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Jad Finck, VP of Innovation and Sustainability at Silicon Valley based eco-friendly woolen shoes company, Allbirds, shares his thoughts on what working in Sustainability is like.

Jad has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, and MBA in Finance and Strategy, from University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business.

Jad will soon be hiring for his team, keep a lookout for openings on the Allbirds careers page here: https://www.allbirds.com/pages/careers If you're interested in applying, drop us an email with your resume at [email protected], so that we can share your resume with Jad.

Some of the areas that Jad touches upon in this episode include:

1. What is Sustainable Innovation

2. Examples of projects - Scouting for new materials, Lifecycle Assessment, etc.

3. Types of activities a Sustainability expert might be work on during a project

4. Interesting and challenging aspects of the job

5. How to be effective at your job - Sustainability needs to be backed by leadership

6. How to assess importance of the sustainability function at a company by talking to people at the company - does it come up without you prompting them on it?

7. Resources: Conferences such as Bio Based Markets, World Bio markets, Sustainable Brands, Outdoor Retailer, etc.

8. How to stand out during recruiting - Have a point of view on what would you do if you were in our company

Thank you for listening!!

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Audio of the speech titled "You and Your Research", delivered by American Mathematician Richard Hamming in 1986.

This a great talk with a number of observations and recommendations for how to excel in your career. From working on important problems, to routinely examining your life, there are a number of ideas here that you can begin applying immediately.

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Jeremy Schifeling, Founder of BreakInto.Tech, a startup that helps people with non-technical backgrounds land jobs in Tech, shares numerous tips on how candidates can structure their job search and improve chances of success.

BreakInto.Tech has helped candidates land jobs at well known Tech companies such as Amazon, LinkedIn, Microsoft, etc. Jeremy has a BA in Political Science & Education from Swarthmore College and MBA from Ross School of Business, Michigan University.

Some of the areas that Jeremy touches upon in this episode include:

1. Why Jeremy started Break into Tech

2. How Jeremy realized that a technical background is not needed to work in Tech

3. Jeremy's recommendation for how to structure your job search process - Identify what role, position yourself, systematic approach to your applications, and interview prep

4. Examples of roles that are open to non-technical profiles

5. How non-technical roles tend to lie on a spectrum of super analytical (Eg: Business Analyst), to super relationships oriented (eg: Sales)

6. How to assess fit with a role - talk to people + volunteer for projects/gigs

7. Positioning yourself - focus on your LinkedIn profile and resume

8. How to optimize your LinkedIn profile - keywords and where to include them, good summary, and experience

9. Examples of how to phrase resume points differently depending on the function you are applying for

10. Don't wait for a referral when applying. You can add it to your application later

11. Resources - Google Alerts, Techmeme, Wikipedia, read 10K, https://www.breakinto.tech/, AngelList, LinkedIn , PMinterview.com

12. Don't hide your quirks and edges - they will help you stand out!

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On how to find fulfilling work. Excerpts from posts on BrainPickings.org and Paul Graham's essay on How to do what you love.

Posts cited:

https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/04/23/how-to-find-fulfilling-work-roman-krznaric/

http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html

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As we approach the end of this year, and begin a new year, I would like to share this passage from the book 'On the Shortness of Life' by Seneca - on how life is long, if we know how to use it.

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Travis Moore, Founder of TechCongress (non-profit startup), describes how he and his team are creating a way for those interested to apply their tech skills to government. TechCongress is a year long fellowship, where fellows get the chance to work with members of Congress and leverage their technical skills to influence policy and legislation.

Some of the areas that Travis touches upon in this episode include:

1. What is TechCongress

2. Examples of projects TechCongress fellows work on

3. Why Travis started TechCongress

4. What a typical day looks like - from drafting statements in response to events (such as the Equifax breach), to working on longer term policy changes

5. How this program is great for those looking to understand how govt and policy making works

6. Future paths that Fellows end up taking

7. Other programs like this - Presidential Innovation Fellows, but there are very few that exist

8. Skills you pick up during the program - How Congress works, nuances of how coalitions form, negotiations, bill writing, policy research, etc.

9. Skills a good fellow needs to have - technical ability, tech translation skills, people skills and teamwork

10. Application timelines

11. Interview Process

Thank you for listening!!

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Jiayi Liang, joined Amazon as a Product Manager in their Amazon Web Services business. After a few years, she joined their Entrepreneur in Residence program. In this episode, she shares her experience as an EIR (including what it was like to present to Jeff Bezos), and how she made the move from Product Manager to EIR.

Jiayi has a Bachelors in Economics from Beijing Foreign Studies University and MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Some of the areas that Jiayi touches upon in this episode include:

1. How she got into Product Management with zero technical background

2. How Jiayi focused on earning her team's trust from the get-go

3. How Jiayi developed proposals for ideas she had and circulated them within the company for two years, which helped her get in front of the right people

4. How Jiayi got into the Entrepreneur in Residence program at Amazon

5. Jiayi's meeting with Jeff Bezos to get seed funding for her idea

6. What happens in the Entrepreneur in Residence program

7. 3 qualities that enabled Jiayi to get into this program - openness to learning, resilience, and patience

8. How she really invested in learning about the business - which helped her build her network and earn trust

9. Setbacks that she had along this journey

10. Courses that Jiayi used to teach herself basics of computer science

11. Career advice

Thank you for listening!!

Follow the show on Twitter @LED_Curator

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Ian Murdock, Senor Manager of Marketing Analytics at cloud communications platform company, Twilio, describes in detail what a Marketing Analyst in Tech does. Good listen for anyone interested in Data and Tech.

Ian has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Houston, and MBA from Wharton, University of Pennsylvania.

Some of the areas that Ian touches upon include:

1. Why Ian got interested in Analytics

2. What is Marketing Analytics

3. Examples of projects someone in this function might work on

4. Stages in a typical project

5. How analytics should drive decision making

6. Typical day in the life

7. How is success measured - timeliness, quality of analysis and ability to communicate

8. Interesting and challenging aspects of the job

9. Examples of tools he uses - R, SQL, Python, Visualization tools

10. Not so interesting aspects of this job - how if your insights are unexpected, there can be a lot of resistance, and you really need to figure out how to persuade people

11. Difference between Analytics and Data Science

12. Career progression

13. Skills/Qualities in someone who is good at this job - comfort with numbers, ability to learn new tools and languages needed for the job, communication and curiosity

14. Typical background

15. Helpful resources for interested candidates

16. 3 questions you can ask yourself to assess if you will like the job

17. Tips for applying for similar jobs

Thank you for listening!!

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Taylor Pearson, Author of The End of Jobs, shares his thoughts on future of work, and his own journey as he transitioned from a full time job to writing a book and running a small business. Taylor's work has been covered in numerous publications including Business Insider, Huffington Post, etc. His book has also been recommended by James Altucher and Derek Sivers.

Taylor asserts that wealth is created at the "limit" or "bottleneck", that knowledge work is no longer the highest order of jobs given how we have access to amazing talent globally, and how entrepreneurial skills and being an entrepreneur is the new "limit".​

Some of the areas that Taylor touches upon include:

1. Taylor answers the now famous Peter Thiel question - "What's one thing you believe in that no one agrees with you on" - Taylor thinks the skills of the future is going to be Marketing and the ability to distribute

2. Concept of limits - wealth is created at the bottlenecks, and how entrepreneurial skill is the new "limit" in careers

3. Taylor talks about how you can build the entrepreneurial skill - through apprenticeships or stair-stepping

4. Thoughts on "What are you optimizing your life for?"

Thank you for listening!!

Follow the show on Twitter @LED_Curator

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Simon Kirk, Co-Founder @RaisedBy.Us and Director of Business Development @InVisionApp, draws on his experience of organizing events over the last 10 years, and talks about how organizing events is a great way to build your own network.

​

As co-founder of RaisedBy.Us, Simon has closed relationships with some of the leading startups of New York including Foursquare, Blue Apron, Birchbox, Squarespace, and many others.

Some of the areas we touch upon in this episode include:

1. What kind of event to organize depending on the situation - Breakfast, Cocktail Hour/Happy Hour, Dinner

2. Whom to invite

3. How to get people to come when you're still new to the scene and don't know many people

4. How to "socially engineer" an event to make sure people have a good time

5. How a host's priority should be that attendees extract a lot of value from the event

6. Lots of resources and other tips for organizing events

Thank you for listening!!

Follow the show on Twitter @LED_Curator

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Subscribe to the show on iTunes itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/learn…ver/id1049159321