Following the Gong, a Podcast of the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State

Guest Bios: Peter Schweyer ’00 is the PA State Representative for the 22nd Legislative District which covers parts of the City of Allentown in Lehigh County. Prior to his election to the House in 2014, he was Director of Community and Government Affairs at Sacred Heart Hospital in Allentown and was a twice-elected member of Allentown City Council. He earned a BA in Political Science with Honors fr...

Guest Bio: Jim Durrell ’94 Eng ’05g Bus is a senior engineer at Google in Pittsburgh working on the AdBrain machine learning infrastructure. Before joining Google, Jim was CTO at Health Monitoring Systems doing public health reporting and VP at McKesson building automated pharmacies. He earned a BS in Computer Science with Honors from the College of Engineering in 1994 and earned his MBA from the...

Guest Bio: Dr. Paul Markowski ’96 is a Distinguished Professor of Meteorology in Penn State's Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science, where he studies thunderstorms and their attendant hazards, particularly tornadoes, using state-of-the-art observations and computer simulations. He has been at Penn State since graduating from the University of Oklahoma with his Ph. D. in 2000. Prior to...

Guest Bio: Uma Pattarkine ’14, ’14g Bus is the Global ESG Lead & Investment Strategy Senior Analyst at CenterSquare, where she leads their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) strategy to incorporate ESG into investment decision-making and management of listed and direct investments. Their research demonstrates embedding ESG considerations into their investment process provides opportun...

Guest Bio: Matt Mignogna ’18 Lib, ’18g Edu joined the Smeal College of Business eLearning Design & Innovation Group as an instructional designer in 2021, but has been with the Smeal College of Business at Penn State since 2018, previously serving as an Academic Advisor. Matt earned both his degrees from Penn State: an M.Ed. in Learning, Design, and Technology from the College of Education and...

Guest Bio: Basel Kayyali ‘96 Eng is a Senior Partner at McKinsey and Co. where he co-leads the Payor and Provider digital practice globally. In addition, he is the Managing Partner of McKinsey’s Mid-Atlantic Digital Office based in Summit, NJ. He has worked primarily at the intersection of operations, technology, and healthcare, serving clients across the healthcare value chain on various topics,...

Guest Bio: Jocelyn J. Fitzgerald, MD is an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the division of Urogynecology and Reconstructive Pelvic Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She completed her Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery Fellowship at Georgetown University/MedStar Health with the National Center for Advanced Pelvic Surgery and her Gynecolog...

In this special episode, we speak with Lisa Kerchinski and Keith Graham ‘85 Eng.  Guest Bios: Lisa has served as the Director of Career Development for the Schreyer Honors College from 2007 throguh 2022 where she supported Scholars and Scholar alumni in a variety of career exploration and development opportunities. She also worked with employers to recruit Schreyer Scholars for internships and ent...

Guest Bios: We have two guests on this episode of FTG. The first is Sam Bonsall ‘04 ‘12g. Sam is the Reeves Family Early Career Professor in Accounting at Penn State’s Smeal College of Business in University Park, Pennsylvania where he teaches Master of Accounting and doctoral students and conducts research related to the impact of information on capital markets. Before joining Penn State in 2017,...

Guest Bio: In this episode, we hear from John Hemmer ‘03 Eng. John is a patent attorney and partner at Morgan Lewis where he helps clients protect and leverage their most important and innovative inventions and designs. John also regularly prepares and negotiates technology agreements, counsels clients on matters relating to litigation and patent challenges, and works with clients on venture capit...

Guest Bio: In this debut episode, we chat with Asia Grant ‘17 Bus, the founder and creative director of Redoux, a cosmetics company in Philadelphia, PA where she oversees growing the brand. Prior to founding Redoux, she worked as a user experience designer and research for IBM and then Capco in New York, NY. She earned a BS in marketing with Honors from Penn State’s Smeal College of Business in 20...

#FollowingTheGong is a podcast for current and prospective Schreyer Scholars as well as recent alumni and prospective Scholars. Join us each week, wherever you are engaging with this content, as Scholar Alumni share their journeys and advice to help you make the most of your experience as a Schreyer Scholar and prepare for the next step on your own journey.  Don’t forget to like, follow, or subscr...