Cool Careers & How You Got Them
A conversation with professionals who have cool and interesting jobs and a description of their career path, targeted at high schoolers, hosted by Zain Raza, a current high schooler.
Cool Careers & How You Got Them
2.4 - Global Head of Private Capital Kenna Baudin
In this episode, Ms. Baudin takes us through her role at Egon Zehnder and the roles and responsibilities associated with her job.
Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Cool Careers and how you Got them. I'm your host, zane Rousen. I'm sure lots of adults ask you what you want to be when you grow up and if you're anything like me, you don't have an answer for them. Hopefully my podcast can give you some inspiration. I'm very excited and lucky to be joined today by Mrs Kenna Bodden, who has a very cool and interesting career. She her jobs to consulting and finance, with a pivot into recruiting and, without further delay, let's get into it. This is Vaughn. How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm fantastic, zane, happy to be here.
Speaker 1:Thank you, of course. So let's start out how we always do. What is your official title? So my title is Partner, global Head of Private Capital at Egon Zender. Partner and Global Head of Global Capital.
Speaker 2:Sorry, one more time Global Head of Private Capital at Egon Zender. What does that mean? Yeah, it's a good question, so we'll go maybe in reverse chrono. So Egon Zender? What is Egon Zender? So Egon Zender is a global meaning. We work across. We're an international firm, talent advisory and executive search firm, so we do like consulting for human capital, meaning it's all about people and we place people in different jobs around the world. So another term that people use for the type of work that I do is a headhunter, but executive search consultant sounds a little nicer, I guess. So that's what we go with and I'm a partner, which means I'm one of the senior members of the organization, I'm one of the owners of the firm and I have a global role. So I basically work across the world, managing a team and a strategy around how we serve our clients that are what we call private capital providers. So that's everything from a venture capitalist to traditional private equity, what's called private credit or debt family offices and sort of everything in between.
Speaker 1:Okay, Awesome. Now it's important for us to kind of know what you were like when you were our age, so we'll know you know. If you have similar things, maybe we could potentially work in this field. So when you were a teenager, what were you like? What activities were you involved with? What interests did you have?
Speaker 2:activities were you involved with? What interests did you have? Yeah, so kind of like you, Zane, I was one of those kids that was like involved in a lot of stuff and so I did well in school. That was obviously my number one priority was getting good grades. But I was also the type of person that was like student council president. I was played tennis. I was captain of the tennis team. I played softball. I was captain of the softball team. I was involved in several clubs. I played piano. I played three instruments. I played piano, I played clarinet, I played bass and bass clarinet.
Speaker 2:So I was kind of one of those kids that was very like interdisciplinary, If I said like I liked a lot of things, I tried a lot of things and I happened to be pretty decent at a lot of things. So that made it hard for me. Actually, even when I wanted to go to college because I didn't know it wasn't like oh yeah, I always wanted to study X and so I'm going to go to this school I sort of again wanted to do something that was as interdisciplinary as possible. Sort of again wanted to do something that was as interdisciplinary as possible.
Speaker 2:And I grew up in New Jersey, in a town called Teaneck. I went to a public school. My graduate class was like 316 kids, and so I was really fortunate that I had a chance to do a bunch of summer programs, which then led me to where I decided to go to college. I went to the University of Pennsylvania and I was in the Wharton School of Business, and I had done a summer program at Wharton the summer before, which opened my eyes to what that was all about.
Speaker 1:What was your actual major at Wharton?
Speaker 2:So I got a BS in economics with a concentration in management and a minor in Spanish minor in Spanish. That's cool yeah, I studied abroad while I was in college. I went to Spain and I studied at a business school called Icave in Madrid.
Speaker 1:So great great experience, awesome. What did you take away from that trip to Spain? That sounds incredible. How did that affect you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was great.
Speaker 2:I mean I, unlike you, know a lot of kids now I hadn't really traveled that much growing up outside of the country.
Speaker 2:I didn't even have a passport until college and so I always wanted to go see what the world was like in other places and what I learned most about um going studying abroad. What I learned was that, like they were kind of taught in the United States Like the way we do everything is like the best, we're the biggest, but the reality is like there are a lot of other people doing really cool things around the world and doing them in different ways, and that, for me, was one of the biggest takeaways was like wow, there's more than one way to do something, there's more than one way to live and people are doing, like what we do, many of the things that we do here in another country in another language, and it gave me a much bigger sense of respect for, I think, the world overall and people overall. So while I, of course, I studied and my Spanish got like really good, it was really about how it opened my eyes to the world.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to learn Spanish. It's not. It's not the easiest thing to do, so that's impressive. What, um? What jobs did you have before your current role?
Speaker 2:So when I got out of college, my first job was actually in management consulting. I worked for a company called the Boston Consulting Group, bcg, and I found that a really good foundational career, because you learn a lot about a lot of different industries in a short amount of time. And then I moved into working in private equity. So I was a private equity investor for many years before and after going to business school, and so that's what I was doing before I joined Agon Zender and I've been at Agon Zender for a little over 10 years now. Okay, what was your actual role at BCG?
Speaker 2:So the title was called Associate and usually when you come out of college you're either called like an analyst or an associate, depending on what the company, what the nomenclature is and there you're taught to work on business problems, structured business problems. So I worked on everything from I worked with, like Tropicana, on trying to figure out how to increase or introduce consumption. That was one of my projects. Then I also worked for a pharmaceutical company, pfizer, and we were working on looking at some of the way they did their clinical trials. So I can tell you this now because it's many years later, so at the time it would have been confidential, but what's cool about management consulting is that you can have a chance to look at a lot of different industries, and so I'm always a fan of, in your first job, having it be something that's foundational, that really helps to open your eyes and expand your worldview. So that's what that was for me.
Speaker 1:Okay, great. And then business school is always, I don't know. In my social circles that's a big thing we talk about, because, as you know, finance bro stereotype is very prevalent at Del Barton, and so it's what a lot of kids are interested in. So can you tell us a little bit about business?
Speaker 2:school. So I doubled down on business school. So I went to business school for undergrad. I went to Wharton for business school and then I went and got my MBA at Harvard Business School and I loved business school. I think it's a phenomenal experience.
Speaker 2:It's different than other graduate schools because you know it's not academic in the same way You're learning, but it's much more of like a pre-professional degree. So everyone knows, like why you go to law school. You go to law school to, like, become a lawyer. You go to business school to become a doctor, excuse me, you go to medical school to become a doctor. But what do you go to business school for? Right, it's not completely clear.
Speaker 2:You can do a lot of different things. It's really about leadership and it's about helping you to be a leader in whatever environment you go into, whether it's academia, traditional business, teaching, whatever it is. And you know my classmates have gone on to do a variety of things. A lot of them are in what you think of as like the business world. But the business world can span so many things. It's not just finance. Some people went to finance, some people went to tech One of my section mates, which is the group of students that you're in class with the whole time is a really senior person at LinkedIn. Someone else started a makeup company, somebody else started Rent the Runway so a range of different things that you can do coming out of business school, and so for me, it's really an opportunity for you to learn more about yourself, learn about the world and also really expand your network of people.
Speaker 1:So these things, like your previous jobs in business school, were just kind of building the foundation for where you are now.
Speaker 2:That's right, and they've all been helpful in terms of building the foundation for where you are now. That's right, and they've all been really helpful in terms of building blocks. If you think about, like you know, you're going on a scavenger hunt through life right and along the way you're like finding all these different things, you're putting them all in your basket, like your little toolkit, and the goal is to, like you know, build as many things as you can in this basket so, like, no matter what happens ahead of you, you kind of have the tools alongside you to help you through whatever those challenges might be.
Speaker 1:It's a great great way to think about it. Obviously, I think you have a cool career because you're on the show. But if you had to describe it yourself, what makes your career cool or unique? What makes it special to you?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So for me, what's York Times big names that most people are aware of. And then I also work with firms that you may have never heard of to help them make sure that they have the right leaders in place to help them grow and develop, and so the tagline for our firm is sort of leadership for tomorrow. It's all about how do we make sure that we're helping the right leaders to be in place to create, to help create the paths that are going to come down the line in the future. So I think it's cool because I get to meet lots of different people, hear their stories, figure out where they would fit, and it's like kind of marrying people and opportunities together for the right next step on their journeys.
Speaker 1:So you guys are like a Tinder kind of pair up the company.
Speaker 2:You know, interestingly, there are firms like we in some ways are like that, but we actually work with some of the firms like that. Like we actually placed a bunch of the team at a firm called Grindr, a company called Grindr which is like Tinder, right, and so we, you know we are, we don't, you can't just pick who you want, like there's a piece where both sides, of course, have to come together, but I guess in a way, we are kind of like a matchmaker.
Speaker 1:Yes, so how does this work? Oh, I need a CFO, and then they come to you.
Speaker 2:Yes. So I mean, hopefully, you know we have really we have a relationship with the organization right, so they know what we do and when they have a need, they would come to us and say, hey, you know what I? What's ideal is to say, hey, kenna, we need a CFO, we want you to do it. That doesn't always happen exactly like that. It may be like hey, kenna, we need a CFO, we'd like for you to do it. We may have other firms also kind of pitch their wares to say like who we think would be the best partner for us in this particular situation? And you know you kind of, you were given a presentation and you know you basically share with them. This is what we've done in the past. These are our credentials in the space. This is how we would solve the search for you. This is what we would do. This is why this is a really exciting opportunity. This is why it might be a challenge, this is why we think we'd be good partners for you, and then they typically will decide amongst the different firms and hopefully they pick us and then we move forward and our job is to really cultivate candidates in the market that we think could be right for this.
Speaker 2:Right Because the lion's share of the people that we place are not actively looking for a job. They don't even know that this is an opportunity, right? So we call them and we sort of tell them about why this is really exciting, and then we get to know them. If we don't know them and understand their background, we have to figure out. You know, are they right? So it's an interesting dynamic because you're kind of like buying and selling at the same time, right, like presenting the opportunity to them, you're wanting them to be excited about it, and then sometimes they're excited and then you realize, oh no, they're not actually qualified for it, Like, and so you have to. You have to manage that whole process too. As to you know, this isn't necessarily the right person for this role, but maybe they'd be great for something else down the line, and so you want to constantly be maintaining. You know you're a network of people that you know and the folks kind of in and around the ecosystem, ecosystems where you work.
Speaker 1:You got it. So then, how do you pick out of when they say they come to you and they choose you, yeah, how do you pick a person to give them?
Speaker 2:So typically we give them what we call a slate of people so it's not just one, it's going to be several and we allow them. They pick right. They don't. They don't give us full discretion to be like I'm going to pick Zane, he's the guy, only Zane, right? It might be like, well, we're going to show you Zane and we're going to show you Jim and we're going to show you Jenny and we're going to show you Leanne, right. Like. And then they're going to and everybody's going to bring something different to the table.
Speaker 2:Because what we start with is what we call a role specification, a spec Like what do we want this person to be able to do? Right, and typically it's like we want them to be able to operate in a company of a certain size. We want them to have had this experience in this industry, say, maybe sports. Okay, we want them to have been in sports. We want them to have managed in sports. We want them to manage a team of a certain size. We want them to be in New York.
Speaker 2:We have all these different criteria that we're looking for and nobody ticks every single box. A person might have sports, they might have team size, they might have all this, but then they don't live in New York. So then we have to say, okay, that's what you get with this person. Then you talk to Zane. Well, zane, you know, is an athlete, but he hasn't had the team that's been this big, but he does like the industry and he does live in the New York area. So he's bringing that, so everybody's bringing something else, and we work with them to help them manage tradeoffs, which is what life is all about. Right. Nobody's perfect, but about right.
Speaker 1:There's nobody perfect, but hopefully people have enough of one thing or the other for them to be applicable for the role, and then we pick. Does your involvement end there? Or then would you kind of facilitate, like the, the logistics of the job and like salary and all that stuff, or then yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:So we managed great question. We managed through the whole process around helping them negotiate the offer. So we work with both sides right. We work with, say, our client, which is how they want to think about this company or whatever, whoever the client may be right, and then we would get a sense from the candidate. Well, you know what is it going to take to recruit me out of where I am and we would help that client, whoever it may be.
Speaker 2:You know ABC company figure out like you know what is Zane going to require to get here. Sometimes it's more money, sometimes it's more like equity in the company, sometimes it's not more but you want to not relocate or you want to have certain hours or whatever the case may be. Whatever your criteria are, we kind of help manage that negotiation and we're there all the way to the finish line and then we follow up with the person over time, make sure that they're integrating well. We also help sometimes we will help coach them as they join the organization, because a lot of times, people, when things don't work out, it's not that they don't work out because the person's not qualified. It's usually that they don't work out because there's some sort of mismatch in either expectations or culturally in the organization, and so we try to help manage that as well.
Speaker 1:So I don't know, I'm kind of struggling to see how you would put a price on something like that, like that's not a quantifiable thing, like I don't know if the details are sensitive or confident, but how would you like? Where does your cut of things come into play?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question. So it is priceless. You're right, right, I wish our clients always thought that. But in terms of the search market, there's sort of this industry standard, if you will, which typically the fee is around one third of the annual compensation of that person.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay. So whatever that person makes, you know it'd be one third of that, right, they've made a hundred dollars, right? Yeah, it's really, you know, a full third. So that's typically what the fee looks like, and the way the fees paid can vary from firm to firm, but that's kind of the industry standard, if you will. Sometimes, you're right, the value is even more than that, and so therefore it should be more. But there's sort of many, many moons ago, probably, you know, 70 years ago, they started. That's kind of how the industry started.
Speaker 1:And that's kind of kind of like a one time fee or is there like additional things when you're following up with them over time and it's a more involved process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's for the actual search. It's a fee that's paid over certain milestones, but that's like a one-time fee and then if you do ongoing consulting work with them, then there would be additional fees down the line.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, you know there would be additional fees down the line. Okay, yeah, so if you had to outline a couple characteristics, qualities, what would you say it takes to be successful in your role?
Speaker 2:So I would say that to be successful in my role, you need to be someone who is not afraid to go out and engage with other people. You have to. I think it really helps if you like people, because you spend a lot of time talking to people, but it's also about someone that can manage a process, be organized, be responsive, be thoughtful and be curious. I mean, those are all things that are really important and you know you really have to be. You have to follow up a lot in this job, because there are many things that could fall through the cracks and if you're not organized, I don't know how you would potentially do this job. It would be, I think it would be a nightmare.
Speaker 2:So organization is key and I think, in order to be someone that stands out, it's important to be someone who is memorable, because I always say you know, when I follow up, if I introduce you to a bunch of people, zane, and I say, oh, how was it meeting Joe? And you're like Joe, Joe, I don't remember Joe. Joe is not going to be high on your list, but I was like, how was meeting Joe?
Speaker 2:Like, oh my gosh, joe was awesome. Like he had such a great story, he was wonderful. I'd love to hang out with him again. Like it's the same thing in this business If you meet somebody and you kind of don't remember them, like do you really want to work with them? I mean, they might be confident, they might be able to do the job, but ideally it's somebody that, like they left some sort of impression on you. So I think that's helpful, not in a contrived way or like a silly way. You don't want to be doing like gymnastics to show up in like you know a red, you know business suit or something, but I think you know having something memorable about you, whether it's your content, knowledge, whether it's your style, whether it's your access, whatever it is, is important, and I think that's in anything that you do in life.
Speaker 1:It's a really unique answer that I haven't had anything like that on the show, but I definitely see how that would be important. Speaking of important things, why is what you do important?
Speaker 2:Well, the world is not run by machines and just companies, it's run by people. So what we do is, as I mentioned, we focus on leadership for a better world, and so why it's important is that we have the ability to impact what happens in the world based on the type of leaders that we help place at senior levels in these organizations, that we help place at senior levels in these organizations. So, everything from you know, I work in private capital, but I also do work for large nonprofits, for educational institutions, we do work for across all sorts of things, and so it's really important to make sure that we have the right leaders in place because, as you know, we all know, the leaders can really determine the outcomes for for life yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Um, can you take us through? I don't know if there's such thing as a normal or a regular day for you, um, but like a day-to-day kind of thing. How would that look?
Speaker 2:yeah, so, as you said, you're right, no day is sort of normal or the same every day, but my day is comprised of a combination of external, external engagements, so working with clients, where maybe I'm already working on something and we're doing. We're, you know, having updates. We're learning more about the progress of the search that we're working on to new business, so new business development. So I may have a meeting with a new potential client, either in person or on Zoom or over the phone, to help them understand what we do and why we could potentially partner with them in the future.
Speaker 2:It's an interviewing people for these different searches that I'm working on, so understanding their backgrounds, what drives them, what motivates them. It's, then, doing internal stuff for the firm. So, you know, helping to develop the people that work at our company, to have meetings with the practice group to understand, like you know, what are we working on, what are we seeing in the market, how are we focusing on our strategy in the market? How are we focusing on our strategy? And then there are so internal, external, physical meetings in person, outside, you know, on the road and been quite a quite an enhancement for us in the business that I do.
Speaker 1:Okay. Now if there's ever a time where you don't have an active search, if you have like a like a bi-week kind of got the NFL in my brain, sorry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we actually don't have bi-weeks, so the thing that's interesting is I don't work on just one thing at a time. I work on multiple things at a time. Now, every client should feel as though I'm only working for them, but the reality is I may have multiple things going on. I will have multiple things going on simultaneously, and that's what makes this hard job. Hard in part is because nothing is linked to the other. Right?
Speaker 2:If I'm working for your company, that has nothing to do with the other company I'm working with, and they're all like everything is urgent for everyone. So I'm constantly juggling balls in the air and constantly thinking about what I need to get done so that nothing falls through the cracks. I have a great assistant who helps me manage my calendar, because my calendar is pretty nutty, but I also do other things outside of my job that are important to me. So I think one of the hardest parts of this job is time management, because you could basically work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and the work would never be done. So it's a pretty intense job.
Speaker 1:So how do you deal with all these different companies that you're working with, when they're all might not necessarily be related to McDonald's or some other company that you're working with?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you have to be able to somewhat compartmentalize and typically what will happen is over time people will develop areas of specialty. So I do a lot of things in sort of media sports entertainment along with my private capital hat. So those, a lot of those things are somewhat like synergistic, but it is. There is a lot to kind of keep track of, and so it's just kind of part of the gig, I guess, is keeping those things in order and recognizing where there's actually interesting intersection. Right, because sometimes you might not realize that like one industry so for instance, like financial services is somewhat related to healthcare, because financial services is heavily regulated, there are a lot of rules, and healthcare is also heavily regulated, there are a lot of rules, and so there might be some similarities that overlap between those sectors, depending on the types of roles that you're helping them with.
Speaker 1:Okay, got it Now. You might not have a set amount of work hours, but if you have to estimate how many hours, would you say you work a week a lot of people make the joke like the oh, the work never ends.
Speaker 2:I'm always working, but that's true, but I mean on a daily basis. That's the challenge, right? I think nowadays, like the work doesn't really go away, so you don't compartmentalize it that way all the time. But maybe 60, I mean maybe like easily you could be working 12 hours a day, easy, maybe more.
Speaker 1:Is that in an office or when you go?
Speaker 2:I'm not in the office all the time, no, but I I would say, yeah, it mean the thing is because we're always, always connected.
Speaker 2:You know, I was on my email this morning at 6 am and I was on it last night at midnight, right Like just because there was something that needs to get done. And if somebody's in, like you know, I'm working on something where the client is partially in Asia, so if you're dealing with a 12 hour time zone difference, you know you're, I've literally had times where I'm talking to somebody and they go to bed and they wake up and I'm still working, like I'm still working, because they were up late, you know, and then they wake up. So it just kind of depends on on what you're doing. But with remote, you know, with things with remote access, and you know iphones, like kind of, wherever you are, you can kind of reply to your can't, your, you know your colleagues and your um clients, um, all the time do you have a lot of variability in um, like the busy times and the non-busy times, like they're a big gap, like are you like my?
Speaker 1:I'm swamped, and then other times you have like a kind of light day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think that's all jobs I mean that are kind of of this nature that there are going to be days that are like crazy, crazy intense and other days that maybe for whatever reason, like you might be at a conference or something for the day, and so a bunch of the day you're not doing what you normally do, but then that means at night, like the work doesn't go away, it just kind of shifts. It's kind of like if you miss a day of school, right, like the work didn't go anywhere, the teacher still assigned it, you got to make it up, right. It's kind of like that.
Speaker 1:Okay, I mean, I mean I missed I'm. I was sick for like three days and I'm still making up work from. Yeah, it's a lot. That's the thing.
Speaker 2:That's the thing with uh, you know, in in the kind of real world or the working world, depending on what you do, if you work in a place where it's very discreet, like with what you do that day, if you're not there it doesn't happen right. Or it like if you were, you know work in a factory and you're making widgets all day long. If you're not there, like they're not asking you to make the widgets up when you get home. But if you're in a I mean a professional services environment, like if you weren't there to take that meeting, right, then that meeting got postponed to the next day and you're gonna do it so do you?
Speaker 1:do you have um flexibility in your work schedule like so do you? Do you have um flexibility in your work schedule like sometimes you know you just kind of drop something in personal life, something happens. Do you have a lot of flexibility?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean I'm fortunate that um, I'm at a like point in my career. I've been doing this for a long time such that I do have um as a good degree of flexibility. That happens with time and seniority in many instances. When you first start out like you should expect to have very little flexibility. When you first set up right because you're just there to like work and get it put it down right, that's the thing I mean.
Speaker 2:I know generationally that it's not everyone doesn't think that way, like they used to when I was coming up. But the truth of the matter is, over time you get more and more leeway because you've proven yourself. People know, even if you're not there at that minute, that you're gonna do what you need to get done, and that's, I think the beauty of spending time kind of honing your craft is that you get to a point where people trust you, and so if Kenna's not there, I'm not worried that Kenna's not still going to do it. It's just that she's taking care of something. Maybe she's at Del Barton for something today, or she's had a doctor's appointment, or she's on a board at a board meeting, right Like that. That stuff comes with time.
Speaker 1:Okay, sure, you're having a great time talking about all work during your free time, but when you're not on podcasts, how would you use your free time?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know, I want to link that to the last question. So, as you might be able to see, I'm in my office, right? So I have the good fortune that I could carve out this time to do this podcast, even though it is the middle of my day, but it works for you because of your schedule. I wanted to make sure that we did it at a time that works well for both of us, right? So you know, when I'm not doing this, I'm spending time being involved in my community. I'm big into yoga, so I'm a big yoga enthusiast, so I like to practice yoga quite a bit. I'm involved in my church. I'm involved in both my kids' schools I sit on boards there, or parent organizations so and I also serve as the president of a nonprofit, a chapter of a nonprofit that I'm involved in. So I'm pretty busy. Obviously, that's self-inflicted to some extent, but I kind of feel like life is short. I want to do as much as I can and with the time that I've been given. So excited.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm just curious how you find time to sleep with with all that um, I probably don't sleep enough, that's for sure, um, but I do.
Speaker 2:You know, we all need our sleep. I'm trying to, you know, stay and look young as long as I can. So I gotta sleep, but yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, I have that problem too, but you know we're getting through it. Um so, when a company would approach you, are you working with a team to then, or is it just you?
Speaker 2:yeah, so I'm working with the team. Um, typically they'll be myself and like one other person that does what I do. Typically that person is going to be maybe have been in the game less time than me, so you'll kind of have a more senior person and someone that's a little bit less experienced. But we tend to work together and bring different things. So I might bring a particular level of expertise around, for instance, like the finance function. The other person might bring expertise around the industry and we work together. And then we have typically have a research team that partners with us. So our research colleagues spend their time doing like a lot of the desk research and making sure that we're being methodical about what we do. And then we have our two assistants. So I typically have I have an assistant and then my colleague my other consultant colleague will have an assistant. So that's kind of what the overall team tends to look like.
Speaker 1:It's anywhere from you know, typically four to maybe six people you know, typically four to maybe six people, okay, and it's all collaborative the whole time. Right, this is not the job for the introverted people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean everybody kind of has their own game. I mean I like to think of us ideally we should be like a high performing sports team, Right, so we all kind of have a little bit of a different role, but when we come together we can make magic and that's the goal, right, If you're the forward and I'm the goalie, like we shouldn't be doing the same job. So that's kind of how we tend to work on the team, is that everybody brings a little bit something a little bit different.
Speaker 1:I'm loving. I'm loving the sports talk today. This is great.
Speaker 2:You know I try to know my audience. So what's the next step in this?
Speaker 1:field for you. What are you going to do? Is there a next step or what's next?
Speaker 2:Listen. I mean I think I love what I'm doing. I look forward to continuing to do this, hopefully for many years to come. I hope over time you have increasing leadership responsibilities over time. That tends to be what happens if you do a good job. It's a little bit of like a pie eating contest, right, like the reward for eating the most pie is like more pie. So that's kind of sometimes a challenge. But I feel blessed to work at Egon Zender. It's a great firm and great people and you know I've met some, made some really strong and lifetime relationships. So for me, I think you know this is what I want to do for the foreseeable future, and just continue to do it with great people.
Speaker 1:All right, awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us, ms Bonham. As we finish up, let's do the mailbag. To submit for the mailbag, you can email Zane at coolcareersandhowyougotthemcom. You can fill out our Get In Touch form on our website, coolcareersandhowyougotthemcom, or DM us on the at coolcareersandhowyougotthem. So today's question comes from Chris. He's a senior in Pennsylvania. His question is I find myself drawn to the humanities, but my parents think I won't be employable. What kind of jobs can I have and what should I tell them, with a humanities degree?
Speaker 2:So great question, chris. I would say that the first and foremost, you really have to do what you enjoy. If you take a major that you really don't like, the likelihood of you doing well in it is harder than if you really like it. So the first thing you need to do is, if you decided to be in the humanities, you need to kill it in the humanities, like do the best you can do, be the top of your class if possible, right, so that when you're out looking for a job you can talk about why you're passionate about this.
Speaker 2:I find that a lot of careers the major itself doesn't always matter. Now, that's not a hundred percent true. If you want to become a doctor, right, you need to take, like, science classes you need to take. You know the classes are going to prepare you to go to pre-med. You know, go, excuse me, prepare you to go to med school. Right. And sometimes people want to do after they do what's called like a post-bacc, post-baccalaureate, so that they can get those classes that they need to go become a doctor.
Speaker 2:But for many other careers the major is not quite as important. How you perform in whatever major you choose, that is important. So with a humanities degree. You could do everything from you know something in you know. Do everything from something in education. You could work in business. You could teach. You could work in sports, you can work in kind of anything, but you need to do well. You need to always have a story. It's like why did you choose that? Be very credible about that. You just got to hustle.
Speaker 2:I think now more and more technology is something that organizations are really interested in, and you're hearing the new buzz phrases around AI. If there's something that you can do over the course of what you're working in in the humanities that touches some sort of technology or maybe AI, I think that could only help you. Maybe even it's just a class. You know it's always. It's never a bad idea to get either like an econ or a finance class under your belt as well, maybe even a computer science class, but it doesn't mean that has to be your major. I mean having exposure to those things will just help you when you get out. So just do your heart, you know, do your best in your major, do well, and then just you've got to pound the pavement when it comes to trying to get the gig right so that you can show your parents no, I can be employable, no matter what my degree is. That's what I offer for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. You know, there's no limit to how you can pivot between unless, like you said, if I'm a history major and senior year, I decide oh, let me go to med school. Probably not going to work out great, but I mean other than things like that you can really kind of tailor your previous experiences to what you want to go to next. That's really good advice. If people want to learn more about you or what you do, where can they go on this bottom?
Speaker 2:So they can look me up online. I'm on LinkedIn under Kenna Wiley-Broaden that's my last name and find me there and you can sort of look me up and read more about what I've done and all the things that I do. So delighted to be with you today and I really thank you for the opportunity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course. So, as we finish up, you've got the ear of many highly ambitious students. Do you have any advice for them or an ask you might have for them?
Speaker 2:So my advice would be to always remember that life's not a dress rehearsal right. Anything you do, do it, take advantage of it, whether you're in high school, elementary college, grad school. While you're there, try to soak up as much as you can, because it all goes so fast. So I encourage you to just make the most of every moment. Study hard, work hard, play hard not too hard, but you want to. You want to make sure that you, you know you really get the most out of every, every day, and enjoy the journey.
Speaker 2:And remember we live in a really amazing time where, if you happen to go down a path and you realize, oh, this isn't what I want to do, like you can actually pivot, you can actually pivot and that sometimes we get so caught up oh my gosh, did I go to the right college? Is this going to be the end all be all to my life? Is this going to be? You know that I go. You know what. There are many paths to success, and whatever you define success as and that's my last piece of advice is that success is on your terms, you as your individual person. What somebody else deems as success might not be deemed as success for you and you have to be honest about that and you have to trust that all the things that you've been building the whole time over your life, that your parents have shown you, that the teachers and folks around you have been trying to you know, drill into your head that that that's here to prepare you for the future.
Speaker 1:So that's my advice, awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today, ms Bonham.
Speaker 2:My pleasure, thank you.
