The 92 Report

Michael S. Chen graduated with a degree in investment banking. He worked at Hambrecht Quest, a smaller investment bank focusing on high tech and healthcare companies in New York City. After two years in investment banking, he decided to pursue medicine, inspired by his father's career as a cardiologist. He then went on to study internal medicine at UCSF, Cleveland Clinic, and then joined cardiac a...

David Tavárez, originally from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, completed a degree in anthropology and visual environmental studies. He had several ideas for his future career, wavering between being a scientist or a filmmaker. He secured a place at the Writers Workshop in Iowa and an internship at the American University in Cairo. He spent a year in Cairo after graduation and supplemented that summer by wr...

Show Notes: J.J. Bartlett kicks off the conversation with a short explanation on how his wife shaped his career in various ways. He took healthcare management in graduate school and his primary reason for this was his interest in extending healthcare coverage. The President Clinton and Hillary Clinton Health Plan had just failed in 1994, and he was interested in finding new ways to extend coverage...

Show Notes: Alison Umminger Mattison talks about a 20-year stint as an English professor, a marriage, a 13-year-old daughter, and publishing a book. She also pursued a master's in Christian spirituality and spiritual direction certification, focusing on spiritual direction, work, retreat, ministry, and facilitating silent retreats with themed content. She has moved around the world, from Boston to...

John Knepper thought he would pursue a career in theater after graduating and performing at the Harvard Radcliffe summer theater. However, after  moving to Memphis, Tennessee, he took a left turn and started working in the marketing department of the nation's fifth largest security guard company. After nine months there, John quit his job and traveled around the country for six months. Working in...

Show Notes: Christiane Pendarvis found her career passion in retail and retail merchandising in Neiman Marcus department stores in Dallas, Texas. She started working in a high-end department store, and  after working in the retail industry, she went back to business school and earned an MBA.  Experience as a Team Lead and Mentor After business school, Christiane worked at Procter & Gamble in their...

Show Notes: Robert Frost married  his high school girlfriend 10 days after graduating. After moving back to New York, Robert worked at a consulting company called A.T. Kearney. He was interested in business and thought consulting would be a good way to go while working towards becoming a CEO. However, three weeks in, he realized consulting wasn't for him. From Columbia University to Real Estate Ro...

Show Notes: David Willbrand got married immediately after graduation in 1992. He talks about that period of uncertainty many graduates experience after school, and David did not have a clear professional direction, but with an interest in politics, he started working on a campaign for a city council candidate in Cincinnati, which was short-lived but did lead to a position with the Ohio EPA. David...

Show Notes: As a student, Elijah Aron started writing plays, musicals, and making weird films with friends. After school, he moved to San Francisco and started a theater company with friends from college. They transformed an old shoe store into a theater, where Elijah worked and slept. He talks about the imaginative and adventurous shows, which included surrealist works and musical elements, and s...

Andrew Ott left college to work at a nonprofit, then moved into technology research and small internet startups before returning to nonprofits and working in social entrepreneurship in Brazil and Rwanda. Now, he runs his own nonprofit, training people from low-income backgrounds, particularly people of color and women, how to code, program websites, and launch new careers.   College Friendships On...

Show Notes: Somava Saha's interest in medical school began late in her career. She studied molecular biology in her fourth year at Harvard, but she eventually enrolled in the Berkeley UCSF joint MediCal program. There, she learned about medicine from the perspective of people and cases, as well as the economics of medicine and the history of healthcare and public health. She also completed a maste...

Show Notes: Julie Lin was a medical student at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons when she met her future husband. It was the first day of medical school and they met while attending a class where they were both serious amateur classical musicians. Julie talks about their shared love of music and how they planned to have a family quartet.  The All-state Orchestra Model Julie shares her...

Show Notes: Dennis Crowley started working for Tyco International in 1996 and spent five years in Europe, spending half his time in Paris and two and a half years in Brussels. This experience was enjoyable as it allowed him to work, sightsee, and travel around Europe.  During his time in Europe, he had the opportunity to visit every country in Europe, including Spain, Italy, the UK, and France. He...

Show Notes: Title: Media Entrepreneur and Filmmaker   Show notes: Natalia Tsarkova, a transfer student from Latvia, was the first student from the former Soviet bloc to apply to an American college. She was thrown into a completely different world and roles, but knew she wanted to create more contexts for others to transform their lives like she did her life . Growing up in Latvia, she watched pir...

William Cheng has been working in the Silicon Valley area since 2000. He graduated from Harvard as a bio concentrator and later attended UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine. He completed residency training in internal medicine at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, a county hospital affiliated with Stanford Hospital System. He then joined the Palo Alto Medical Foundation as a hospitalist, focusi...

Jeanne Simpson moved to New York after graduating. She started doing day jobs in New York City to make ends meet while attending free dance classes, which allowed her to continue her training without having to pay for grad school. She eventually joined the American Isadora Dance Company, a modern company. Beginning a Career in the Performing Arts Jeanne began her acting career at HB Studios, where...

Joshua Brandon Holden, the author of The Mathematics of Secrets, Cryptography from Caesar Ciphers to Digital Encryption, graduated with a degree in pure math and went on to teach at the University of Massachusetts and Duke. He discovered that he was spending most of his time on teaching, so he sought jobs where they would reward teaching. He then worked at the Rose Hulman Institute of Technology,...

Mark Jacobstein resides in Stanford, California with his wife, two children, and his mother in law. Mark's career has primarily focused on entrepreneurial technology, primarily in health tech, biotech, molecular diagnostics, and digital health arenas. After Cambridge, he worked with Scott Murphy, a close friend and business partner. He moved to California in 2003 to start a technology company and...

Andreas Stavropoulos, a venture capitalist and entrepreneur, came to the United States from Greece at 18 and has been in the United States ever since. His big moves include marrying his high school sweetheart, arranging their lives around graduate school, medical school, business school, and moving to California. He is now 55-years-old and is excited about the third act of his life, where he can c...

Show Notes: Shannon Frison joined the United States Marine Corps during her time in law school. She spent her second year at officer candidate school and became commissioned as an officer. After law school, she returned to Massachusetts, worked for a year at the TAs office, took the bar, and went on active duty with the Marine Corps. After serving at Marine Corps Air Station, New River, North Caro...

Show Notes: Anastasia Fernands has been practicing law since graduating from NYU. She started practicing in Boston at Hutchins, Wheeler and Dittmar, which was the oldest continuously running firm in Boston at the time. Anastasia has since moved to New York and now practices at Quinn Emanuel. Anastasia's career primarily focuses on intellectual property litigation, particularly patent litigation si...

After Brett Janis left Harvard, he worked as a journalist in Southeast Asia and later attended Georgetown University's Masters of Science and Foreign Service program, which introduced him to the International Affairs world. After a stint in Egypt, Brett joined the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1995, where he focused on economic issues related to the Southeast Asia crisis, including issues r...

Show Notes: Richard Primus initially had no idea what he wanted to do professionally after graduation, but eventually realized that he wanted to be a professor with interests in both law and political theory. He took HW Perry's constitutional interpretation class and decided to pursue graduate school and political theory before going to law school. Richard decided to study political theory at Oxfo...

Show Notes: After graduation, Chris Ball spent his summer working in Cambridge before returning to Columbus, Ohio, where he began graduate school in physics at The Ohio State University. He worked with Professor Frank DeLuca, a world-renowned researcher in microwave spectroscopy. Chris' research focused on the microwave absorption of sulfur dioxide and its relationship to NASA's Microwave Limb Sou...

Show Notes: Tom Hughes initially planned to pursue an MD, PhD, and work on multiple sclerosis, but decided against it due to his poor chemistry skills. Instead, he focused on being an English professor, inspired by his father, who had been an English professor. During his senior year, his brother joined him and encouraged him to pursue his passion for acting. Tom auditioned for two of his favorite...