Elissa Ellis: Hello and welcome the Career Lab Podcast. I’m Elissa Ellis, Executive Director of the Forte Foundation. Recently, we brought the Career Lab to Minneapolis for an evening of discussion with women in all different fields of business. Kymm Pollack is currently a Marketing Director for General Mills in the Cereal Division. Like many women in business, she envisioned herself in a very different career when she was an undergraduate.

Kymm Pollack: I thought actually, I was going to be the American Ambassador to the United Nations. That was what I entered college thinking I was gonna do. I was always really interested in International Languages, politics, that kind of stuff. Actually when I graduated from college, I thought I was actually going to go into the Peace Corp and it was only when I felt I needed a back up option to the Peace Corp because not everybody gets accepted into the Peace Corp that I threw my resume into MetLife Insurance Company, they had a wonderful management training program and it was really my back up option but in getting interested in this program and interviewing, all of a sudden I realized, “Wow, maybe this is something that I would be really interested in.”

In the end, I did have to end up deciding between MetLife and the Peace Corp and I just really felt that the pull for the business job was ultimately what I really wanted to do. In fact, one of the people at MetLife that had interviewed me, I had finally gotten sick of asking, I had asked all the questions I could possible ask during my re-visit and so finally I said, “Why do you want me here?” And he looked at me and said, “Because whether you know it or not, you’re gonna be in business and I would just love for your career to start here at MetLife,” and that actually statement really stuck with me because my dad was a doctor, my mom was a teacher, I didn’t really have a lot of business people who were influences in my life. Then that got me off into business and that’s where I’ve been ever since.

Elissa: Kymm told us that what surprised her most about the business world is the broad spectrum of career options.

Kymm: There are so many different paths that you can take and it’s almost overwhelming. I think back to when I was an undergrad and part of the reasons why I think I didn’t even consider much business is just I went to a liberal arts college and there weren’t a lot of business recruiters coming there. Luckily for me, MetLife came there but I had no idea sort of the spectrum of all the different jobs that were available. It wasn’t until I went back and got my MBA I think that I was in a better position to take advantage of all the opportunities and to really craft a path for, no this is really what I’m interested in, brand management, which is what I do now. I wouldn’t even have known that term when I was an undergrad.

I think going into business, it’s just the sheer spectrum of all the different things that you can do, no matter what’s your interest, no matter what’s your passion’s. That was unexpected. I guess I thought of it a little bit more in a siloed sort of, “Well, this is business,” but business has so many different definitions.

Elissa: Kymm explained what