Alumni – Page 11 – Penn & Beyond

Guest Blog: A Career in Conservation

Today’s guest blog is by Eddie McKenna (’04 College, Anthropology & Communication), now an employee with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Communications Division.

Penn Career Services has been a key university resource for me when I have needed it most, particularly for resume reviews and mock interviews. It is a pleasure to be part of that resource myself for other Penn students and alumni and I hope everyone takes full advantage.

I work for Texas Parks and Wildlife, the agency responsible for the management and conservation of fish and wildlife populations in Texas as well as 93 state parks and historic sites. In PA it might be the equivalent of Pennsylvania State Parks, Pennsylvania Game Commission, and Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission all rolled together.

Although I am not a park ranger or a biologist by training, my work does revolve around conserving natural resources and offering recreational opportunities to one and all. My Penn anthropology and communications majors serve me well. This was not my first job out of college, but it has certainly become my favorite.

I would encourage Penn students and alumni to consider public service careers, to know what they want from a career and express it to others, and to pursue their dream employment environments based on the people and the places rather than the starting salary.

A Day in the Life: Urban Public School Reformer

Read Janel Forde’s archived tweet feeds here: Day 1 and Day 2

In the next two weeks, we welcome alumna Janel Forde who will post about another career path in education – urban public school administration. Follow @PennCareerDay on Twitter on November 8th, and then again the week of November 15th. Don’t miss out on what Janel’s days are like!

Janel works for Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the third largest school district in America with over 400,000 students, almost 700 schools and a $6bn operating budget. For the past year, Janel has worked in the CEO’s Office as the Director of Stimulus Programs. In that role she served as the district’s single point of contact for all stimulus related initiatives and helped to develop the state’s Race to the Top application ($400M) as well as the district’s Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grant which was the district’s largest competitive grant award to date, $34M. She has also led several strategic projects for the office. Prior to joining the district, Janel was a consultant in the Boston Consulting Group’s Chicago office. She specialized in the financial services sector and functionally in process management and strategy development.

Originally, from the east coast, Janel has worked in marketing and business development at American Express and in investment banking at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, all in New York. Janel earned her MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and her undergraduate degree from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

A Day in the Life: Publishing

Read Jamie Cheng’s archived tweet feed here: http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/JaimeCheng_Feed.pdf

If you have a love for the written word, then a career in publishing has likely crossed your mind. There is more than meets the eye in the publishing sector, you can publish books, magazines or industry specific journals. Furthermore, the sector has a wide range of opportunities beyond editing and writing – spreading the word. Jaime Cheng (SAS ’99) posts for @PennCareerDay on Wednesday, December 8th and will highlight a day in her life at Elsevier. Read more about Jaime below, and follow her next Wednesday!

Jaime Cheng is a Product Marketing Manager at Elsevier, the world’s leading publisher of science and health information. Jaime’s team provides hospitals with electronic reference solutions that meet the training, education, and reference needs of the nursing staff and leadership to optimize patient outcomes.

Prior to joining Elsevier, Jaime was a Database Marketing Manager with the Philadelphia Flyers and Philadelphia 76ers professional sports teams. There, she managed the database marketing and research strategy and operations. She also worked at a startup company in San Francisco for three years.

Jaime has a BA in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Tap Into Your Alumni Network

Homecoming is this weekend. Time to reminisce and celebrate Penn’s rich history of excellence and its many traditions. It’s also a time where there are a lot of alumni on campus, and events that connect current students with them. So, don’t let this opportunity pass you by.

As a Penn student, you are part of an extensive network that you can leverage for your job search and professional development at any stage of your career. Take advantage of the events that are going on here this weekend and build your network. You never know when an opportunity will present itself because of a connection you made.

Here’s a video from last year’s networking event during homecoming, Quaker Exchange, for insight about why alumni are excited to connect with you and what you can take away.

A Day in the Life: International Health Recruiter

Read Kate Theirs’s archived tweet feed here: Day 1 and Day 2

There are many opportunities for those of you interested in international and/or health-related careers. If you find the right organization, you can apply a broad range of your talents and have a career that serves your passion for international relations and/or healthcare. Our next alumni on @PennCareerDay will highlight one of these career paths on Tuesday, October 19th and Tuesday, October 26th. These two days on @PennCareerDay are alongside a line-up of programs and events geared toward international opportunities. For more information on these events, click here if you’re an undergraduate or here if you are a graduate student. Read more below on Kate Thiers who will be posting for @PennCareerDay during these weeks, and don’t forget to follow to see what her day is like!

Kate Thiers (W ’00) is the Operations Manager for Africa Health Placements (www.ahp.org.za), a Johannesburg-based non-profit company that places foreign and local health workers in rural public hospitals in southern Africa. Since inception in 2005, AHP has placed over 1,750 doctors in southern Africa, over 900 of whom are foreign nationals. Kate’s team manages all finance, IT, HR, marketing, PR, website and orientation activities for all AHP offices, which include Johannesburg, Durban, Swaziland, Lesotho, the UK and the US.
Prior to moving to South Africa in November 2009, Kate was a Project Manager with Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics in London. There, she was a project administrator for a European-wide corporate merger project for one year and subsequently managed a new partnership initiative with National Health Service (NHS) hospitals for a second year. In the US, Kate worked as a project manager for a Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical company and managed large-scale application and infrastructure initiatives. She also worked as a business consultant for two years with Andersen Business Consulting.

Kate has an MBA from the Said Business School at Oxford University in the UK and a Bachelor of Science in Economics (BSE) from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.