Four Alumni Visit to Discuss their Careers

March 7, 2017

Thanks to the efforts of the Career Services Advisory Committee, four alumni visited Pardee RAND this quarter to discuss their careers with students.

Loren Yager (cohort ’87) visited RAND for a Development Office event on January 27 and also returned to campus to share his experiences inside the presidential transition process and discuss careers at the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). Yager is the former managing director of international affairs and trade at the GAO and gave a post-inauguration talk about what’s next now that the Trump administration has taken office, with insights into the scope and process of the decisions to be made in the first 100 days.

On February 17, Ying Liu (cohort '04), associate director of the global health economics and outcomes research (HEOR) department at Biogen, provided students with insight into the working conditions and cultures at various types of firms and organizations doing health research.

Student Gulrez Azhar (cohort '14) commented after the talk, "Ying explained her impressive career trajectory from the Harvard Education fellowship to the CDC prevention effectiveness fellowship and her current work for the biotech industry. It was really inspirational for us students to meet another successful alum in person. She made us believe that we can do it, too.“

Finally, on March 3, Eric Jesse (cohort '08) and Jonathan Wong (cohort '12) visited to talk about their positions as consultants in the Los Angeles office of Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

Jesse joined BCG in August 2016 and his work has involved realizing significant margin improvement for a major service firm. He also executed merger integration training design and coordination for two large service firms. Wong joined BCG in January 2017 and is managing a personnel baseline to ensure the orderly merging of two major service firms. In this capacity, he has already advised executive leaders on cost synergy impacts of personnel changes and facilitated separations process for outgoing personnel.