Zijia Song is an Emerging Markets Reporter at Bloomberg, focusing on covering Latin American sovereign debt and corporate credits. She was born in China and attended her province's school system until her second year of high school. We talk about the culture of academia in China and why she moved to Minnesota and stayed with a host family for the rest of her high school years. During the transition, she went from being an only child to living with six other kids and many pets. After her experience in the US school system, she chose to stay in the United States for college. She worked with a college counselor while home for the summer and decided to attend Boston College. She entered BC as a math major and added a second major in the Communications department after a journalism internship while home one summer in China.

Zijia was accepted to Bloomberg's Diversity Exploration program during her senior year of college. The program took place the last week of senior year, causing her to miss all the senior week activities, but she says it was well worth it. Before joining Bloomberg full-time, she received a second degree from the Global Journalism Program at New York University. She networked with program directors and was mentored on how to best present herself in her grad school application, which is excellent advice she shares with listeners in the episode. While at NYU, Zijia reported on sex work in the Chinese community. She shows her dedication to her work with stories about spending long nights out reporting and building rapport in the community.

She has now returned to Bloomberg in a rotational reporting program. She was not initially interested in business reporting but gives the advice to take opportunities when presented, even if they are different from what you expect/are comfortable with. We talk in-depth about the elements of good market reporting. Because her reporting is read by many traders who have to make quick decisions with significant monetary consequences, balancing speed with credibility is at the core of her work. She pays attention to all aspects of LatAm markets, from specific names, such as an oil company in Mexico, to the political landscape of Latin American countries to inform on debt performance and developments.

She also gives excellent advice on how to find internship opportunities in journalism as an undergraduate and how she advocated for herself to make all of her accomplishments a reality.

Sarah Winglass attended Boston College on an ROTC scholarship and graduated in 2014. She did not come from a military family or participate in ROTC in high school. Still, when applying to colleges, she spoke with a close friend who participated in an ROTC program and was attracted by the broader opportunities connected to the scholarship. This meant that on top of her classes and personal extracurriculars, Sarah participated in Army ROTC-specific physical and leadership training.

She started her career in the US Army in an operations unit in Colorado. Over time because of her high performance, Sarah earned the opportunity to be trained in the Counterintelligence force. She mentions that one of the biggest challenges transitioning to the military - was that she was so eager and excited - that performing a support role was out of character.

She then served on Counterintelligence teams in Washington, DC, and then on an extended deployment in Iraq. She said her deployment was one of her two goals for her military career - the other being company commander. On her deployment, Sarah is very insightful about the renewed sense of dedication and focus toward a mission that thrilled her.

Sarah accomplished both of her goals in her career with the help of mentors along the way. We talk about the organization and trajectory of a career in the military and the traits of successful military leaders. Sarah connects to how many of those skills transfer into the business world. This conversation also highlights Sarah’s experience as a woman in the Army and imposter syndrome in general. We end on an empowering note about how to find mentors to guide you through new missions and business ventures alike.

Hannah McGowan is the founder of a talent and corporate development consultancy. She specializes in cultivating crucial soft skills in individuals and transforming business management strategies to boost engagement and results. Hannah also worked as a childhood counselor for years, and we talk about the transition from personal to professional counseling. This conversation highlights communicating with your managers, shifting career goals over time, and what makes for high performers in the workplace.

After years in sales and counseling roles, Hannah took the leap to start her own business as a talent development coach in 2021. She graduated from Boston College ten years prior and started her career in a healthcare consulting position, where she was promoted rapidly. She said that what contributed to her success was her eagerness to contribute to the business beyond her day-to-day responsibilities. She developed a training program for new hires and realized that her genuine affinity was consulting with individuals over corporates. 

She got her master’s at Harvard’s graduate school of education and served in many counseling positions focused on empowering students. Now as the head of Hannah McGowan Coaching, she is bringing her talents to individuals looking for career and advice and corporates looking for management tools. She specializes in cultivating crucial soft skills for individuals to succeed and adapt across jobs. More than what someone should study/pursue as a career, Hannah is focused on how to make those decisions.

Entering the second year of her business, she is focusing on transforming organizational management strategy to boost engagement and results. We discuss the gap in quality development opportunities and how Hannah builds a strengths-based learning culture at the businesses she works with. 

In this fascinating and thoughtful conversation about creating a sustainable ethos surrounding work, Hannah gives tips for choosing a college major, common traits of high performers, shifting definitions of success throughout your career, communicating with managers, and advocating for yourself in the workplace.

Alisa Fitzgerald is a Municipal Bond Trader at Morgan Stanley. As an Executive Director, she helps build and manage various portfolios. When Alisa was a junior in college, she interned with Fidelity in a trader assistant role and continued the internship throughout her senior year of college and has progressed in title across different firms since.

We introduce what a career as a trader looks like compared to other jobs in finance like Investment Banking or Consulting. Alisa is also part of a buy-side team vs. sell side. She explains that a sell-side trading desk has its own profit/loss statement to strategize for along with servicing clients, but in her job, she buys and sells bonds to fit a portfolio that retail investors can then buy and hold. However, the core understanding of how economic conditions affect bond prices and markets is the same. Even more specifically, she trades Municipal Bonds and explains the nuances of Municipals as an asset class.

Because Alisa has been in trading for her entire career, she has a unique perspective on how external shocks from 9/11 to the financial crisis and technological innovations have changed her job. We will talk about each instance in depth. Because the entire financial industry faced a set of regulations amid a technological boom, Alisa emphasizes the need for adaptability and eagerness to learn in a career.

We will also talk about her career in the context of culture and personality fit, which she believes will always be crucial to a long and successful career - even in a field that seems to be more technical. Alisa explains why the fast-paced and social nature of trading has played to her strengths and gives an authentic look into a day in her life.

Cordelia Meserow is an Associate Director in UBS's Realty Investor practice. She studied English as an undergrad, but with guidance from a family member in residential real estate, Cordelia concentrated on professional opportunities in real estate early on. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, she joined a top real estate investment bank in Chicago that focused on deal-making for real estate firms.

She says the best advice she could have given her younger self as a banking analyst would be to listen first and ask questions. "Having that sense of awareness is hard to cultivate, but being humble and saying you don't know something will get you a lot more points than being too confident, maybe overly so, and making a mistake."

We discuss different real estate investment considerations, from sheer asset types like a mall vs. an office building to owners' risk profiles when buying real estate. An owner can pay more for the newest building in the best location and be sure that the building will attract tenants shortly. On the other end of the spectrum are value-add buyers. "It's really the model of buy it, fix it, sell it." Cordelia talks about the trends in strategy she has seen across her career and the impact of Covid on the commercial real estate industry during the shift to hybrid work models. She has been interested to see that, for the first time, property owners in New York are focused on updating and renovating their spaces. "It's not enough to just own a building in New York anymore."

"It is important to be social at work. Those two things do not contradict each other." Cordelia emphasizes the importance of relationships in any business, and it is fascinating to hear how she has been connected to new clients and has heard about new investment opportunities by prioritizing her business relationships.

Kyleigh Leddy earned a spot on this year's Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the media category for her first book, The Perfect Other. The Perfect Other shares the story of Kyleigh's sister's disappearance and assumed death in 2014 after years of struggling with schizophrenia. Kyleigh pairs personal experience with scientific research to address how mental health is viewed and treated and finding peace amid grief.

In 2019 Kyleigh won the New York Times Real Love essay for "Years Ago My Sister Vanished; I See Her Whenever I Want." This piece is about how grief has changed in the digital era and caught the attention of many big-name publishers. She received multiple book deal offers and chose to sign with Harper Collins. She spent her first-year post-grad writing The Perfect Other.

Kyleigh talks about the influx of messages related to her NYT essay that made her feel called to push through any hesitation toward writing the book in full, and we talk about the opportunities for young writers. The first time she submitted her writing to a contest, she did not even include her name out of nerves. Now, Kyleigh pushes for young writers to put themselves to submit their writing to contests and magazines. As it was in her case, the second time she decided to share her writing, this time with a byline, changed the trajectory of her entire career and life. With platforms like TikTok, there is no limit to the amount of promotional content authors can create for themselves. Her Forbes 30 Under 30 declaration has also aided in getting her name out there. 

We discuss the business behind books in depth and the friction between this tragedy in relation to her career. Kyleigh explains how she decided on her manager and which publisher to sign with. Money, trust, and differing editing processes were all factors in Kyleigh's decision. We also discuss shifts in how authors market themselves and their work. The next step for Kyleigh is turning her book into a video production. Although unsure what the final format will be, Kyleigh talks about her transition from prose and narrative writing to writing for film.

View Kyleigh's work here:

https://kyleighleddy.com

https://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Other-Memoir-My-Sister/dp/0358469341

Year Ago My Sister Vanished. I See Her Whenever I Want - New York Times 2019 Modern Love Essay Contest Winner

When There's No Word Like 'Widow" - New York Times essay published Feb. 11, 2023

Lucy Alexander is a 2019 Boston College graduate who now works in the Cyber Security arm of a multinational software business. Early in her college experience, she sensed a massive shift toward technology in the early stages of finance recruiting and changed her major to Computer Science. Lucy started from scratch in her junior year of college but found that the opportunities for computer science majors extend far beyond back-end coding. For example, her early experiences and interests were related to pseudocode, which is more related to designing the steps in an algorithm versus technical back-end coding. After an internship with an IT Consulting Firm after her junior year and a few years on the job, she has mastered how to leverage her strong communication and interpersonal skills with her knowledge of computers. 

Lucy is now a Customer Experience team co-leader and has taken her expertise globally. Lucy has spoken in New York, London, and Berlin at conferences about the Future of Customer Engagement with Cyber Security Products. We have a fascinating conversation on why brands and individuals have started to care more about data privacy, how the rules and regulations differ in the United States vs. Europe, and the shift from Cyber Security as a cost to a value driver.

Lucy has also had a speedy and impressive trajectory in her career as a result of her personal professionalism. Lucy talks about the abundance of opportunities in the Cyber Security business, even for people with little computer science background. More importantly, she talks about how she has always aggressively advocated for herself and is unafraid to ask to be paid more. Salary transparency is a conversation that is becoming more mainstream, and Lucy gives excellent insight into things to think about when evaluating your own value in the workplace.

In a career twist that Bridget Burke could have never predicted, she has spent the last two years building NurseWallet, a financial empowerment platform for nurses. Bridget became a Registered Nurse in 2019 and started her professional career only a day before Covid-19 disrupted the US healthcare industry forever. One day when she was out of work with Covid herself, Bridget offered to give feedback on a new GenZ-focused investing app but realized that most of the features were not optimized for the unique finances of a nurse 🏥👩‍⚕️

She had by then seen firsthand how adaptable and resilient nurses need to be, but on the flip side, how far the nursing industry had fallen behind in terms of economic mobility and salaries. She took a leap of faith into the tech and startup world to address this issue. Bridget has since changed the entire trajectory of the app, into NurseWallet. 💸📈 In her former role as "Head Nurse," Bridget became the mind connecting investing professionals with the needs of nurses. In this episode, Bridget talks about the transition from nursing to a tech startup. She explains how NurseWallet structures itself around data pairs with human insights. For example, when prospecting for new features, Bridget discovered that users were already combining existing elements to do something the platform had yet to build out. "That's so nurse." 

Beyond the niche of nursing, Bridget has done plenty of research on the investing habits of women at large. We talk about why women invest less despite living longer and how NurseWallet's personalized money management plan and investment platform are bridging the gap. We talk about her approach to social media marketing, finding your voice at the table, and the US Healthcare Industry at large. In a personal favorite episode, Bridget highlights how to find inspiration and transform industries that need it most 🚺🩺

Kate Schumacher was always told that she should consider being a lawyer growing up. With an affinity for reading and writing, she knew her skill set was the right fit, but pushed off the idea of the LSAT until senior year to open up her post-grad optionality ✍️👩‍⚖️ 

Kate had a variety of other internships and career options, but ultimately chose to attend law school at Fordham University after graduating from BC as an English and Communications major. This week on WIBCast, she talks gives a great look into the law school experience and the typical career progression as a litigator. With many years of experience, she in now a partner at one of the largest corporate law firms. 

This episode will be very helpful for anyone who is curious about law, but unsure if they want to commit to the next steps ➡️ We talk about her decision to go straight to law school instead of working for a year in between, and she discusses common jobs people have if they do choose to take some extra time between undergrad and law school. 

We then talk at length about what to expect in law school from the socratic seminar style of the first year to specialization in later classes 👩‍🏫 Kate was always interim litigation, so while it is common to work on many different cases during the summer spent with a firm in between the second and third year (similar to a junior year summer internship), Kate began to master is style early on. After her third year, the only thing holding Kate back from taking to the stand, was the Bar. This exam is demanding and Kate talks about how she studied and tips for success 💪 

Kate is now a partner at a top law firm and she describes the patience and time it takes to work at her level. I certainly learned a ton in our discussion and Kate is a master on the microphone as she is the host of her own podcast - Pop Fiction Women! At the end of the episode, we talk about her own podcast, Pop Fiction Women, where Kate aims to bring justice to the complicated female characters of your favorite tv shows and books. "Popular entertainment hasn’t always portrayed women with all of these human facets, instead reducing female characters to one-dimensional archetypes ... In the last decade, this has changed ... and so many more characters with a full expression of what it’s like to be a human being who also happens to be a woman."🧍‍♀️📺

Check out Pop Fiction women here:

https://open.spotify.com/show/5gPTy7x8IqsEO72pNwg9hG?si=debcf3dff8634c9a

https://popfictionwomen.com/

Maddz Ciccone, a master soul cycle instructor in Boston and the host of the Wicked Fearless podcast, joins WIBcast this week to talk about how she “found her fearless.” After graduating college, Maddz moved to California and worked with some of Hollywood’s biggest names. With a continued passion for branding and fitness, she took what she learned in the corporate side of Hollywood and moved to Boston to grow her own brand as an athlete and confidence coach. We talk about the building blocks that have lead her to success and a day in the life of a soul cycle instructor, both on and off the bike. 

Maddz always had west coast dreams in college, so when she got the opportunity to be an intern for The Ellen DeGeneres Show, she moved to Los Angles after graduation. Working closely with production professionals and hustling around the set, Maddz became equipped with managing high profile names and from there, continued further into the corporate and creative sides of Hollywood. However, no matter how busy her schedule became, Maddz would always find a way to fit in a workout - even if it mean waking up at 4:30 AM. So when faced with career struggles and uncertainty on where to turn next, she took a leap of faith and auditioned to be a Soul Cycle instructor.

"It is a completely different animal," Maddz said about how her life changed with that career jump. She moved to Boston and now balances her days between being an athlete, mentor, and entrepreneur. We talk about her passion for fitness and how the Soul Cycle community has built her up to be much more than an inspiration in the studio. Maddz described 2019 as the best year of her life. She had just started her podcast and was promoted at Soul Cycle to Master Instructor when Covid-19 completely disrupted all that she had been building in the previous years. With no fitness studios open, Maddz had to pivot platforms to connect with others. She started her Wicked Fearless Confidence Coaching business which has since taken off. We talk about how she builds her own confidence, growing a social platform into a business, and we reflect on the decision to put yourself first in a social and professional environment where it can feel like so much is out of your control.

Love this episode? You can find more of Maddz here:

https://www.maddztaddz.com/about

https://open.spotify.com/show/1hcnwbWBcc9Sde9kFFBEGn?si=87c42930b03a4689

https://www.soul-cycle.com/instructors/10367/Maddz/

https://www.instagram.com/wibcast/