How I Got Here

Ever since we started How I Got Here, we have been looking to learn from the various tools, analyses, and thought processes that people use as they design successful careers for themselves. But, as our guest today exemplifies, sometimes good decisions don't come from a pros and cons list or from crunching data -- they come from a strong sense of intuition and trust in oneself. Dr. Howard Murad's career -- which spans pharmacology and medicine, military service in Vietnam, and ultimately building a skincare empire at the age of 50 -- was fueled by a strong sense of conviction in his gut feelings. Listen to how Dr. Murad used his intuition to conquer numerous challenges in his career and life, and become the world renowned skincare expert and innovator that he is known as today.

During college, Catherine Halaby developed a strong view of what she wanted to do in the world. Ultimately, she wanted to work for the United Nations and support countries post conflict.  After graduation, she found herself at a desk job in DC, writing grants and itching to be actually out in the field. But when she finally got the opportunity to be in the thick of it, things did not go well. She found herself in a moment of crisis, questioning her path and how she would be able to contribute. 

Catherine’s story is one of the biggest “plot twist” career stories we have ever shared on How I Got Here. I hope you enjoy hearing how she went from avoiding all on-campus recruiting to becoming an MBA graduate to where she is today, leading content partnership at TikTok.

Héctor Colón believes that boxing truly saved his life. Bullied for the color of his skin and growing up in poverty, boxing brought structure and discipline to Héctor's life. And he was good at it, to say the least. Héctor became a 7X national champion and traveled all around the world with the US team. At just 19 years old, he was favored to go the Olympics. Soon after, though, Héctor completely quit the sport of boxing to pursue something that was bigger and more important to him. Hear what made Héctor quit boxing despite his immense success in the ring, and the ways in which he has carried his legacy with him throughout his career to get to where he is today.

Melissa Baird describes herself as the best two truths and a lie player in the world. Her eclectic experiences help shed a light on why: Melissa has worked in fields as diverse as marine biology, fashion and e-commerce, hospitality, and now in healthcare, where she serves as COO for hims & hers. Her career switches are guided by her philosophy of bravery and her ability to challenge self-imposed rules to unlock new opportunities. In moments that require courage, she asks herself: "If I do this thing which scares me, what is the most likely worst case scenario?" Hear how Melissa used the answer to this question to navigate inflection points in her career, eventually landing at the job that makes her love going to work every day.

In honor of finishing Season 2 of How I Got Here, Lara and Eric spend some time reflecting on all the conversations and career journeys they’ve heard over the course of this season. Listen in for some cross-episode synthesis, Lara and Eric’s personal career takeaways and some book recommendations to further your own career journey.

Like many of us when we were growing up, Amy Weinblum had big dreams for her future. Her dream was to work for none other than Oprah Winfrey. Once she was in college, though, Amy discovered that she had a passion for lots of different things and she lost track of what exactly she wanted to do with her career. That is, until she asked herself a fateful question. Ultimately, her answer to that question led her to achieving her childhood dream – she became Oprah Winfrey’s Chief of Staff for eight years -- and much more.

As we move through our lives, we never know what experience around the corner could have an outsized impact on our future. For our guest Amrita Saigal that experience was a college internship working on feminine care products, like pads and tampons. From there , Amrita grew her career with a focus on developing sustainably elegant products, combining her engineering background with her passion for the environment. Not only is Amrita a two-time founder, but she is also someone who has enjoyed working in large organization like Google and Proctor and Gamble. The one thing that has remained constant throughout her varied experiences is that Amrita is deeply motivated by solving a problem at hand. Her conversations with new mothers led her to the problem she is currently working on: building a better diaper.

Caitlin Reiche was attracted to the linear, clear cut career path. After she graduated from college, she pursued the natural next step for someone interested in psychology -- she worked in a hospital as a clinical psychologist. However, she soon felt a growing sense that this seemingly logical journey she had embarked on didn't actually make sense for her. That's when Caitlin stopped thinking about her career as a path. Instead, she asked: "how can I make this more exciting for myself?" While staying true to her north star of working in healthcare, Caitlin took some detours within that realm. Rather than optimizing for some specific long term goal, she went searching for roles that she was excited about in the moment.  Ultimately, her approach paid off and she's in her dream job today as Chief Operating Officer at Buoy Health.

Andrew Gazdecki had one goal as he was preparing to graduate college: to not have a job. Instead of a “job,” Andrew wanted to be an entrepreneur and grow something that he himself built. At this stage in his career, Andrew was primarily motivated by money – he viewed entrepreneurship as a pathway to a life that he didn’t have growing up and one that he wanted to provide to his family. After almost failing out of college, Andrew ultimately succeeded. His first company was acquired and he suddenly had the power to buy whatever he wanted. In that moment, Andrew had a realization:  he had no wants. In working towards his goal of making money, Andrew fell in love with the process itself. In his own words, he loves playing startup. In this conversation, hear how Andrew got to the place many dream of – selling a company and not having financial wants – and then figured out what to do next.

A common career trope we hear constantly is to pick something, anything really, and focus entirely on it from the earliest age possible. Work 10,000 hours and you'll achieve success, or something of the like. Range, a book by David Epstein, pushes back on this advice. David argues that having a diverse set of experiences actually makes us better in the modern working world. In fact, it's important to explore and sample, because if you stick with something you don't like, you'll end up not only unhappy, but failing to achieve your full potential. Our guest today is an amazing case study of this winding and exploratory approach. Natalie McCullough, currently the President and Chief Commercial Officer at Guild Education, didn't start her career off in business. In fact, her first job out of college was as a geologist, doing environmental assessments on groundwater contamination. In this episode, Natalie shares her career journey from geologist, to bike guide, to management consultant, to finally where she is today: an executive business leader at a mission driven company, helping frontline employees get more education affordably.

This episode is a bit of an experiment. Instead of featuring a guest's story, hosts Lara Mitra and Eric Eliasson will take some time to reflect on what they've learned since launching How I Got Here. You’ll hear what Lara and Eric plan to do differently in their careers as a result of 25 inspiring conversations and get a behind the scenes look of what they're thinking about as they continue to grow How I Got Here in 2021. Whether you've listened to one episode or all of them, we think this episode will get you thinking about your own professional journey and how you can make some changes for the better too. 

Lorraine Vargas Townsend is a survivor. She survived growing up in a town where she didn’t always feel welcome as a Latina and a lesbian. She survived cancer – twice – including during her first year in college. These experiences fueled an activism in Lorraine—a desire to stand up for the underdog – which she’s made the singlehanded focus of her career. As an HR professional at Dell, A Cloud Guru, where she is the Chief People Guru today, and more, Lorraine has made it her life mission to fix as many companies as she can to ensure that everyone -- no matter their race, gender, or sexual orientation – is treated with dignity and respect in the workplace.

Kat Cole is the President and COO at Focus Brands, which owns well-known brands like Auntie Anne's, Moe's, Jamba, and Cinnabon. Kat started her career at the age of 15 so that she could provide for her family. One day during her shift at a clothing store in the local mall, she was recruited to be a Hostess at Hooters. Little did she know that she'd spend over a decade moving up the ranks at Hooters. By age 26, she was a Vice President at Hooters. At 31, she took a new job to be President of Cinnabon, and helped turn around a mall-based brand in the heart of a recession. As you might imagine, this journey did not come without its challenges. Kat's career story offers great insight into what it takes to be a successful business leader: tenacity, a willingness to say yes, and a lot of empathy.

Growing up, Brittania Boey moved countries every three years. This shaped her professional approach: throughout her career, B demonstrated a strong ability to adapt to new cultures and situations. Unsurprisingly, then, B's career has been varied: she started by adjusting to the boys' club culture in investment banking, then moved on to a totally new culture at Disney where people valued art and media, only to later move into the start up world which was massively different than the corporate environments she was used to. Ultimately, B's story offers a great lesson for us all as we go through our careers: the ability to read the room and be humble enough to adapt based on the circumstances can be a powerful tool to finding success.

Melynda Barnes had four professional ambitions as a young child: to be an Olympic gymnast, President of the United States, an author of children’s books, and a doctor. For various reasons, she ultimately chose the pursue the fourth and became a surgeon, focusing on head, neck, and reconstructive surgery. But one day, after completing 10+ years of grueling medical training and without an alternative role lined up, Melynda quit her job as a full time physician. She embarked on a new path of entrepreneurship and innovation because in her gut and in her soul, she knew that this was what she was supposed to be doing. Melynda’s story is one of grit, perseverance, and a strong sense of belief in herself, even when those around her thought she was crazy.

Meredith Whipple Callahan, executive coach and partner at Evolution, seriously considered going into a convent after high school. She found herself drawn to spiritual practice and questions. She even contemplated becoming a minister. Instead, after graduating from college, Meredith went into consulting to work for Bain & Company where she thrived. But as she got more experienced, she realized that the content of the work didn’t resonate with her anymore, leading her back to questions she has always asked herself: what do I want? What should I do to get what I want? What am I learning? What am I missing? What's next? In fact, during this conversation, Meredith is answering some of those same questions. We meet here in a place of transition that was thrust upon her by the pandemic. 

Tod Plotkin, CEO and founder of Emmy award winning Green Buzz Agency shares his career story, starting during his early years selling baseball cards. His interest in business and striking it out on his own started at such a young age. In high school, Tod discovered his passion for video production. It was these two passions that eventually led to him founding his own video production agency many years later. Although it may sound like a straight line, Tod's path has had a bunch of twists and turns to get him to where he is today. You'll hear how Tod struggled through his first entry level jobs and even found that his dream job, working for the Washington Wizards, wasn't all it was cut out to be. After years of staying in this job, one bad Friday at work led him to make the jump and see how he could make it on his own.

Veronica Armstrong, Co-founder and CEO of Isle de Nature, shares her career story. Veronica has one of the most varied careers of anyone we’ve featured on the podcast – she was a telemarketer, a legislative aide in the government, a successful mommy blogger, marketer, general manager, entrepreneur and more. 

Sometimes her career moves were a result of following her passion… Other times, they were the result of making sacrifices for those she loved. Despite frequently moving across multiple roles and organizations, one thing remained consistent throughout every single role she had: her positive attitude. 

Listen to Veronica share how she sees the good in any circumstance even when the odds are stacked against her, why she holds onto and revisits every single performance evaluation ever written about her, and how she’s currently building what she hopes will become the next billion dollar company.

Ever since Emily Heyward was young, she has loved advertisements. Instead of hanging posters on her bedroom wall when she was growing up, she hung up framed ads that she loved. It is no surprise then that Emily went to work for big ad agencies after graduating from Harvard. And she was thriving. Until she found herself working at a company that made her question whether advertising was her calling, after all.  

Listen to Emily share how she bounced back from a job that was not right for her and rediscovered her love of helping people craft and tell compelling stories – a love that led her to found and build Red Antler, the brand agency behind Casper, Allbirds, Rent the Runway and more.

Steve Cook, Executive Managing Director at LFM Capital shares his journey from the military into manufacturing and then finally into private equity. After his time as a Navy pilot, Steve was looking to create value in the world, not just working his way through a bureaucracy. He found this in a role as a leader in charge of Dell Computer’s manufacturing out of Tennessee. He quickly dedicated more and more of his time and energy towards this endeavor. 

And then a natural disaster hit and it fundamentally shifted how he approached his work and his life.

On this episode, we chat with Nicole Alvino, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of SocialChorus. Nicole started her career at one of the most infamous companies in the world, Enron. In fact, she worked on the SWAT team for the CFO, Andrew Fastow who was ultimately charged with fraud and sent to prison. You'll hear how this experience deeply impacted Nicole's career. In the aftermath of the bankruptcy, she first swore off business entirely, but after some soul searching she came across another idea and dove back in.

In this episode we speak with Andrew Noh, co-founder and COO of Finch Therapeutics. Andrew tells us about how, after a couple years at Bain, he went to business school to get more confident sharing and defending his ideas and opinions in front of others. After one year at MIT Sloan though, he decided to drop out and even give up his sponsorship commitment to Bain so that he could create and grow an organization, OpenBiome, with his co-founders. What’s more is that Andrew didn’t have any fear or doubt in making this huge decision. In this episode, listen to Andrew tell us what made him so confident about his decision, why he likes being "the guy behind the guy" in his role as COO, and how he’s conquered the Sunday Scaries, something I know we all aspire towards.

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In this episode, we speak with Ming Zhao, CEO and Co-Founder of PROVEN Skincare. Ming describes her career journey from roles in management consulting and investing to eventually founding and building her own skincare company, PROVEN Skincare, which was recently featured on Shark Tank! During our conversation you’ll hear Ming describe adjusting to the US after moving from China to South Florida as a child, freeing herself from the feeling of needing to prove her worth to society, and eventually finding true happiness in her career - something we all aspire towards.

On this episode, we talk with Austin Martin, Vice President of Strategy and Operations at Snyk. I actually first met Austin by cold messaging him for a class assignment where we needed to interview people who were more advanced in their career. I had a good sense that Austin was going to be thoughtful about his career because he outlines five principles that he uses to guide his career. As we learned more about Austin's path, we learned how he came up with a few of those principles. One of those principles focuses on how Austin takes sole responsibility for his career. During our conversation you'll hear how Austin lived that principle by talking to an admissions officer in a liquor store and initiating a nerve wracking conversation with his boss to stay a year longer than planned at one of his first jobs.

Miro Kazakoff, Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan, shares how he ended up becoming a lecturer at the very business school he graduated from a few years earlier. On this episode, we talked with Miro about his whole career journey which includes, we kid you not, a year living on a converted bus traveling the country. He also recounts some of his most challenging experiences like when he made the tough decision to quit being the CEO at his start up. If you ever wanted to hear an honest reflection about what happens to a founder who didn't "succeed" in this role, this is your chance.

In this episode, Simon Johnson, Professor at MIT Sloan and co-founder of the COVID-19 Policy Alliance, tells us about how he transitioned from his first career aspiration -- which was to be a rescue helicopter pilot for the Navy – to becoming the Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund and a tenured Professor.

We cover his journey plus:

• How to persevere in spite of rejection and remain confident in yourself
  
• When it’s worth it to burn bridges and how to be OK with the consequences
  
• What it’s like to work in a political job
  
• Why he called for a meeting with Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker last month and all that he’s been doing in response to the COVID-19 crisis

Paul Sagan, Managing Director at General Catalyst and former CEO and Director at Akamai Technologies, shares his career journey with us. We had a great conversation with Paul and learned a lot from his journey through journalism to being the CEO of Akamai. In this episode, we talked with Paul about the following and more:

• How he applies his training in journalism to his current job as a venture capitalist
• Understand when to make a career change by making sure you've "stewed in your juices"
• How he took care of his employees and himself during the tragedy and crisis of 9/11

In this episode, Chris Bell, CEO of Whele, tells us about how he achieved his career goal of running his own company. We cover his career journey plus: 

• Making long-term goal setting easier by not getting caught up in the specificity of you goals 
• How to stay true to your goals through consistent reflection on what your “65 year old self” would think 
• Strategies for learning how to quickly switch functions and industries Keeping in mind that careers are long and you can make mistakes and be okay

In this episode, we spoke with John Chisholm, serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and author of Unleash Your Inner Company: Use Passion and Perseverance to Build Your Ideal Business. John tells us about how an early setback in his career,  getting fired from his job, eventually led him to build and grow a company that is part of Google today. He also describes how he persevered through the dotcom bust, taking a $300,000 personal loan and putting his house as collateral to keep his company afloat.

John Harthorne, founder and former CEO of MassChallenge talks to us about his career path and how pursuing struggle is the only way for him to find meaning and joy. MassChallenge is a start up accelerator headquartered in Boston, MA and as of 2019, it has helped almost 2,000 start ups raise over $5B in funding which have gone on to generate almost $3B in revenue. In this episode, we cover a lot of topics, including: 

• A framing that may make career changes feel more comfortable and less risky 
• The differences between management consulting and entrepreneurship 
• How John made a career switch during the Great Recession

In this episode, Elyse Neumeier, Chief People Officer at EverQuote, tells us about how she embraced the many twists and turns of her career. 

We cover her journey plus:

• What it’s like to be on the job market during a global crisis, like a recession
  
• How being open to serendipity and not overly-planning your career can lead you to happiness and success
  
• How to find new roles within a company, when you’re not enjoying your current one
  
• Why confidence in yourself is essential when making a career switch
  
• How taking every job interview that comes your way can lead to surprising opportunities