WIBcast

This week on WIBcast, Allison Minogue will remind you never to settle. At Boston College, Allison studied Psychology and Economics and found her niche in behavioral economics in the middle.

After graduation, she joined a market research firm where her academic interests were elevated in practice. She gives a deep dive into what it means to apply data to human behaviors, and we discuss how to turn data collection into applicable strategic goals through visualization and narration. We also talk about concepts from Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow, one of the more influential works on behavioral economics. Allison has adopted many of Kahnmenan's ideas into her own work.

Allision attended Columbia Business School, and in a different view on business school than I have heard before, Allison explained that she viewed her time there as a chance to pivot. She joined McKinsey afterward. Her interest in consulting stemmed from a desire to work across industries, and the role at McKinsey allowed her to travel and develop a new set of hard skills.

Now, Allison is a year into her newest role as a Strategy and Operations Lead for Google Cloud. She helps with everything from headcount and budget to reporting and metrics of special projects. The importance of Cloud technologies was elevated to the forefront of how we work during Covid, and Allison is diving into what consumers want out of a streaming experience and how to create that.

Theresa Mahoney started her career in Deloitte’s consulting practice after graduating from Boston College and has stayed there her entire career. We get into a detailed conversation on anything and everything students interested in consulting would need to know. If you are unsure of what you might be interested in as a potential career, Theresa is far from the first to say that consulting is an ideal first position because of the broad skillset and industry exposure that young consultants gain access to. She also explains that one of the advantages of a bigger firm like Deloitte is that analysts can find a project in any industry they find fascinating, from luxury goods to tech strategy. 

Throughout her career, Theresa has developed a specialty in Healthcare and Lifesciences. She volunteered at a hospital as a student. We note that consulting provides opportunities for people passionate about a specific industry to stay close without needing the niche technical skills that a doctor or engineer would.

We also discuss the day-to-day as an analyst. Many of Theresa’s memories from the beginning of her career were centered around travel. Although based out of Boston, Theresa was on the road four days a week. While traveling, she remembers being in meetings with executives and learning the job through action. Theresa is an active recruiter and gives tips on what makes candidates stand out in the consulting recruiting process. 

As a senior manager, she oversees a broader range of responsibilities, but most of her projects focus on Lifesciences. We have a great conversation about what clients were looking for during Covid and how the consulting industry changed during the pandemic. 

This is a must-listen episode, as Theresa’s advice is applicable far beyond the consulting field. 

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Emily Wilson joins WIBcast this week to talk about her career as a Product Growth Manager at Meta. We discuss the growth of platforms such as Meta and Google as advertising tools and the culture at big tech firms. This is a great episode to learn about what goes on behind doors at the tech companies that have changed the world. 

Emily studied English at Boston College, giving her a broad but vague sense of potential career paths. After her junior year of college, she accepted a role at a startup called SocialCode, which would become a pioneer in social media advertising. At SocialCode, Emily worked closely with all of Meta's products to help clients advertise and with employees at Meta directly.

In 2016, she joined the Meta, then Facebook, team directly. Now, as a product growth manager, Emily thinks about how to build tools for advertisers on Meta. We focus a lot on tech firms' capabilities from the perspective of both an advertiser and end user and compare how tech platforms compete with each other for business.

Emily also shares a look into the culture of the tech industry. She describes Meta's massive campus in California and its office in New York. With perks such as complimentary meals and coffee, a laundry service, and flexible working conditions, the environment is part of the reason Emily has stayed at Facebook for so long. On that note, we talk about why it is hard for companies to keep young talent in one place. Emily mentions that hopping from one company to the next is a methodological way to get a raise, but by staying at Facebook, she has genuinely integrated into the culture and become an expert in her practice. 

Emily emphasizes the importance of a liberal arts education, even in the tech field, and shares insight on how to stay curious and ever-evolving at work!

This week on WIBcast, Phoebe talks to 2022 BC grad, Caroline Costa, about her job as a Digital Product Analyst at Cava. In her role, Caroline is now helping build their website and app as this fast casual start up rapidly grows! With a less linear recruiting path than some other jobs in business, Caroline discusses all the experiences as a student that lead her to her role today. As a freshman, Caroline entered BC as a finance major, but after spontaneously attending an internship fair and accepting a summer position with an emerging Public Benefit Corporation, Caroline realized that crafting brand strategies excited her much more than financial statements.

After that summer, where Caroline focused on creating the image for Millie Giving, she began to look more into the marketing track. And in a field where there are not always strict resume drop deadlines or specific technical questions you can expect in an interview, much of Caroline's career exploration took place in the form of getting on the phone with people in all different roles and asking the under-rated question, "can you walk me through a day in your life?" After her junior year, she worked for a marketing agency, which creates marketing material for all sorts of clients from makeup brands to tech firms. There, Caroline got exposure into search engine optimization, A/B testing, and the different strategies to make sure the campaigns she worked on performed well. For example, why not pay for your brand to come up in a Google when someone searches a competitor?

Caroline gives great insight on how to learn beyond what students are told in classes, and highlights key considerations for any marketer that she has learned along the way. Are you building a product that everyone can enjoy? Who might be left out in your branding strategy and how can marketers incorporate those people into their design? We discuss the differences between working for a brand vs working for an agency, and why she ultimately chose Cava.

In this episode, we hope to clear up some of the confusion marketing majors may feel in their career search and emphasize the persistence and curiosity that lead Caroline to Cava!

This week on WIBcast, Molly Mahon joins me to talk about our summers as interns in New York City for part 2 of the WIBcast is Back series. 

Molly is a senior at Boston College and on the Women in Business Board, but calls Chicago home. We talk about why we wanted to intern in New York and how to navigate finding roommates / living with new people. Molly took on a "just do it attitude" that extended into all parts of her city summer. The majority of the episode echos this theme as we share tips from our time as interns that focus on networking, professionalism, learning, and receiving feedback. All of those skills are things that we have had some experience with as students, but found new insight on in a work environment. We reflect on all that we learned about ourselves from communication styles to finding balance and how we have brought that back to campus as seniors.

And any discussion about New York would not be complete without some dialogue on all there is to do! We talk about what we did on the weekends, from meeting up with friends to exploring new neighborhoods. When there is always something going on, the toughest decision you have to make is whether you will get to your destination by subway, Blue Bike, or on foot. We also talk about our thoughts on safety and making such a big city feel like home.

Molly and I are happy to be resources for anyone considering an internship in New York. Questions are always welcome through @WIBCast on Instagram. 

Welcome back to WIBcast! I know it has been a while since I last recorded, but that time did not go wasted. In January of 2022, I left to study abroad in Barcelona for the spring semester and then I moved to New York City for a summer internship. I put WIBcast on hold to be completely focused on those experiences. And that said, before more interviews with women in the business world, I am taking the first two episodes of WIBcast Season 4 to share some stories of my own.

Today, I have Jordan Klumb on with me to talk about all the details of a semester abroad. Jordan is a senior at Boston College and the Co-President of Boston College's Women in Business Organization this year. She studied in Dublin, Ireland, and while I was in Barcelona we crossed paths many times while traveling. I want to preface this entire episode with gratitude that I was able to study abroad. This was such a unique experience that has undoubtedly enhanced the way I appreciate new cultures and think about my life now that I have returned. In those 5 months, I was able to visit eight countries and countless different cities and towns. 

Jordan and I talk about where we traveled and why we studied where we did. But beyond logistics, the majority of our conversation is focused on the life skills that you have to adopt to have a successful experience. We get into culture shock, the differences and similarities between European and American cities, and reflect on what it was like to travel so independently as young women. We share stories about spontaneous friendships with locals, planning trips, and creating irreplaceable relationships with the people you live with. I hope this can be a look into what I have been up to since I last recorded, and be sure to be on the lookout for pt.2 of the WIBcast is back series next week where I talk about my summer in New York City.

Feel free to reach out to either of us to share your own experience or ask more questions about study abroad through @WIBCast on Instagram. 

WIBcast is back! - Phoebe

Kristina Bittorf is a Senior Manager at Sprout Social and in this episode, she brings a breath of fresh air to the possibilities of a career in finance. In her role, any considerations on how to fund projects, allocate cash or maximize revenue run through Kristina. Kristina evaluates investments and returns at a deep level, but she emphasizes that on top of her analytical knowledge, it's her creative side that makes her good at what she does.

We talk about the ‘rut’ finance students sometimes feel when considering traditional banking and consulting. Kristina started her career at Deloitte and explains that starting at a large established firm with a lot of guidance was very helpful in her early professional life. Her transition to a broader and more encompassing position, as she holds now, is the result of many years of analyzing how to think about financing decisions creatively. Kristina explains that as she has gained confidence in her work, she has become excited by difficult problems versus feeling overwhelmed or paralyzed. She has a broader interest in technology, and we talk about the nuances of working at a tech company compared to a traditional bank or consulting firm.

Kristina radiates confidence you can hear in her voice, and she talks about how her experience as an international student was foundational to her education and personal growth. She says it was overwhelming at times but taught her to be resilient and channel her stress into action. Later in the episode, we talk about her experience on an Arrupe service-immersion trip at Boston College and the transformative impact it had on her life since then.

This week on WIBcast Phoebe talks with Marne Sullivan and Paige Carter about their experience working at Voice in Sport. Voice in Sport is an online resource platform for female athletes created by female athletes. Its mission is to connect athletes with professional athletes as mentors and  bring visibility to issues women in the athletic community face. Marne and Paige embody all that Voice in Sport stands for through their professional and athletic careers.

Now the Head of Content at Voice in Sport, Paige graduated from UCLA and is now getting her MBA at Boston College while finishing her NCAA eligibility on the women’s cross country and track team. This BC connection is how Marne found out about the Voice in Sports internship program. She is now on the marketing team with other student-athletes from all across the country.

We talk in-depth about the value that supporting women’s athletics brings to the business world. Both Paige and Marne have found community and confidence through sports that translates into all aspects of their lives. They are not alone in this. A global EY and ESPNW survey found that 94 percent of the women in C-suite positions played sports, and 52 percent played sports in college. We talk about how media representation fuels results, balancing an internship while in school, and how Voice in Sport is creating an accessible and credible platform to do all of the above.

Paige and Marne agree that one of the most inspiring parts of working with Voice in Sport is the ability to meet and connect with so many other women. In tandem with that, the group of interns creating the content at Voice in Sport is the same demographic that Voice in Sport aims to serve. 

This is an episode for the athlete, the marketing mind, and the ambitious. Don't miss out on what they have to say!

Get used to seeing the name Barbara Euripides! As a first-year Sales at Trading Analyst at Citibank and the published author of Brains, Beauty, Boss: The Ultimate Guide for Women in the Workplace, Barbara has already established herself as one to accomplish her own goals and her ability to uplift other women along the way.

While a senior at Duke University, Barabara received a LinkedIn message from Professor Eric Koetser. His goal is to publish 10,000 in 10 years and he asked if she would be interested in writing a book. With little experience as a writer, and little belief that she was a good writer, she accepted the challenge, and after a year of interviewing women from the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, Barbara published her first book. We talk about her creative journey, how writing complimented her finance curriculum, and the lessons learned from both. Anecdotes from Brains, Beauty, Boss celebrate unconventionality, risk-taking, and passion. 

My favorite moment of the episode is when we discuss our thoughts on validating passions. Whether you want to film videos for Buzzfeed, work in an Investment Bank, or democratize water access with mechanical engineering, the way we come to love what we do is just as much random as it is methodical. Brains, Beauty, Boss is a celebration of women succeeding across industries and I hope you leave this episode inspired to dive into what you love!