The semester has started and for the second time, QUEST is offering a very exciting elective course: Product Management (BMGT438N)! This class is filled with twenty QUEST students, a lovely TA, an amazing professor, and many guest speakers that are excited to help the class learn about Product Management.
This semester, the course has a new professor, Jessica Alves De Sa, a Product Manager at Shopify and QUEST alumna from Cohort 16! She has experience in consulting and product management and is excited to share her knowledge with the class.
It’s hard to believe that almost a year has passed since our “extended spring break” turned into the beginning of our “new normal.” As a student (hopefully) graduating this semester, I wanted to reach out to the leading experts in leaving college in the midst of a global pandemic: QUESTees who graduated last May. I had the opportunity to catch up with a few of them on how they’ve adapted, and I gained some helpful advice along the way!
Ari (front row, right) and her roommates – many of whom are QUEST alumni – celebrate the holidays.
It is not uncommon for young adults to feel insecure in their abilities or become lost while navigating the professional world. Cohort 12 alumna Amanda Nachman’s new book Qualified aims to help young adults land their dream careers by making connections, building their personal brands, and growing their leadership skills. In my interview with her, she emphasized her passion for empowering people to realize their full potential.
Amanda wrote Qualified after seeing the impact of her publication and podcast.
While the global pandemic has forced all of us to adapt in different ways, Andreia (a.k.a. Andie) Rauta of Cohort 14 saw an opportunity to use technology to adapt changing needs and help bring people closer together.
It’s natural to wonder what to expect when one leaves the university to join the “real world.” For this reason, it’s always interesting to catch up with QUEST alumni to see what they’re up to. I was recently able to talk to Noel Barrion from Cohort 3, who graduated from UMD in 1998 with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering. He currently works at Ultragenyx as a Director and HR Business Partner.
Noel is originally from Silver Spring, MD. Upon graduating from UMD, he moved to San Francisco where he spent five years as a management consultant and got his Masters in Human Resources and Organizational Development in 2004. He’s worked in Human Resources in the biotech/pharmaceutical industry in San Francisco, the UK, and Switzerland over the last 15 years. Today, he’s 44 years old and still lives in San Francisco with his partner Rob.
Noel has fond memories of his time in QUEST. He has vivid memories of the experiences he had and has three favorite memories from his QUEST journey.
Orientation is the first one. Noel says, “I remember doing a ropes course and taking the MBTI personality assessment. It was my first time doing both and it was very eye-opening. The ropes course required trust, teamwork, and self-reflection and the MBTI helped explain personality types. Up to that point, my focus in academics was in chemistry, biology, and math and so learning about some of the science behind personality and behavior helped me understand myself better and how people’s personalities can be.”
Noel told me that his second highlight was the cross-cultural course, which sounds like the equivalent of the 390H course that current QUESTees take. Noel said, “I was always fascinated with foreign cultures, partially because my parents were immigrants, and I always felt like I was caught between their culture and western ‘American’ culture. In the cross-cultural course we learned how communication, sense of individual versus group, and relationship versus task orientation can vary in different cultures especially in a business setting. These lessons were the beginning of a passion of mine as I have spent almost 5 years working abroad. Learning how to work and live abroad is an important part of my life.”
Finally, Noel loved the experience he had during his capstone project. From his perspective, “It was my first experience in paying attention to client needs, and without expertise in their business, still helping them problem solve. The critical thinking and problem solving felt in some ways quite similar to the scientific method I was learning in the lab and my chemical engineering courses. My experience with the practicum inspired me to pursue a management consulting career after graduating instead of engineering.”
Noel has had a diverse array of experiences since graduating from UMD. He first spent a few months traveling Asia before working in management consulting. During this time, he moved to San Francisco as he wanted to work more closely with clients in High Tech. He worked with clients undergoing large-scale technology changes and focused on the people side of this change, specifically in organizational change management and training. He would then decide to move on from consulting as he didn’t feel like it allowed him to learn more about the companies he worked at.
Following this realization, he started working at Genentech. It was a very exciting time to join the company, as it was doing ground-breaking work in oncology therapies, and it had just topped Fortune Magazine’s “Great Places to Work” list. It was the perfect place for Noel at the time because his science and engineering background helped as most of his clients were scientists and engineers. It was at Genentech that he decided to move into Human Resources and also pursue an international career. He spent over 1 year in the UK and 3 years in Switzerland. While in Switzerland, he managed a group of early-in-career HR professionals and also managed a global project with 40 team members from all over the world. After returning from Switzerland, he decided to leave Genentech after over 13 years there to join a small biotech startup. It was a big change going from a company with 90,000 employees worldwide to one with 50 employees and two locations, which is why he then joined Ultragenyx as a Director, HR Business Partner. Ultragenyx is a biotech/pharma company focused on developing therapies for patients with rare diseases.
Noel loves his current work, saying, “Working in the biotech/ pharmaceutical industry is very rewarding knowing that the people I help hire and the culture I help foster can lead to therapies that help people with terrible diseases.” A big focus for him lately has been on inclusion and diversity and so he is working with the company to see what they can do to create a culture of inclusion. Part of this is ensuring that their employee population has more balanced representation across different dimensions of diversity, such as gender, race/ ethnicity, and generations.
As for the future, Noel is looking forward to the pandemic subsiding and being able to do things with family, colleagues, and friends without having to think twice about social distancing or poor air quality. Beyond this, he wants to explore California more. He also hasn’t traveled to South America or Australia/New Zealand yet and would like to travel there one day.
Finally, Noel wanted me to include a big thank you to the QUEST program from him for all that he’s learned from it.
There are an incredible number of paths that someone can experience life. I was able to catch up with Andrew Jones from Cohort 26 this month, who studied aerospace engineering at UMD. I’d written an article about him just before summer, when he was approaching his one year anniversary of working at Appian in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Since then, Andrew decided to leave Appian and relocate to Taipei, Taiwan. At the moment, he is studying Mandarin at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). He’s not working towards a degree currently, but is hoping to work on his Chinese and get it to a level where he can use it professionally.
Andrew with some of his new classmates
Andrew’s motivation behind this move stemmed from a variety of factors. One of them was being able to live in a different part of the world. Andrew said, “I was not keen on settling down there for the rest of my life (or rather, I wanted to see what living in other areas of the world was like before settling down if I were to come back to live in DC long term).” He picked Taiwan because of its location, as it is close to many other countries that he is interested in exploring and because it’s where his mother’s side of the family resides. Additionally, he wanted to properly learn Chinese since it is a language he only acquired from listening to his parents talk while growing up. Andrew said, “There’s no better way to quickly improve your language skills than immersing yourself in a country and culture where that language is spoken,” and I think there’s definite truth in that.
While in Taiwan, Andrew’s been busy exploring Taipei. One of his favorite places so far is Taroko National Park in Hualien (on the east coast of Taiwan). In Andrew’s words, “It’s a huge gorge that cuts through from central Taiwan to the east coast, and surrounding the area are these immense mountains and beautiful marble in the river. Rent a motorbike, and you can actually drive along carved-out roads that run parallel to the gorge.” That does sound like an absolute blast.
Taroko National Gorge (picture courtesy of Andrew Jones)
Andrew’s been able to learn a lot from this move to Taiwan. He said, “You’re traveling to and shifting into an environment that’s unfamiliar, and more often than not, there will be new situations you encounter that you couldn’t prepare for beforehand. Even with family in Taiwan and having traveled here on a couple occasions, actually coming here for a longer term brought an abundance of challenges and things to learn that I’m even still navigating to this day.” He’s also been able to expand his network through his travels and by attending NTNU right now, meeting a diverse new group of students and forging meaningful connections with them.
Andrew’s currently enjoying life in Taiwan. However, he’s open to taking his life in any direction that catches his fancy. He mentioned that he’s always wanted to try living in the Pacific Northwest in the U.S., so hopefully he gets the chance to do that some day as well. Andrew – thanks for showing us that #theQUESTneverends!
Jessica and Erick Alves de Sa of Cohort 16 met through QUEST and just returned to the DMV after living in the Netherlands for almost five years.
Jess and Erick met during their sophomore year at QUEST Camp when they were assigned to the same 190H team. They started dating about a year and a half later and have been together for about ten years.
Erick worked for ExxonMobil after graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering. Since his parents are from Brazil, Erick had always been interested in working internationally. He expressed this during his on-campus interview for an internship with ExxonMobil during his junior year. He was placed into the Global Project Management organization. Once he accepted a position after graduation, it was only a matter of time before he went abroad for a project.
Since beginning at ExxonMobil, Erick had worked on the early-stage case selection for an expansion of a refinery in Rotterdam, Netherlands, one of the largest ports in Europe. When the project was green-lit, he decided to follow the project as part of the Project Management Team, prompting him and Jess to move to the Netherlands.
Jess studied bioengineering at UMD and worked for IBM after graduation. After moving, she worked in data engineering for Cool Blue, the second-largest e-commerce company in the Netherlands. While working in Rotterdam, Jess had to adjust to differences in the professional norms.
“The Dutch are very honest, and they’re very comfortable giving and receiving feedback,” Jess said, explaining the difference between how managers communicate in the U.S. compared to the Netherlands. “Here, if you asked your boss ‘Hey, how am I doing?’ and you weren’t doing a great job, they may say, ‘I mean, you’re doing well. Things are going good. Maybe keep focusing on improving this.’ In the Netherlands, they would say, ‘You’re not meeting my expectations right now, and I think you need to spend more time working on this. We’re gonna have a review in 3 months and we’ll get back to it.’”
Although this required a change in perspective, Jess appreciated this communication style. “It’s very different, but once you get used to working that way, you always know where you stand and you get really comfortable receiving and giving feedback. It took a while to adjust to, but I’m really appreciative now because I was able to grow a lot. I now know that feedback is a gift someone wants to give you.”
Erick and Jess enjoyed being immersed in the culture of the Netherlands. Erick said, “You can get around everywhere by cycling. The Dutch are some of the best cyclists in the world. As soon as you can stand on two feet, they put two wheels under you. It’s not a very sedentary culture. Everyone is moving around and outdoors.” Jess gained new perspective from the simplicity of the Dutch lifestyle. “They’re not interested in big houses, clothes, or cars, and they’re super happy.”
While in Rotterdam, Erick and Jess not only learned about Dutch culture, but also enjoyed becoming friends with coworkers from other countries. “Making friends with the Dutch could be difficult because it’s a small country. They have tight-knit friend groups, they’re close to their families,” Erick said. “We made really close friendships with coworkers who were also on expat assignments. That was kind of like our little family, and we made sure that we celebrated Thanksgiving every year. A small turkey was $100 there.”
After Erick’s project ended, they decided to backpack in South America for four months before returning to the U.S. They visited Erick’s family in Brazil, and additionally traveled to Chile, Argentina, and Colombia. Taking this time to travel gave them an opportunity to reflect on their time in the Netherlands and re-energize before searching for new jobs.
“Now we’re back, and I’m pumped to start working again,” Jess said. “I think you need some of that detox time to get some perspective. I think of some of the things I was worried about at work 8 months ago, and they’re so irrelevant now. Stepping out of it and seeing other people’s lives and other types of day-to-day schedules, you realize there’s so much you’re worried about that does not matter at all.”
Erick believes his experience in Rotterdam will influence his priorities when searching for a new career path. “As we’re looking for our next career moves, I’ve got exposure to the work-life balance in the Netherlands. They’re holistic human beings, compared to American counterparts who think of their worth as tied to performance at work. In the Netherlands, that’s just one aspect of your life.” In his job search, he’s interested in finding a company that “values [me] as a human being as opposed to a piece of a big corporate puzzle.”
Jess agrees that finding a company with an ideal work-life balance will be important to her, as well as a culture of communication similar to what she experienced in the Netherlands. “I don’t think I could go back to sugar-coating everything,” she said.
For all QUEST students, whether or not you’re interested in working abroad, Erick suggests to never limit yourself. “Don’t have that preconception of putting yourself into a box. If you ever ask yourself at the end of the day ‘Why am I doing this?’ and if what you’re doing really isn’t of interest to you, don’t hold back. Make a change, take time off. Take care of yourself, work is not the #1.”
Jess suggests that QUEST students keep an open mind about living abroad. “Realize we have one way of life here and that’s wonderful, but there are plenty of other ways of life that are also wonderful,” she said. “People aren’t that different. People’s lives all around the world at the superficial layer can be different, but at the end of the day, everyone has the same things they’re looking for.”
Considering their overall experience in Rotterdam, Erick reflected, “5 years changes anybody regardless of where you are. We’re indebted to the experience of living abroad. You take a piece of where you’ve lived with you all around.”
