place during the winter quarter, this year on Jan 25th. We talk about resilience and how the LEAD course is designed and timed to help students increase their resilience in the face of challenges and stresses.

This episode is made possible by a Compassion and Resilience Seed Grant from the Resilience Lab. http://webster.uaa.washington.edu/resilience/

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In this episode I speak with Jamie Young and Jonathan Duong, two second year MBA students from the class of 2019, about advice for first year students heading into internship recruiting.  These interviews were excerpted from longer interviews that will air on another episode.

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On this episode, I speak with Ken Myer about leadership, entrepreneurship, and startups.  Ken is an interim CEO, a commercialization adviser with CoMotion, the UW Innovation Hub. He is a lecturer at the Foster School of Business where he shares his expertise on leadership with students in the Masters in Entrepreneurship Program. During winter Quarters 2018, he will be teaching the core MBA course, Leading Teams and Organizations or LTO.

Ken mentions the following books:

• Kim Scott, Radical Candor
• Derik Liddow, Startup Leadership
• The Culture Code
• John Dorner, Measure What Matters
• Bill George, True North
• Daniel Khaneman, Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow

And organizations:

• Washington Technology Industry Association
• Center for Leadership and Strategic Thinking

Ken talked about the importance of networking, and recently listened to Jordan Harbinger on Dan Harris's 10% Happier Podcast give some great advice on building your network (at 50:10 in the episode).

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This episode features Dr. Jane Compson, a Associate Professor in Comparative Religion; Environmental Ethics; Philosophy, Religion and the Environment; Biomedical Ethics and Introduction to Ethics at UW Tacoma. Jane and I discuss mindfulness and self-compassion. Some of the resources mentioned on show include:

• Kristin Neff's https://self-compassion.org/
• University of California San Diego: Center for Mindfulness
• Apps for meditation: 10% Happier, Insight Timer, Headspace, Calm, Muse
• Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center

You can learn more about Jane in this Faculty Friday article from the Whole U and view her writing and research.

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Colette Vogel, Ed.D is the Director of the MBA Mentor Program and 
Senior Associate Director of MBA Career Management and Corporate Recruiting at the Foster School of Business. Colette and I discuss ROMBA -- Reaching Out MBA -- a national MBA career conference for LGBTQI and allies, and NetImpact, a national conference for students and professionals interested in careers in sustainability, corporate social responsibility and other impact areas.

We also talk about the Foster MBA Mentor Program.

For more information on these topics, Foster MBA candidates can contact MBA Career Management, visit Foster Jobs, or their ProDev Foundations Canvas Course.

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Dr. Polo DeCano is a Lecturer at the UW School Psychology and College of Education. He is affiliated with the Center for Leadership in Athletics, and a member of the Resilience Lab Curriculum Development Group.

Polo and I talk about developing a meaningful gratitude practice, mindfulness, and cultivating resilience. This episode is made possible by a grant from the UW Resilience Lab.

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On this episode of Conversations on Careers, I speak with Assistant Dean for Career Management, Dr. Naomi Sanchez about the start of a new school year and welcoming the MBA Class of 2020 to Foster.

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Get ready for new episodes starting soon!