Please give a brief background on yourself and your career.
After moving to the east coast for Wellesley, I ping-ponged back and forth between New York and Boston for ten years before settling back in the Bay Area where I grew up.
Like a typical econ major, after graduating I high-tailed it to Wall Street! I spent three years at Goldman Sachs, then returned to Boston to attend Harvard Business School, and landed back in NYC to work at Tiffany & Co.
Now I’m back where I began in California, running a 35-person startup. It’s been an enlightening, sometimes frightening and very successful three and a half years for Relevant Mobile. We make mobile apps for restaurants that let customers pay, order online, and earn loyalty credit with their phones while gathering consumer data. We’re growing by the day. It’s pretty awesome.
How has your career changed since you originally envisioned it at Wellesley? What other careers did you consider as a student?
I had no idea what I really wanted to do while still at Wellesley. I did have a vague notion that I wanted to work somewhere internationally and that I wanted to run a company someday. My metrics then were based on what I thought was ‘cool’ in the business world. My metrics are evolving now to be more based on what I find fulfilling.
While at Wellesley I did internships in non-profit and academia (MIT), but I am glad I ended up on the business track.
How has Wellesley contributed to your career?
I got my first job at Goldman Sachs because a Wellesley alum pulled me in. She coached and mentored me, and three years later also wrote my recommendation letter for business school. I am so thankful that she did that. Paying it forward, my second hire at Relevant was a Wellesley alum – she rocks.
Also, while I didn’t start my career living the motto “Non Ministrari sed Ministrare,” I think I’ll return to those Wellesley roots at some point.
What is a typical work day or work week like for you?
While running a small company, you wear a lot of hats. Much of my time is focused on our sales efforts as well as account management, but I still do a bit of everything. It’s pretty exciting to be at this stage of growth. This morning I woke up to the news that one of our newest investors is a pro tennis player (!!). Then I made a presentation for a large partner of ours which sells the most point-of-sales (cash registers) in the U.S., helped our sales team determine pricing for a potential new client, and ended the day by putting together a demo of a new app that we plan to publish to the App Store soon. Tonight I’ll plow through ~50 emails before going to bed.
What piece of advice would you offer students looking to get into your area of interest and expertise?
Have tenacity. Listen to the market and abandon your original idea if you need to. I believe those things set successful entrepreneurs apart from the pack.
What do you wish you had known as a student?
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what my path should be. I wanted to know: “What is that one thing that I am meant to do and that I will love?”
I wish I knew that there was no ‘one thing’. I wish I knew that all the thinking in the world wouldn’t help me get to the answer (and that the answer would change every couple of years anyway). I would just had to live it and figure it out on the way.
Advice to my younger self: Take the job that gives you a lot of experience. Work somewhere where you try a bunch of different things so you can learn what you excel in and what makes you feel excited when you do it. Maybe it’s communicating with people (ding ding, this is what it will be!), maybe it’s performing analytics, or perhaps you’ll just feel incredible satisfaction from editing something well. Take note, and incorporate that in your next job choice. Keep exploring and eventually you’ll be spending a lot of your time doing what you are good at and what you enjoy. That’s when you’ll have arrived at what you were looking for.
If you could come back and take one class at Wellesley what would it be?
More advanced Art History classes. The learnings from 101 have served me over and over again- I still have the textbooks!