Author: Shannon Kelly

Shannon Kelly is the Job & Internship Coordinator in Career Services.

Day in the Life: Adviser in Australia’s Department of the Prime Minister & Cabinet

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr and the Martin Luther King Day of Service, we’re kicking off our 2013 edition of @PennCareerDay with a focus on public service careers.  On Thursday, January 24th we welcome, Lex Ruby Howe, who will tweet about her career with the Australian government.  To learn more about Lex, read below, and don’t forget to follow her on the 24th!

alumpictureLex Ruby Howe graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Gender Studies with the Class of 2007. As a student, Lex won recognition for her undergraduate leadership, receiving the R. Jean Brownlee Award of Leadership, and the PennGALA Student Leadership Award, both senior honour awards. After graduation, Lex took a role in Penn’s Alumni Relations Office, and went on to become the Assistant Director of the Penn Traditions & Young Alumni Program for Alumni Relations at the University of Pennsylvania, focusing on class unity, leadership cultivation, and strategic planning for continued engagement.

As an alumna, Lex has stayed involved and served as the Co-Chair of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Alumni Association (PennGALA), as well as a member of the Alumni Board of Governors for the Sphinx Senior Society, and now serves as the Penn Alumni Australia Co-Chair.

Lex recently returned “home” to Canberra, Australia to take up a role as an Adviser in the Department of the Prime Minister & Cabinet in the Cabinet Secretariat Division.

I’m Here to Get You Linked-In.

We’re 10 days into 2013.  Yay! You may have some New Year resolutions related to your career, and if you do, I hope one of them involves LinkedIn.

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As the social media manager here at Career Services, my personal mission is to help any student or alum become comfortable with this amazing tool.  Why? It is powerful.  Let’s review the facts on just why it’s so powerful from LinkedIn’s website:

1)      There are more than 187 million members in over 200 countries and territories.  That is a LOT of people.  Odds are, if you want to learn about an organization or a career trajectory, you can find someone on LinkedIn and see what they did. For example, do you want to be a consultant? I would recommend looking for someone who is currently an associate at a consulting firm you are interested in and see where were they before? This is one way to get an idea of how you can follow a similar path.

2)      As of the school year ending May 2012, there are over 20 million students and recent college graduates on LinkedIn. They are LinkedIn’s fastest-growing demographic. Part of on-going professional development and one’s ability to find positions after college (whether that is the day after you graduate or 5 years after you graduate), it is important to stay connected to your peers.

3)      Over 39 million members in Europe as of June 30, 2012 and more than 34 million members in Asia and the Pacific as of September 30, 2012. Want to work in Europe? Want to find a job back home in China? One way to do that is to connect with those who are working there right now, especially if they are Penn alums, and ask them for advice.

So you see, LinkedIn can be useful/powerful/helpful/awesome (in my eyes). Now you’re wondering, how do I get started? How can I take my LinkedIn profile to the next level?  This semester we’re offering a variety of programs to help undergraduate and graduate students.  Here is a list of hand-on workshops offered in the Weigle Information Commons at Van Pelt:

Jan 14, 2013, 12:00 PM-01:00 PM
Jan 24, 2013, 12:00 PM-01:00 PM
Feb 28, 2013, 12:00 PM-01:00 PM
Mar 13, 2013, 12:00 PM-01:00 PM

To sign up for these workshops offered, visit the registration page.

We’ll also offer custom programs for different populations throughout the semester. Information on those workshops can be found on the Spring 2013 program and event pages for undergraduate and SEAS master’s students and for graduate students and postdocs. And, of course, if you can’t make one of these programs, utilize our LinkedIn resource page or come in and meet with a counselor.

Day in the Life: Sales Engineer at AppNexus

If you have a passion for technology and business, you’ll want to follow our next alum on @PennCareerDay, Andrew Lenehan.  On Tuesday, December 4th, Andrew will talk about his career as a Sales Engineer with AppNexus, where they are “setting the standard for excellence in ad technology and helping the largest and most innovative companies in online advertising build their businesses.”  Read more about Andrew’s background below and remember to follow him after the Thanksgiving holiday!

Andrew graduated from Penn’s Jerome Fisher Program in Management & Technology with a BS in Economics (Marketing / Finance) and a BAS in Computer Science. He moved to New York to join the consulting team of a digital ad agency called Rosetta (since purchased by Publicis), where he worked with a phenomenally talented team within their Healthcare vertical. While he loved his time at Rosetta, he aspired to eventually try his hand at his own entrepreneurial venture, and wanted to gain some first hand experience in helping to build a company. Two years ago, Andrew switched industries into the advertising technology space to work for a startup called AppNexus, which provides companies like Rosetta with the cutting edge technology necessary to thrive in today’s digital media industry.

Andrew’s career focus also changed, from solving strategic business problem, to complex technical ones as a Support Engineer. With a solid technical foundation to build on, he wanted to shift into a more client-facing role and moved over to AppNexus’s Sales Engineering team. A Sales Engineer is responsible for qualifying and amplifying deals with prospective clients, acting as somewhat of a technical advisor to all parties involved. It has afforded him the ability to speak with executives from hundreds of companies, from early-stage startups to household names, and accelerated his professional growth significantly in a relatively short amount of time.He has loved his experience at AppNexus so far, and look forward to helping this market-making company continue to evolve in the coming years.

Day in the Life: Chief Networking Officer of an International Healthcare & Assistance Firm currently on location in Asia

We focused on International Careers in late October 2012, to help those of you with the travel bug navigate your search to work, intern, volunteer and/or study abroad.  To add to these resources, we had alum, Suzanne Garber, contribute to @PennCareerDay.  Her career takes her around the world, in fact, she was on assignment in Asia and while she  tweeted Sunday, October 28th through Tuesday, October 30th.  Learn more about Suzanne by reading her bio below, and remember to follow read her @PennCareerDay feed on Storify to learn about her international career!

SuzanneGarberPhotoSuzanne Garber is the Chief Networking Officer for International SOS bearing global responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of providers within the medical, security and travel networks on which tens of millions of members rely to keep them healthy, safe and secure while abroad. Previously, Garber was COO for the Americas with accountability for the delivery of P&L of the entire region. Her travels have taken her to every continent and over 70 countries.

Prior to joining International SOS, Garber enjoyed a successful career with various operating companies of FedEx, culminating in her role as Managing Director, South America, based in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Garber is an honors graduate from Rutgers University with a degree in foreign languages and a Master’s degree recipient with honors from the University of Pennsylvania specializing in environmental engineering. Reared in Spain, Mexico, Algeria, Egypt, England, the Dominican Republic and various US states, Garber is fluent in English, Spanish and Portuguese and is an international expert in the topics of Duty of Care, international assignments, and risk mitigation within globalization.

Day in the Life: Biomedical Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Penn

To follow up our Biomedical Career Fair held on October 3rd, we welcomed Dr. Caleph Wilson to @PennCareerDay on Twitter for two days, Tuesday, October 9th and Wednesday, October 10th.  Dr. Wilson, also known as @HeyDrWilson, talked about his work as a Biomedical Postdoctoral Research Fellow here at Penn.  It was a great opportunity to learn about this path, whether you’re a current PhD candidate, a postdoc or an undergrad interested in biomedical research.   To learn more about Dr. Wilson, read his bio below, and check out his tweets on our Storify page.

Dr.CalephWilson Dr. Caleph B. Wilson is a postdoctoral scholar in the Abramson Cancer Research Institute and the Department of Microbiology of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.  Dr. Wilson investigates immunological therapies to develop treatments for cancer and HIV infections.  Specifically, his work seeks to genetically modify patient T cells, and transform the T cells to more effectively kill HIV infected cells and malignant tumors.

Before coming to Penn, Dr. Wilson earned his doctorate in Pathobiology at the University Park Campus of the Pennsylvania State University and his undergraduate degree in Biology from Alcorn State University.  Through engaging in investigative research as an undergraduate, graduate student and postdoc, Dr. Wilson has fully immersed himself in the biological sciences, fulfilling his lifelong goal to investigate and eliminate human diseases.  In addition to his laboratory studies, Dr. Wilson is also a co-chair of the Biomedical Postdoctoral Council.  As co-chair he seeks to represent University of Pennsylvania postdocs on campus, in the local community and nationally.

Receiving great mentoring has been a major cornerstone of Dr. Wilson’s progression from a small southern town to producing scholarly work at the University of Pennsylvania.  As a result, he has prioritized mentoring undergraduates, graduate students and fellow postdocs.  He envisions that the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields will lead all future industries in the U.S. and globally.  This interest in the development of the future of STEM drew Dr. Wilson to follow policy developments in the scientific world. He took this interest one step further and last year served as a Public Policy Fellow for the American Association of Immunologists.

Overall, Dr. Wilson hopes to impact society by developing successful therapies to eradicate cancers and HIV infections.  Further, he seeks to cultivate and support talented students into STEM fields and assist them in becoming lifelong scientists.