1997 Major: Sociology and Women's Studies
"I use the lessons I learned in my sociology studies every day! I've spent most of my career thinking about how to engage and represent groups of stakeholders and, from that established base, how to lead those same groups to take action. Every role that I've had, in every institution I've served, has benefitted from my having studies the dynamics of human relationships and how relationships drive behavior. (That's equally true of the "extracurricular" work I do, such as serving on our local school's PTA board!)"
"Trust your judgement. In the early years of my career, I let myself believe that people with more quantitative backgrounds somehow had skills or perspectives that were more valuable than mine (and I was around a lot of those kinds of folks, who were quick to remind me of that idea). However, as we've all progressed through our careers, they and I have both come to recognize that my ability to see and understand what moves people to take action is often more predictive and always equally valuable (if not more) than whatever their data is saying."
