Audrey French on How Grade Skipping Impacts Child Development

In Chapter 1 of 18 in her 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, entrepreneur Audrey Parker French answers "What Childhood Experiences Have Been Most Fundamental to Shaping Who You Are Today?" French starts preschool early and then skips 2nd grade. Being the youngest in her class by two years has a profound impact for French as she goes through school.  She shares the challenges of being 11 years old in 8th grade and then starting high school at 12. The experience ultimately helps her succeed as a young entrepreneur doing business with much older people. Audrey Parker French is an entrepreneur who co-founded CLEAResult, an energy management consulting firm she helped grow to #144 on the 2010 Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing private companies and then sell to General Catalyst Partners. She currently volunteers as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) and teaches children's choir. She graduated from Wake Forest University and lives with her husband in Austin, Texas.

Bijoy Goswami on Learning a Lifelong Lesson in High School

In Chapter 2 of 19 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, leadership philosopher Bijoy Goswami answers "What Do You Find are the Keys to Managing a Busy Schedule and Getting Things Done?"  Goswami shares how as a high school student, he tried to get a B+ final grade changed after the semester completed.  Goswami's teacher, Mr. Earhart, reminds him of the opportunities he had along the process and how he chose not to do them. This teaches him a life lesson to embrace the process, not the result, be it in school, life or career. 

Bijoy Goswami is a writer, teacher, and community leader based in Austin, Texas.  He develops learning models to help individuals, organizations and communities live more meaningfully.  Previously, he co-founded Aviri Software after working at Trilogy Software.  Goswami graduated from Stanford University.

Bijoy Goswami on an Easy Way to Teach Complex Concepts

In Chapter 11 of 19 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, leadership philosopher Bijoy Goswami answers "How Have You Learned to Better Distill Complex Concepts into Teachable Moments?" As someone who understands problems and teaches concepts by creating models, Goswami finds it helpful to break down ideas into three parts. Whether it is his maven, relator and evangelist MRE model or the magician pledge, turn, prestige model, he finds three-parts easier to communicate as well as to learn.

Bijoy Goswami is a writer, teacher, and community leader based in Austin, Texas. He develops learning models to help individuals, organizations and communities live more meaningfully. Previously, he co-founded Aviri Software after working at Trilogy Software. Goswami graduated from Stanford University.

Hammans Stallings on How Parents Raise Gifted Children

In Chapter 1 of 19 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, innovation strategist Hammans Stallings answers "Where Has Your Family Been Most Supportive in Your Career Development?"  From an early age, Stallings finds his family an extension of his career.  He grows up in a family of doctors and learns medicine is not the career for him via a variety of experiences, from doing home Skinner Box psychology research to taking personality tests in junior high school to learning at camps such as Odessey of the Mind and Duke Talent Identification Program (TIP).

Hammans Stallings is a Senior Strategist at frog design. Previously he worked in strategy at Dell and investment banking at Stephens. He earned an MBA from the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, a MS in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas and a BA in Economics and Psychology from the University of Virginia.

Breaking Down Learning Barriers by Building a Home Library

In Chapter 11 of 19 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, innovation strategist Hammans Stallings answers "Why Did You Decide to Build a Home Library and What Approach Did You Take to Do It?" Stallings shares how his home research library has taken shape over time as he has identified necessary resources that help him bridge gaps between the research of academics and the practice of business.

Hammans Stallings is a Senior Strategist at frog design. Previously he worked in strategy at Dell and investment banking at Stephens. He earned an MBA from the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, a MS in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas and a BA in Economics and Psychology from the University of Virginia.

Hammans Stallings on Learning Innovation by Teaching Innovation

In Chapter 14 of 19 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, innovation strategist Hammans Stallings answers "What Do You Expect to Learn by Teaching a Graduate School Class on Innovation?" Stallings finds that teaching a program at CEDIM in Mexico City allows him him to identify what he does not know about innovation and provides him a platform to learn from the classroom teaching experience. Teaching a graduate-level class allows him to learn from the shared experiences of his class and apply it to learning innovative elements of information space and information theory.

Hammans Stallings is a Senior Strategist at frog design. Previously he worked in strategy at Dell and investment banking at Stephens. He earned an MBA from the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, a MS in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas and a BA in Economics and Psychology from the University of Virginia.

How to Use Psychology and Decision Sciences in a Business Strategy Job

In Chapter 17 of 19 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, innovation strategist Hammans Stallings answers "What Types of Psychology Research Have Been Most Useful in Your Strategy Work?" As an undergrad studying psychology at University of Virginia, Stallings embraces the decision making and uncertainty research of Herbert Simon and Daniel Kahneman. Stallings draws on this and similar psychology research in his strategy planning work at frog design. He finds tying psychology into business strategy helps clients more easily understand the concepts and theories driving his recommendations.

Hammans Stallings is a Senior Strategist at frog design. Previously he worked in strategy at Dell and investment banking at Stephens. He earned an MBA from the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, a MS in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas and a BA in Economics and Psychology from the University of Virginia.

Kyung B. Yoon on Elementary School Influences on Career Choices

In Chapter 4 of 17 in her 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit executive Kyung B. Yoon answers "What Childhood Experiences Have Been Most Fundamental in Shaping Who You Are Today?"  Yoon recounts learning memorization skills as a 6th grade elementary school student.  Learning to memorize and recite poetry gives Yoon an appreciation for memorization and practice she uses later in her career as a journalist and public speaker. 

Kyung B. Yoon is the executive director of the Korean American Community Foundation (KACF) in New York City.  An award-winning journalist and documentary film producer, Yoon earned an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in History and Political Science at Wellesley College.

Jullien Gordon on Using a Teaching Degree in a Business Career

In Chapter 15 of 21 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, business coach Jullien Gordon answers "How Have You Used a Masters Degree in Education in Your Business Career?"  Earning a teaching degree at Stanford helps Gordon better understand how individuals learn and how educational systems facilitate learning.  This shapes how he teaches career education in his business work.  Jullien Gordon is a high performance coach and consultant to organizations, individuals and teams who want to increase employee performance, motivation, engagement and retention.  He earned a BA from UCLA, an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a Masters of Education from Stanford University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: How have you used your master’s degree in education in your business career?

Jullien Gordon: Well, at my core I’m a teacher, and one thing that I learned in terms of my master’s degree in education was how people learn. And so that’s been core to the way I develop my curriculum, the way I develop workshop experiences. It’s just been extremely valuable in that way. Ultimately I want to expand career education, I think it’s lacking in the same way that I think financial literacy is lacking in our K-12 education, in our college education, and our adult education. Why don’t people know how to do a budget? Why don’t people know how to manage the difference between assets and liabilities? Why don’t people know how to navigate their own career?

For me it’s the same thing and while I haven’t found a way to fully scale career education yet, so that people can manage their own careers and stop relying on their organization to manage their careers for them or their boss to manage their careers for them, I want to—ultimately I want to empower people to be able to navigate their careers on their own. And so that’s why that education at Stanford was so important to me because I understood how educational systems work, and how individuals learn, so I understood the ultimate infrastructure and I understood how people actually receive and retain information, and that shaped my teaching and my structuring of the work that I do.

Lulu Chen on How Fashion Stylist Work Leads to Art Director Job

In Chapter 13 of 16 in her 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, art director Lulu Chen answers "How is Your Graphic Design Education Relevant in What You Do as an Art Director?"  Chen talks about how a traditional art director job candidate has design and layout experience.  Chen talks about her unconventional path of working on sets as a stylist and how she came into her art director role. 

Lulu Chen is a photo art director working in retail e-commerce in New York City.  Previously, Chen worked as a freelance stylist for leading fashion catalogs and magazines.  She earned a BFA in design and art history from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How is your graphic design education relevant in what you do as an art director?

Lulu Chen: The traditional candidate for an art director is somebody who came up the ranks more focused on design and layout. And, you know, I came up the ranks being on set, you know, and logging in those hours, and I did have that advantage of being an art director at the magazine because you play, you know, you play dual roles, and I also had the background, so I was able to kind of bridge that.

Just the experience and all the different shoots that you’ve been on, you know, there has—you know, there’s been good days and there’s been bad days, there’s been all different kinds of talents, there’s been all different kinds of projects, there’s been all different kinds of art directors, you know, having seen that, and learned from it, you know, that was my bridge. But it took somebody really giving me the opportunity to show that I could do it, because I wasn’t a conventional candidate. And I will always be appreciative of those people who believed enough in me to give me that chance. 

Stacie Bloom on Developing Manager Skills in a Science Career

In Chapter 2 of 18 in her 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, Neuroscience Institute Executive Director Stacie Grossman Bloom answers "How Are Your Responsibilities Changing As Your Career Evolves?"  Bloom notes how she is becoming more detached from the daily work and more involved managing the people doing the daily work.  Bloom now overseas organizational finances and sees this as a natural progression in her career.  Bloom shares how  her science career background supports her strategic, operational and financial management responsibilities plans running the organization. 

Stacie Grossman Bloom is Executive Director for the Neuroscience Institute at the NYU Langone Medical Center.  Previously, she was VP and Scientific Director at the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) and, before that, held editorial roles at the Journal of Clinical Investigation and Nature Medicine.  She earned her BA in chemistry and psychology from the University of Delaware, her PhD in Neurobiology and Cell Biology at Georgetown University and did post-doctoral training in Paul Greengard's Nobel Laboratory of Molecular & Cellular Neuroscience at Rockefeller University.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen:  How are your responsibilities changing as your career evolves?

Stacie Grossman Bloom:  I would say I’ve become more detached from the actual daily work of the place and more involved in the management of the people who are really doing the amazing work. I would say I’m more involved in managing the finances than I was in my last position where we had a whole department doing that and now that operation rolls up to me for the first time, so I would say you know as my career evolves, taking a higher level position overseeing the entire organization, which I don’t think is a unique position for someone whose career is evolving necessarily. 

Erik Michielsen:  How is your science career experience most useful in your current role? 

Stacie Grossman Bloom:  I think that I couldn’t do my current role without my science career experience. And it’s a really—it’s been a very interesting evolution for me. So my position as executive director of the NYU Neuroscience Institute, in that role, I’m really overseeing the strategic financial and operational plans to actually run this, what my scientific experience gives me that makes it such a special position for me is just the ability to understand everything that’s going on there. So when we’re interviewing a potential faculty candidate, I fully understand the science, how that fits into the existing infrastructure of scientists and clinicians who we have and how that person can build bridges and really foster translational progress that will bring, you know, hopefully new therapies to neurological and psychiatric patients, so that scientific background, I think it gives me credibility, I hope it gives me credibility but certainly it gives me the ability to truly understand at the most molecular level all the work that we’re doing. 

Stacie Bloom on Finding Purpose Working in Neuroscience

In Chapter 7 of 18 in her 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, Neuroscience Institute Executive Director Stacie Grossman Bloom answers "What Makes Your Work Meaningful?"  Bloom hopes that the research work done at the NYU Neuroscience Institute will translate into some kinds of new therapies that improve patient outcomes.  She notes how an aging patient population is generating increases in neurological diseases - autism, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's - is creating economic and psychological challenges and how her work at the NYU Neuroscience Institute aims to foster research science and clinical science collaboration to create new therapies for the diseases. 

Stacie Grossman Bloom is Executive Director for the Neuroscience Institute at the NYU Langone Medical Center.  Previously, she was VP and Scientific Director at the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) and, before that, held editorial roles at the Journal of Clinical Investigation and Nature Medicine.  She earned her BA in chemistry and psychology from the University of Delaware, her PhD in Neurobiology and Cell Biology at Georgetown University and did post-doctoral training in Paul Greengard's Nobel Laboratory of Molecular & Cellular Neuroscience at Rockefeller University. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen:  What makes your work meaningful?

Stacie Grossman Bloom:  What makes my work meaningful is the hope that what we’re doing will someday reach the patient. The expectation that the research that’s going on at the NYU Neuroscience Institute will have a translational component to it that will allow it to be developed into some kind of a new therapy and that will ultimately be able to improve patient health and patient outcomes especially as the patient population and the population in general is just aging. The affliction of neurological disease like Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, the increase in the prevalence of autism in our population, these things are having such a big societal impact on us economically, as well as psychologically. And the hope that the work that we’re doing and what we’re building will have an impact on  alleviating some of that.

Erik Michielsen:  What are some of the signals or some of the steps you look for in working toward that, that goal? 

Stacie Grossman Bloom:  I mean the purpose of the institute is really to build bridges between the basic scientists and the clinicians, to really become a very translational entity. And by translational, I mean it’s a sort of pedestrian phrase but bench to bedside, so everybody talks about the lab work that’s being done at the bench with all of the pipettes and the chemicals but that actually reaching the bedside in the hospital and actually reaching the patient. And one of the purposes of one of the big goals of the NYU Neuroscience Institute because we have both of those populations, we have the basic scientists and we have these amazing clinicians, one of the goals is to bring those 2 populations together and to foster the types of collaborations and conversations that can push the field forward in that kind of a way.

Stacie Bloom on How Life Science Career Paths Are Changing

In Chapter 17 of 18 in her 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, Neuroscience Institute Executive Director Stacie Grossman Bloom answers "What Has Your Experience Taught You About How Science Careers are Changing?"  Bloom notes that with more life science PhDs being awarded then ever before, there is a supply and demand mismatch for purely academic jobs.  Bloom notes that people trained as scientists are not aware what else they can do with a PhD.  Bloom calls for more scientific or education training for alternative science careers. 

Stacie Grossman Bloom is Executive Director for the Neuroscience Institute at the NYU Langone Medical Center.  Previously, she was VP and Scientific Director at the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) and, before that, held editorial roles at the Journal of Clinical Investigation and Nature Medicine.  She earned her BA in chemistry and psychology from the University of Delaware, her PhD in Neurobiology and Cell Biology at Georgetown University and did post-doctoral training in Paul Greengard's Nobel Laboratory of Molecular & Cellular Neuroscience at Rockefeller University. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen:  What has your experience taught you about how science careers are changing?

Stacie Grossman Bloom:  I think my experiences just being involved in the scientific fields, especially in life science, has shown me that we’re awarding more PhD’s than ever before, there are a lot of people who just by virtue of sheer numbers cannot follow that traditional academic path, cannot end up in that in that ivory tower, and there are a lot of people who are there for either by choice or simply by virtue of the fact that they just can’t compete off looking for alternative types of careers, and by alternative I just mean anything outside of the traditional lab, whether it be academic or pharmaceutical company, biotech, what I see and sort of what I hear is that people trained as scientists aren’t really aware of what the possibilities are for them. What else can you do with a PhD and the truth is you can do a lot, but having the ability to take your skill set and adjust it for a new career, people with PhD’s aren’t being trained to do that, and the academic institutions may be a little bit hesitant to provide that training because the head of the lab wants to train the next Nobel prize winner, I don’t know if they’re as interested in training the next executive director of  the NYU Neuroscience Institute, or the next editor of Nature Medicine, they want to get the biggest return on their investment in you, and they’re investing a lot in you, so I think that there’s a great need to educate people with science backgrounds on other things that they can do, alternative types of careers and I don’t think we’re really providing enough of that just yet. 

Erik Michielsen:  What do you think would help get that process started?

Stacie Grossman Bloom:  So that process is starting a little bit. So when you go to a large scientific meeting, there’s usually one session about alternative careers and the room is usually packed and I’ve been a speaker at a lot of these. At NYU, we have a bi-annual event called “What can you be with a PHD” where there are panels of people who are doing really interesting other things, and that event is attended by almost 2,000 people, I think, the last one. So there’s obviously this great need for it and I think also some of the big scientific journals like Nature, I know for example has nature jobs network that’s not just focused on, you know, where to get a postdoc, where to get a professorship, so it’s starting, and I think as more of us end up in high-profile alternative careers and can be mentors to other people, you know, you hope that you’re the beginning of a larger group that’s going to encourage this kind of thing.

Using Journalism Education in a Business Career - Ross Floate

In Chapter 5 of 20 in his 2012 interview, branding and design strategist Ross Floate answers "How Has Your Journalism Education Been Useful in Your Business Career?"  For Floate, journalism skills that teach finding out the fundamentals of a particular issue is hugely useful.  Additionally, the problem solving skills and also the inquisitive skills that come with finding the truth prove very helpful in business settings.  Ross Floate is a principal at Melbourne, Australia-based Floate Design Partners.  Experienced in branding, design and both online and offline publishing, Floate and his team provide marketing services to clients seeking to better communicate business and culture goals via image, messaging, and story. He is a graduate of RMIT University.

Jon Kolko on Finding Joy Changing Careers From Business to Teaching

In Chapter 3 of 21 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, design educator Jon Kolko answers "What Do You Enjoy Most About What You Do?"  Kolko discusses making the transition working as a design professional to teaching design at the school he founded.  He discusses the rush he gets in the classroom and across parts of the "ivory tower" experience such as reading, researching and writing about complex problems. 

Jon Kolko the founder and director of the Austin Center for Design.  He has authored multiple books on design, including "Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving."  Previously he has held senior roles at venture accelerator Thinktiv and frog design and was a professor of Interactive and Industrial Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).  Kolko earned his Masters in Human Computer Interaction (MHI) and BFA in Design from Carnegie Mellon University.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What do you enjoy most about what you do?

Jon Kolko: I loved everything about design. I just love being a designer doing creative design work, making things. I've sort of transitioned in the last couple of years. So being called an academic has always sort of stung me like ah, that’s bad. In the last three years, I've decided that in fact, I am an academic and it's good. And so, I think in the same sort of excitement and personal rush that you get from doing creative design work. I also now get from teaching. And so, that’s sort of have been a revelation to me that it's okay to live in an intellectual ivory tower to some degree as long as you make that ivory tower accessible. I don’t feel bad that I enjoy reading and writing and thinking about complex problems. And so, for me, that’s been something that’s been making me really, really happy recently is any time I can spend actually teaching in a classroom. Weirdly, I'm spending less and less time teaching in a classroom because as the Austin Center for Design is more successful, there's more administrative crap to do. I don’t mind doing the crap. It's called crap because it's not fun but it's also not bad because it's still my baby. I'm still really enjoying it. I could see in the future that would definitely be something for somebody else to do but for the time being, anything that’s related to teaching and design is really, really giving me a lot of pleasure.

How to Apply Psychology Passion in Business Work - Hammans Stallings

In Chapter 3 of 22 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, innovation strategist Hammans Stallings answers "How Do You Apply Your Passion for Psychology in Your Business Career?"  Stallings' undergraduate education in economics and psychology help him learn how the world works.  For Stallings, his psychology passion helps him generate new approaches and ideas to better understand people and human behavior in a business environment.  This is Hammans Stallings' Year 2 CYF interview.  Stallings is currently a Senior Strategist at frog design.  Previously he worked in business strategy at Dell and investment banking at Stephens.  He earned an MBA from the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, a MS in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business and a BA in Economics and Psychology from the University of Virginia. 

Transcription: 

Erik Michielsen: How do you apply your passion for psychology in your business career?

Hammans Stallings: Psychology has been my -- my secret weapon of sorts, so if you go back to my -- my undergraduate where I spent time to studying economics and psychology, two fields that have not always kind of gotten along. And I spent a lot of time in kind of a state of cognitive dissonance where I was comparing and contrasting how the two fields thought about people and thought about explaining the world.

If you recall, I was very close to going to graduate school for psychology and I'd decided not to because I didn't quite yet know what I wanted to be or how I wanted to make an impact, so -- spent five to six years kind of in the wilderness wandering around before getting to come back to a role where I can work directly upon my background in psychology. That said, when you study those things, those ideas change kind of how you see the world and change how you frame up any situation, as well -- I spent a lot of time studying decision making, cognition and learning and memory.

So, it was always something that I could benefit directly from myself and so I can -- I could always understand that there were any heuristics and biases that might be kind of falling but from a less, say selfish introspective kind of use in psychology toward using them, using those tools and frames as a way to kind of understand other people. I find that business tends to -- to lack I would say, that kind of theoretical framework around people and tends to use one of oversimplification, say marketing is a field. It has people do a lot of self-reporting. We know from psychology that that's really quite bogus yet the entire subcategories in marketing really rely on that assumption being true and it's not. So, I would say that my passion for psychology allows me to -- to sort of see through that, and to see through the self-report and other kind of assumptions like that as bogus. To create new things that maybe are in better fitting with what I know about people.

So it means creating new tools. It means creating a new way of framing up how people are responding, and how they're using things. So, having a background and a passion in psychology for me means that I'm able to generate new things, generate new ideas, whereas, a lot of people I think accept the tools of their field as kind of a given and they don't understand the -- the limitations of those tools. So having a background in a field that, I'd say, should be like a lingua franca for -- for applied social science means that you could actually do cutting edge, you know, creating new tools and new perspectives on -- on people.

Why Psychologist Chooses Design Career - Hammans Stallings

In Chapter 4 of 22 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, innovation strategist Hammans Stallings answers "What Inspires You to Work at the Intersection of Design and Psychology?"  Stallings finds psychology work making peoples lives more meaningful and products and services more useful is an intrinsic motivator.  After graduate school, Stallings looks for an opportunity to use his background and found design work a great outlet for his psychology passion.  This is Hammans Stallings' Year 2 CYF interview.  Stallings is currently a Senior Strategist at frog design.  Previously he worked in business strategy at Dell and investment banking at Stephens.  He earned an MBA from the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, a MS in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business and a BA in Economics and Psychology from the University of Virginia. 

Finding Meaningful Work in Problem Solving Career - Hammans Stallings

In Chapter 5 of 22 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, innovation strategist Hammans Stallings answers "What Makes Your Work Meaningful?"  Stallings finds meaning in the fit between his academic and work background and the problems he tackles on the job.  By framing and understanding problems Stallings gets meaning using tools  from his cumulative education across psychology, economics, and business.  This is Hammans Stallings' Year 2 CYF interview.  Stallings is currently a Senior Strategist at frog design.  Previously he worked in business strategy at Dell and investment banking at Stephens.  He earned an MBA from the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, a MS in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business and a BA in Economics and Psychology from the University of Virginia.