Career Services Talks Feature Six Alumni

November 25, 2019

A record number of alumni visited campus this quarter for career talks — but the Career Services team is working hard to break that record in the near future!

Alumni who visited include Evan Bloom (cohort '09), Marlon Graf ('12), Richard Krop ('92), Mark Schuster ('91), Mike Thirtle ('95), and Jon Wong ('12):

• Schuster started the series on October 8, with a talk on his own career — namely, how and why someone who is a medical doctor came to Pardee for a Ph.D. in policy analysis — and how public policy affects his ability to focus on the bottom-line as founding dean of the Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine.
• Krop, a principal at the Cadmus consulting firm, visited October 17. He gave a talk on survey research and data analysis in support of drinking water protection in the United States, and his work in strategic and technical consulting.
• Wong, a former Boston Consulting consultant and current RAND Researcher, spoke on October 22 and shared strategies for consulting interviews, such as case prep, the best way to practice, what frameworks to use, and more.

• Thirtle, president and CEO of Bethesda Lutheran Communities, visited November 7 to discuss health-related research and possible dissertation funding.
• Bloom, the senior manager of production innovation, working on advertising and promotion algorithms at Netflix, visited November 15 for a small-group discussion.
• Graf, an associate research economist at Precision Health Economics, spoke on a November 19 panel on healthcare careers.

Other (non-alumni) Career Services Speaker Series presenters included:

• Micah Winkelspecht, founder and CEO of Gem, a Los Angeles-based cryptocurrency startup. He visited October 10 to discuss Bitcoin, crypto, and a new, decentralized economic model.
• Yakov Feygin, associate director of the Future of Capitalism program at the Los Angeles-based Erggruen Institute, visited October 31 to discuss "What are the Biggest Challenges of the 21st Century?"
• Helen Kerstein, principal fiscal and policy analyst with the Legislative Analyst's Office, visited November 7 to discuss career opportunities at the LAO, a nonpartisan government agency that provides fiscal and policy advice to the California Legislature.