Stanford MBA: From Baby Boomer to Gen Z | Class of ‘95 Meets Class of ‘25

Podcast Ep. 8 Stanford MBA '95 Van Ton-Quinlivan meets MBA '25 Sarah Tang

• Katharine McLennan • Season 1 • Episode 8

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Today, I’m joined by Van Ton-Quinlivan from the Stanford MBA Class of 1995 and Sarah Tang from the Class of 2025. Van is a national thought leader in workforce development and currently serves as CEO of Futuro Health, a nonprofit growing the largest network of allied healthcare workers in the U.S. Her career spans roles in high tech, government, and nonprofit leadership, including serving as Executive Vice Chancellor for the California Community Colleges and being appointed by the Governor of California to shape statewide health workforce education strategy.

 Sarah is a dual-degree MBA-MA student at Stanford, combining business and education to reimagine workforce readiness. She’s taught in Malaysia through the Fulbright Program, worked in strategy at BCG and Teach For All, and now co-leads the GSB Education Club. Her focus is on scalable, inclusive learning pathways that empower people with real-world skills in the age of AI.

 Van and Sarah explore how education systems can evolve to meet the accelerating demands of work and society. They reflect on AI’s impact in the classroom and workplace, the changing value of credentials, and the practical challenge of making lifelong learning accessible. Across generations, their conversation points to a shared hope: that innovation in education—when grounded in equity and systems thinking—can unlock opportunity at scale.

00:00 Introduction and Backgrounds

03:00 Exploring Education and Personal Journeys

06:06 The Role of AI in Education

12:13 Community Colleges and Workforce Development

16:00 The Impact of AI on Curriculum Development

20:56 Healthcare Education and Future Workforce

26:00 International Perspectives on Education

28:54 Navigating Technology in Education

29:57 Diversity in the Classroom

31:22 The Future of Community Colleges

34:46 Workforce Development and Education

37:03 Challenges in Healthcare Education

41:43 Personal Growth and Career Navigation

Join the Podcast Series
Stanford MBA: From Baby Boomer to Gen Z | Class of ‘95 Meets Class of ‘25

Each of these episodes will feature a different pair of Stanford MBA people -- one from the class of 1995, and one from the class of 2025.

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Contact: kath@katharinemclennan.com


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Katharine McLennan (01:02)

Today I'm joined by Von Ton-Quinlevin from the Stanford MBA class of 1995 and Sarah Tang from the class of 2025. Von is a national thought leader in workforce development and currently serves as CEO of Futuro Health, a nonprofit growing the largest network of allied healthcare workers in the United States.

Her career spans roles in high tech government and nonprofit leadership, including serving as executive vice chancellor for the California Community Colleges and being appointed by the governor of California to shape statewide health workforce education strategy. Sarah is a dual degree MBA and MA student at Stanford, combining

business and education to reimagine workforce readiness. She's taught in Malaysia through the Fulbright program,

worked in strategy at BCG, and teach for all, and now co-leads the GSB Education Club. Her focus is on scalable, inclusive learning pathways that empower people with real-world skills in the age of AI. Vaughn and Sarah explore how education systems can evolve to meet the accelerating demands of work in society. They reflect on AI's impact in the classroom and workplace, the changing value of credentials,

and the practical challenge of making lifelong learning accessible. Across generations, their conversation points to a shared hope that innovation in education, when grounded in equity and systems thinking, can unlock opportunities at scale.

Katharine McLennan (02:38)

Hi, this is Kath Keea-McClennan and I have the pleasure of interviewing today or speaking with Sarah Tang and Von Tan-Quinlivan. And I am so excited because we get to talk about a special topic, education. But first of all, let's hear where everybody is. Sarah, where are you these days and what did you get up to today that we can live through?

Sarah Tang (03:04)

I am calling in from sunny Palo Alto and this morning I got to do a hike around the Rastradero Preserve with a few friends from school and it's beautiful and sunny out here.

Katharine McLennan (03:16)

Fantastic. I was just remembering, the dish is about all I can remember about the hikes that, or the walks we used to do. Where do we find Yvonne?

Van Ton-Quinlivan (03:27)

Well, Kat, I'm calling in from nearby Sarah, so Menlo Park. We had actually left to go to Sacramento for about 10 years, and then we came back to the Menlo Park area and spent this weekend on Friday night with some GSB classmates, Saturday night with some GSB classmates, and Sunday night, tonight, be with some GSB classmates.

Katharine McLennan (03:31)

fantastic.

Sarah Tang (03:43)

Yeah

Katharine McLennan (03:48)

it's awesome. I miss that. You guys staying in San Francisco gets such an honor of seeing everybody. Fantastic. So one of the reasons you guys are so, I'm excited to talk to you is because of the shared interest in education.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (03:54)

It's nice to be back.

Katharine McLennan (04:04)

And Sarah, do you want to just talk a little bit about how you're studying education and where you came from in Stanford or to Stanford in the education area? Go ahead, Sarah.

Sarah Tang (04:18)

Of course.

Yeah, so I actually had the privilege of growing up 20 minutes from Palo Alto in the Cupertino-Saratoga area. I attended fantastic public schools my entire life. And I think I took a lot of that for granted at the time, but just the ability to have a community of peers and have teachers who really encouraged you to be smart and incentivized you to be smart and to work hard. And so...

I went to college in Philadelphia at Penn, was broadly interested in areas of social impact. And when it came down to narrowing that a little bit more specifically, I think I thought back to a lot of the teachers and the school environments that allowed me to have all these opportunities. And so much of that was not just learning math and reading, but I think school, especially in high school, you learn how to be a leader, how to do public speaking, how to be a good friend. And I think

that is so core and critical to the people we go on to be. And so after college, I taught for a year in Malaysia through the Full Bite program, had the privilege of witnessing the magic that happens in the classroom. And it is so contagious to be around kids who have big dreams and to be the one that gets to help build that confidence and empower them. And so I came back to the States after and...

Was working at BCG, worked at Teach4ALL, thinking about education at scale. So a lot of work in the K through 12 space. And since being at Stanford have been trying to explore a little bit of what it looks like to empower learners. How do you do that at scale? How do you leverage technology? And I think we're in a really interesting time right now to be a student in the age of AI and to what that does for the classroom and learning and also what the limitations are of that. And so a lot of my focus has been.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (05:55)

Yeah.

Katharine McLennan (05:58)

you

Sarah Tang (06:04)

shifting not just from the K through 12 space, but a little bit more to the post-secondary workforce space. What does it look like to prepare people leaving school and entering the workforce in an age where the skills that are important have changed? And what does it look like to be able to offer better economic mobility and better choices for the way that they live their lives? so Vaughn and I had the pleasure of crossing paths when she came and spoke in a class that I think impacted a lot of that.

It's called disruptions in education. And I think the work that she's doing really spoke to me in the way of how do you think about both impact and actually delivering programs that change livelihoods, as well as being able to do something that has a sustainable model and offers a lot of opportunities for others.

Katharine McLennan (06:49)

That blows me away. Just that, Sarah. And I have so many questions about that, but I want to go to five. Just one little thing, little thing. You are, like Vaughn, the president of the business education, what's the organization called within Stanford?

Sarah Tang (07:00)

Mm-hmm.

Yes, so it's just the GSB Education Club and I am one of the five co-presidents, so I cannot take full responsibility. Classic business school with a title inflation. But what's really special is I'm in the dual degree program and there's like 12 of us total. The team is made up of four of us from the dual degree program who honestly love to spend time together and talk about all these issues in education. And so we were like, okay.

Katharine McLennan (07:14)

okay.

leadership.

fantastic.

Sarah Tang (07:36)

One of us, think Doug, who was also on this podcast before, got us all together and it's been a real treat.

Katharine McLennan (07:40)

was.

it was a treat. It was a treat talking to Doug. So Vaughn, where do we find you today? Which is Sunday. I so appreciate your Sunday time.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (07:51)

Well, Kat, like you, I'm looking forward to see where life takes Sarah and the impact that she's gonna have over her lifetime. And if you remember back when we were at the GSB, actually also headed a similar club. It was called Partnership for Education at that time, P4E. And I was one of five co-leads, so we're super collaborative.

Katharine McLennan (08:06)

fantastic. Yes, yes, yes.

Sarah Tang (08:11)

Hahaha!

Katharine McLennan (08:12)

Isn't that

awesome? Isn't that awesome?

Van Ton-Quinlivan (08:16)

Really, it's one where we all wanna have impact and how do we do it together? So from the GSB and the work at the Partnership for Education, I actually didn't go into education immediately after the GSB. I went into high tech and telecom and about a decade out, I realized, I'm finding myself in my off hours.

reading education journals and not my tech journals, right? I mean, that it's a telling moment when you're sitting around doing education policy journals. And so I thought, OK, it's time to reconnect back to what I wanted to do and what I wrote in my admissions application, which was to have an impact on education. And so slowly I began to figure out, well, all right, education is super broad, having done the dual degree as well.

Katharine McLennan (08:44)

There you go. 

Van Ton-Quinlivan (09:08)

that Sarah is doing right now, where can I actually have an impact? so it was a bit of a learning journey to explore all the different domains. And once a friend said, a friend who I was working with within a corporation, he said, Vaughn, I'm sick and tired of you talking about it. Yes, come into the classroom.

Katharine McLennan (09:26)

Say something!

Van Ton-Quinlivan (09:31)

And he was teaching at a local community college, which at the time nobody, it was not on the public policy radar. I know because I just did the master's in education policy back at Stanford. And so back then it was not an interesting public policy tier. And yet when I stepped into the classroom, I realized of the 50 faces, there were only five white faces. And it occurred to me immediately, this is where the workforce of the future is going to come from.

Katharine McLennan (09:38)

you

Yes, yes, yes.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (09:59)

And yet nobody was paying attention to that tier of education. And if I began my learning journey, perhaps I can make a difference. so fast forward, I began more from volunteering, reading, talking to experts. And then over time, after I moved into the field of workforce development in my private sector company, then I was appointed by the governor.

to take those best practices to drive the workforce mission of the California Community Colleges, which is the largest system of higher education in the whole country here in the US and super diverse as well. So I was able to do that, then go there, and then now I'm in the nonprofit area of applying those best practices to help out the healthcare industry with each worker shortages.

Katharine McLennan (10:36)

Wow.

my gosh, that just blows me away. Just out of question, so what got you not in education when you graduated? was the technology? mean, there are quite a few people that were in that technology. was such a 1995 was when Netscape went public and arguably it was sort of the heyday start of the internet. So what pulled you or where did that pull you?

Van Ton-Quinlivan (11:09)

Well, I wrote in my application that I wanted to bring some of the private sector skills into education. I mean, that was the idea. going into, and I still use a lot of the learnings that, know, on, I do a lot of systems change work now in order to get siloed systems to work together, right? In order to create opportunities for people. And the change management process, for example, that I observed and lived through in private.

Katharine McLennan (11:14)

gotcha. Okay.

Yep. Yeah. Yep.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (11:38)

sector companies, that continues to be really valuable. And a lot of the things that we learned in the business school and some of those practices and even learnings, for example, like how to invest in transformative program by investing in the leader, the change agent. I mean, all of those became very applicable and were not norms within the public sector. So being able to take some of those learnings across private public.

Katharine McLennan (11:39)

would have.

Yay!

Van Ton-Quinlivan (12:07)

has been really helpful.

Katharine McLennan (12:09)

Well, it's, I mean, that's my field as it turns out. love it's where I was focused in 30 years over the leadership development culture, but Sarah, okay. So what's interesting to me is, Von, you go into technology and I'm going to come back to that and learn the change management principles and the leadership principles. Sarah, you mentioned AI in education. And so one of the interesting things 30 years later, if we graduate is if we went in,

to the internet age, you guys are going into a completely different age. And now you're going to see about applying it to education. So tell us about that.

Sarah Tang (12:49)

Yeah, I mean, think first and foremost, if you can reimagine your GSB experience and going through classes and being a student with AI, I would say it's pretty dramatic in terms of if we, you know, we're learning, we took a class on like data and decisions and it's like, you're supposed to use R and you could, I mean, I don't know how much of this should be on the record, but like you could put your, you're allowed to use, you're allowed to use.

Katharine McLennan (12:55)

Yep. Yep. Yeah, nah.

We did that!

Van Ton-Quinlivan (13:08)

Mm.

I think I've forgotten all of that. Yes

Sarah Tang (13:15)

chat GPT on these exams and it can do almost the entirety of the exam. Of course, there's parts that you need to check and that you need to rethink. You're preparing for our case study and chat GPT can like provide a summary of, you know, some of the key points and the key facts. And so I think as a student, it's transformed the experience of being on here. And I think my friend brought up this really interesting point. If we were not, we're at a really interesting point right now where AI is

still developing as a student. get the privilege of being able to like tinker and toy with it and we emerge going back into jobs knowing how to use a tool like this. And I think as a student, it's a really unique learning environment to be able to have the privilege to learn how to navigate these tools.

I think in terms of education, there are so many angles at which it's being applied. think you see, you know, teachers being able to use AI to help generate their own lesson plans in the K through 12 space. see, um, you know, what it can do on the backend of automating, you know, some of these back office processes. And I think recently a lot of the conversation maybe to a lot of the overlap with Vaughn is that so much of the workforce is going to not necessarily have these skills or

have the opportunity to build up these skill sets. And so when you think about what the workforce in the future is going to need, a lot of it is going to come down to like how quickly can you adapt and learn these skill sets. And so I think I'm excited about what it takes to be able to like train up workers and individuals in this and not just students are able to attend Stanford and have the privilege of having friends who can pass along tips. So that's a place to start, but happy to go further in that.

Katharine McLennan (14:30)

Yeah.

That's a great place

to start. And I'm going to come back to chat GPT during the business school because that's fascinating. But fun. OK. So you look at the last 30 years and now you're looking at the community college education.

Sarah Tang (15:02)

Okay.

Katharine McLennan (15:11)

What are you seeing? Trends.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (15:14)

Well, the wonder of the creation of the community college system is that it's ubiquitous and it's in everyone's backyard. And that was the design, right? To be open and inclusive to provide education opportunities to all. That said, it was the fastest moving of all of the tiers of education, like compared to the four-year system when it comes to responding to workforce needs. And yet, while at the helm,

Katharine McLennan (15:22)

break.

Fantastic, interesting.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (15:38)

at the state chancellor's office, I was always encouraging the colleges to move at the speed of business because things were moving fast, right? And that speed has accelerated. So in healthcare and with the pandemic, I had a new mantra, which is we need to move at the speed of need, not even the speed of business, the speed of need, right? So.

Katharine McLennan (15:57)

I love it. I love

that.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (16:01)

That results in a big challenge because these institutions move and its processes move very slowly. Now, so one of the area where I'm optimistic about the introduction of AI tools is really reducing the time it takes to actually create curriculum, micro credentials that can stack on top and equip people with the right skills at the right time. when we were in college,

Katharine McLennan (16:18)

Yes.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (16:23)

The only unit of education was really the degree, right? You have the associate's degree, the bachelor's, the master's, the PhD. But now because of this need to reduce speed, we have micro credentials and digital badges and things are becoming more modular and more stackable. And so the AI tools accelerate instead of taking nine months to create some new training content, it could be shortened to

Katharine McLennan (16:27)

Yes.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (16:51)

one month. Actually, it's instantaneous, but you need to do some quality verification before you roll it out. So it could be, you know, go from nine months to one month, and it can translate into multiple, all the languages that you need simultaneously and put you in an avatar that is reflective of all the ethnic or

any kind of difference that you may want or even situational environmental difference. So it's pretty amazing what the tools can do right now. And then just so that I kind of tie it together. Then it comes to this introduction of change management, right? So even with my work right now today at Futura Health, my team is all about addressing the critical shortage in healthcare workers. And I invited the Institute for the Future to come in and do a session.

Katharine McLennan (17:24)

Yes, yes.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (17:37)

just introducing for play, right? Just as play, were AI tools. And so they were introducing like po.com, www.po.com, which apparently aggregates all of the latest tools on there. And taught us how to do a little bit of like frame the search. So it's so what you get back is much more responsive. And that invited everybody in the organization.

Katharine McLennan (17:43)

Yes.

Yes.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (18:02)

And I was surprised that there were 20 somethings who weren't playing with the like chat GPT invited us all to broaden our use of the tool. now before I used it, for example, to write a job description and more recently in a speech, I asked it to like design me a story arc based on my, know, what I have publicly on the website and the audience. And it was, it was just amazing what it came back with. This is what you would have.

Katharine McLennan (18:15)

Fantastic.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (18:30)

on to a consultant to help your structure or a good friend on the other side of the helpline. But it's amazing how fast these tools are. And so right now it's playing and introducing them to all of our respective organizations.

Katharine McLennan (18:36)

it

And the teachers of the healthcare, like in how they take it up is where you're talking about as well as the students. So play it back to the GSB, Sarah. So you guys are allowed to use chat tpt and all of the other tools. What does that unleash that gives us? mean, what's the hopeful and exciting part of it rather than the dark side?

Sarah Tang (19:10)

I think the hopeful and exciting part is that if you can rely on chat GPT to do, let's say like the base level one skills of summarizing an article, having, you know, making a list of bullet points into a really comprehensive narrative that sounds right. It's like, what is what more, how much more time can you spend doing the level two or higher order levels of thinking? And I think.

I have found that my favorite use of chat GPT is like, I will think about all the ideas in my head for a paper that I want to write or an email that I want to write up. These are the really important points. But instead of spending 70 % of my time on making sure I have like the right structure or that it flows nice, I can spend more of that time doing the thinking there. and so I think there's an open question across so many different fields, whether it's.

in consulting, whether it's in tech and it's going to do the coding for you, how much more time can you spend in that thinking part of it? And I think there's something pretty exciting about that as to how can you shift the energy towards what you're doing instead of being like, well, ChatGPT can write the whole paper for me instead of being like, no, I'm actually going to think about the ideas and use it to be a tool that I can do something better at.

Katharine McLennan (20:30)

So it actually can digest those case studies. And so rather than be mesmerized by all the numbers and charts and facts and free, we actually have time, I would imagine, for very interactive dialogue with your students. And I don't know, maybe that puts the classroom itself into a higher level of dialogue than perhaps we had Vaughn. I don't know. Is that what happens, sir?

Sarah Tang (20:56)

think it's I think it all of course varies class by class. I think in some cases you get. Yes, it like takes care of the basic notes and the summaries of it. I think. Sometimes you could say like OK, well, if the quality of the notes or the points are not as you know specific or as nuanced as they could be, then maybe your discussion isn't as as rich or exciting. I think.

I'm in Winning Writing right now with Glenn Cramon, which is a pretty popular course. And he said, the one thing you have to be careful of is ChatGPT learns based off of all the other writing that exists in the world. And so it uses the most common language. And so if you want to be one in a million instead of one of a million, a lot of it still comes down to your own writing and originality of thought. And so it's how do you find the right combination of the two?

Katharine McLennan (21:35)

Okay, okay.

Sarah Tang (21:49)

to still be distinguished in what you're going to say, but use it to help iron out some of the details. So I think it does vary. I think they're getting smarter and smarter, so it's hard to say.

Katharine McLennan (21:59)

Well, you

can ask it to write in a Shakespeare iambic pentameter. But you have to be very specific in what you ask. And it's interesting feeding it with your own writing. And Vance, if you come back, if you take those points to educating the health care sector, tell us how that works. What makes it so different in the way that you educate health sectors? Tell me about if I were doing it.

Sarah Tang (22:06)

Yes.

Yeah.

Katharine McLennan (22:24)

30 years ago and learning to be a healthcare worker versus now, what would I experience?

Van Ton-Quinlivan (22:31)

Well, we have a definite shortage of working age population available for the growing 65 plus population. And so just the numbers don't work out very well as the boomers move into that. And as you know, as you age, you just need more care. So we're going to need to rely on all sorts of augmentations in order to just make the numbers work when we need care, when we others that we love.

Katharine McLennan (22:39)

Yes, yes.

Yes.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (22:59)

But it, it just going back to the prior discussion that that you had with with with Sarah, you know, the I was always super nervous when it come it came to the code calling in class and Sarah does that still happen? Okay, very good. So I would imagine that a chat GPT can help help get you up to speed and better prepared more more quickly.

Sarah Tang (23:14)

It does.

Katharine McLennan (23:16)

You

Van Ton-Quinlivan (23:22)

I have come back as an alum and participated in also the executive challenge. don't know if you, you live so far, so I don't know if you've flown in for the executive challenge where, yes, remember we had like a leadership program and then the touchy feely classes? Well.

Katharine McLennan (23:24)

Yes, Sarah said.

No.

no.

Well, the leadership

program, had just started. That has, like, it just started. We barely touched the surface of change management. We barely touched the surface of culture. So go back to the executive challenge. Tell us about that.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (23:41)

Yes!

So it's gotten so sophisticated now where it's a year long program, right Sarah? think, and so the students are getting all sorts of feedback on how they come across and all the skillsets. So some of, a lot more of the soft skills aspect of being a leader, being a manager. And then at the kind of as a capstone alumni come from around the world, really people have flown in from other countries.

for the challenge and we role play board members. And the students, they only have like two hours to read the case study, prepare, and they come in. So the one that I most recently participated in, it was an M &A proposal and the students were, leadership, the management team pitching it to the board members. And all of us board members had a role. Like we had a point of view, we had to act the part, super fascinating.

I would say that in that moment, the chat GBT cannot help you in that moment, right, of doing that type of work. And so, hey, hats off to Stanford for preparing the students in that way. And the brilliance of the students come out. mean, it caused me stress to sit as a board member, even though I wasn't on the line. So those are wonderful skills, and I'm glad that the GSB has evolved its curriculum.

Katharine McLennan (24:52)

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (25:13)

to really do that kind of deep work. The other thing that I wanted to mention and call out was after the case, then all the students came back in and we gave feedback at the individual level, but also at the group level. And again, hats off that the students had gone through a process where they learned to accept the feedback and hear the feedback.

not only from each other, but it wasn't like devastating because those are the things that knock us off from our career, right? So they're learning those skills of how do you keep evolving and how do you synthesize somebody's feedback, whether you like it or not. And I think those are really important essential skills for a career.

Katharine McLennan (25:54)

Hallelujah.

That's something we never, I mean, that's, it's so different. And I can see like, first of all, being, getting involved with the board and I would imagine the experience now of boards who really have implemented AI. So they're not reading the hundred page pack before they get here and trying to add value to the decision making in the executive. It's like class, Sarah. It's like the cold calling it class. And so the quality of the conversation.

Sarah Tang (25:56)

haha

Katharine McLennan (26:23)

is so much better. Now bring it into, isn't it fascinating? You went to Malaysia to go and see what you could add and that was a year and a full bright, Sarah, is that right? Tell us about that, because that would be interesting in itself to look at the international field and see what's happening as opposed to the US. What did you see? What did you experience?

Sarah Tang (26:46)

Yeah, so that was in 2019. So I assume things have also evolved and grown there. I was teaching at a school three hours north of KL, so kind of a smaller town. And my school was probably one of the most under-resourced within that specific area and region. And so they had access to malls and, you know, like shops around them, but that wasn't necessarily like

where they would be able to spend time or spend money. I think from a technology lens, I think the most interesting thing was it was a very mobile first environment as opposed to students having their own laptops at home. They would use their own phones as a source of, know, like sometimes that's how they would like type up their homework. That's how they would communicate with teachers. Even teachers would be using their phones to like send files as opposed to like

Katharine McLennan (27:29)

Yes.

Really?

Sarah Tang (27:42)

always pulling out their laptops. And so I think that was interesting for me of like my own home. didn't have internet. I just bought data on my phone and would hotspot to my own laptop. And so from a learning environment, like what does that look like? We have some of these older computers in a computer lab that it depends on if you're able to like reserve the computers and open them up. But that was like often where I would gravitate towards. And for them, it was less common of a skill to always just have access to.

Katharine McLennan (27:52)

Okay.

Sarah Tang (28:10)

technology at their fingertips. Now know the pandemic may have also changed and shifted a lot of those dynamics there and what that meant for education broadly, but I think that was a big trend and theme. I think the second biggest difference I noticed from a U.S. education system was just the broader dynamic of being in a very diverse classroom. Malaysia is home to both ethnic Malay folks.

Chinese folks, Indian folks, well as indigenous folks. And so that really showed up in my own classroom, thinking about the dynamics of not just ethnicity, but also race on top of that. If you are Malay, then you are required to be Muslim and that has a very big culture significance. So being able to be in classrooms where you see so many of those dynamics that play both the beauty of it, as well as some of the different tensions and how that can play out within.

even just like individual school relationships. yes, you think about schools as these places for bringing people together with so many different backgrounds and providing that exposure also within those environments. How do you encourage more of those kind of more of that integration and mixing even across differences? And so a lot of those lessons continue to stick with me and I think go beyond just education to how you think about our own interactions and where we are in the world today.

Katharine McLennan (29:11)

Awesome.

Sarah, geez, you guys. All right, so here's a question for you. You mentioned Sarah, and I'm going to go to Vaughn because of the community college. But you mentioned you're going to start to focus on getting ready for the next steps. So Vaughn, given that the community college is the biggest sector in adult education, and by the way, it's similar here in Australia, how is that going to change the way we see the university or college education?

Is that, we going to see continually a big shift because, you know, in the US, your costs are ridiculous for university education. And given the modular aspects of what you were talking about, Vaughn, I'm thinking, you tell me, how does this change the way students out of high school are going to go into the workforce?

Van Ton-Quinlivan (30:20)

Well, Kat, I was at an event in DC yesterday and it was talking about college closures, right? Right now with the economics of especially small liberal arts college in communities where the population density is thinning out, they're facing closures and consolidations. And everyone expects that to happen more and more. Now, this may not, this won't affect the

Katharine McLennan (30:27)

Okay.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (30:42)

the, you know, your tier one colleges, of course. Right, the fancies. Yes. So we have a somewhat a framework of once and done when it comes to education, like a lot of the pennies of our societal structure thinks about, okay, let's get the most education in the beginning of life. All your financial aid is structured for that. And then

Katharine McLennan (30:44)

Yeah, the fancies. Yeah.

Yes. Yes!

Van Ton-Quinlivan (31:05)

it sort of assumes that you don't get more skilling or upskilling throughout your lifetime, which is odd, right? And we know that's not true. So as you think about, you your iPhone needing continuous upgrade, the system that we need is actually one where we're continuously skilling and re-skilling it and reducing the time to do so. And that's a real challenge. And the other real challenge is going to be the work experience conundrum.

Katharine McLennan (31:10)

Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (31:32)

Everybody wants an experience. You have the formal education plus experience, but nobody wants to spend the time giving you that work experience, the first work experience. And I think with the AI tools, it actually reduces the volume of kind of analyst types of roles where you learn the ropes of the job. And so it's going to be real challenge in my...

Katharine McLennan (31:40)

Yes.

Okay, okay.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (31:53)

Thank goodness my first son has already landed in the workforce successfully and he's really grateful to have a job. But my second son will, in a few years, will have more of a struggle as the entry level roles get harder and harder to find. So yes, we do need more education and continuous upskilling and a system that allows you to do that affordably. And it's.

Katharine McLennan (32:13)

Yep. Yep.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (32:16)

And it's going to be equally challenging to figure out how to intentionally structure the work experience so that people can begin their career. Because if you can't get that first job, that first career, it really affects your lifetime earning.

Katharine McLennan (32:28)

See.

Okay, I'm going to come back to that fascinating conversation to us in Australia because back in 1989 our education, federal education minister said we want all universities to make work ready students. And so we lost our liberal arts, which I think is a bit of an issue. But Sarah, so you are going to focus on this thing called

How do you call it? Because you're shifting your focus from K to 12 to what?

Sarah Tang (33:04)

I would say more broadly of workforce development and workforce readiness. But I think you brought up an interesting point. One of my cases at BCG towards the end of my time was actually supporting a private liberal arts college in HBCU and thinking about how they think about their organizational structure, how they continue to position themselves to be both this like liberal arts nature and at the same time of being

Katharine McLennan (33:08)

Okay.

Sarah Tang (33:31)

you know, a place where students can come and ensure that they get a career and emerge ready from it. And I think one of the big points that they touched upon was this idea that you have to pick one or the other. And so much of it was how do you, you know, just position this liberal arts education as being able to, you know, be sent into a new environment, learn about a different skillset, and then be able to learn that really quickly and then apply it to a job or, you know, a different environment. And so I think

It's a very like theoretical idea, but it's how do colleges continue to defend the value that they do add to students' lives. And so on one hand, it is really sad when you think about these colleges closing. On the other, I think it is this really big challenge of in order to be able to charge that amount of money, you have to be able to demonstrate what you're going to offer to a student. And I think students are hopefully getting to this point in time where they're able to have more choices of, college isn't the only way that I can.

you know, have a pathway to a really good lifestyle and how do we continue to shift that narrative towards giving students the most options and putting the bonus on colleges or other pathways to be able to actually deliver better outcomes for those students.

Katharine McLennan (34:44)

That is exciting. I thought the internet would bring that. I thought that we would all collapse and watch Harvard's economics professor and then do our group study. then after all that sort of less prestigious professors would be losing their job. So that's fascinating itself. I'm going to go back to the health care sector. That is fascinating. So how do you guys see at least

not the end point, but the next three or four years, hope in the policies that you guys are putting forward and I guess more the practices, the change management that you put. Is there hope for our healthcare sector and what is the hope?

Van Ton-Quinlivan (35:26)

my goodness, that's a big question. All right, all right, all right. So given that all is going on and all the uncertainties, especially here in the United States at the federal level, the dilemma on the workforce side remains the same. So I think I mentioned about the of the growing aging population and the greater need for care.

Katharine McLennan (35:28)

That's okay. Three sentences or less. Put Chappie tea on it.

Sarah Tang (35:28)

you

Van Ton-Quinlivan (35:50)

and it used to be 11 working age adults for everyone that's over 65. It's now seven, and then by 2040, it's gonna go down to four. So the numbers are, we still have a macro problem, regardless of how higher education shakes out. you know, where's the hope?

Katharine McLennan (36:02)

Whoa.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (36:15)

know, for total health, and I was approached by Kaiser Permanente and other health systems to figure out how to import all these best practices that have been learned from the community colleges and prior days. How do you apply it to the healthcare workforce issue, especially at the entry level workforce? Because you want to grow your own, everybody needs to grow their own in their respective communities. And so we were focusing on adults, of crack the code on bringing

adults who normally wouldn't get that higher education because we need them credentialed. Health care is highly credentialed. You have to have the credential to even apply for the job. So what we wanted to do is get the credentials into the hands of diverse, a diverse array of communities. And it's not, I'm not only talking ethnic, but like rural communities, underserved communities. And so what we've learned is that the education journey is not just about the

Katharine McLennan (36:47)

Yes.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (37:07)

the academic. For folks with very, very complicated lives, we did four focus groups. One was clearly the modality of the learning, their lives. It had to fit into their complicated lives. And then the second is, even if they wanted to go into health care, the navigating education to figure out how to go from here to that education is super complicated. And then that's why they often turn to the proprietary because they make it

Katharine McLennan (37:30)

Exactly.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (37:37)

easier. And so navigating. And then the third is for those who actually got their credential and got into healthcare, they were so laden by debt, they were stuck on that first rung. Right? So when we, when we designed, and this was a good exercise in design thinking, like how do we design for tour hall in order to begin to successfully bring adults into the credentials for the first or next healthcare career. And happy to report out that we have

Sarah Tang (37:46)

you

Katharine McLennan (37:47)

Hey.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (38:02)

across all the thousands that we serve, it's 90 % ethnic diversity, 48 % linguistic diversity. Now those two combined is super important for healthcare because that's the beginning of trust. And that's when patients disclose to the provider, okay, this is what I'm really facing, right? So that's the beginning. And then average age is 29. So you're talking about non-traditionals, bringing them into healthcare now instead of...

Katharine McLennan (38:15)

Okay. Okay.

Sarah Tang (38:15)

This is...

Katharine McLennan (38:21)

Stick.

Sarah Tang (38:26)

Thank

Katharine McLennan (38:30)

Ha ha!

Van Ton-Quinlivan (38:32)

Let me just give you three persona. So like Tamika was working as a security guard, took care of her mother who had cancer and then thought, hmm, maybe I should consider a career in care, became a phlebotomist through us and is working in it now. Or Yoshiko who has a bachelor's degree, stopped out of the workforce to take care of the kids, but now, you know, empty nested.

Katharine McLennan (38:40)

Yes.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (38:56)

And doing that process, lost confidence. so got a patient care representative and actually survived an interview panel with five persons, three doctors. That's very intimidating and actually landed the role. So it's like, there's all the talent that is sitting on the sideline and the numbers force us to think about how to cast the net more widely so that adults from a wide ranging of community get the credentials to go into healthcare now.

Katharine McLennan (39:09)

Wow.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (39:26)

And that's what we're trying to solve.

Katharine McLennan (39:26)

Wow.

my gosh. I am hopeful. Now, Sarah, you guys have five people in the GSB Education Club, right? Where's the hope for you in going into this field? Where's the hope that you guys are feeling in this double focus, really? As if there were double focus.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (39:31)

Thank you.

Sarah Tang (39:44)

Yeah, I mean, I think...

Katharine McLennan (39:47)

Because everything is business and everything is change management. So what's the hope for you guys?

Sarah Tang (39:47)

Hahaha

Yeah, I mean, I think for us collectively, one of the biggest and most exciting aspects of the role has been, you know, education and business. There's only 12 of us in this dual degree program. But when you think about, we hosted an event, like an education networking event and brought in speakers from, or brought in organizations across the education and workforce development space, but it was just the amount of student interest. Obviously from the GSE, you expect, okay, they're getting a very specific degree.

in education, but even from our broader GSB community. As a club, we refer to a lot of people who might be education curious. We call it the movable middle of how do you make this just not a very niche interest that 10 of us are gonna go and work in? And even if they're not even gonna go and pursue jobs that necessarily are education focused, what does it look like to have people who are in tune with different themes of education recognized as important?

and then be able to actually advocate for whether it's how they're hiring or how they're thinking about backgrounds or making decisions on sending their own kids to school to be educated on how important this space is and how much it impacts all of us rather than, okay, you're gonna go and do your good nonprofit work in the corner over there while I go work at a bank and make a bunch of money. And so I think it's more of how do you make this more of a mainstream interest because it is gonna have such an impact.

on all of us. think within our team, I think the best part is that we have so much diversity. We have two former teachers, Doug, one of which wants to stay and actually start something potentially in the teacher recruitment space, which is another huge issue and actually something that we, the two of us and a few other teammates, we're looking into as an area of similarly to maybe perhaps the health field. The credentialing system is long and complicated and expensive to become a teacher.

And there is this really significant teacher shortage and what is better training look like to actually prepare people to be in the classroom and to handle the demands and a really difficult job. And I think so much of it in this space, which is exciting to me is not just thinking about like, here's a micro credential or a certificate that's not gonna actually translate to anything. But I think Vaughn and the Futura Health Team, I think maybe there's something in.

Katharine McLennan (41:46)

Yes.

Sarah Tang (42:09)

education careers there when you can actually give a credential that can mean a difference and is actually directly connected to a job opportunity that it can unlock. And so I think that and thinking about not just the college for all model, but how do you think about and create different pathways for students coming out of high school or community college or college to be able to have more choice and skills that can translate.

Katharine McLennan (42:16)

Yeah.

That is hopeful. OK, so now we've got don't want to go in too much sides, but when you see the Department of Education at the federal level being absolutely challenged on, is that a worry to you guys? Because I see what you're doing and maybe it's not. I mean, it's beyond the ground. The people that understand the systemic community colleges, which I imagine are state, local.

Sarah Tang (42:37)

Yeah.

Katharine McLennan (43:01)

What's that political environment affecting you? How?

Van Ton-Quinlivan (43:05)

It's less affecting my organization directly because we don't have much federal funds, but I will tell you one thing having been at the helm on the public institutions that unless there's certainty, it's very difficult for the institutions to do things because one of the things that they have to do is if they want to commit to a workforce program, for example, then they have to hire faculty.

Katharine McLennan (43:19)

Yes.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (43:28)

And there's a system of you're keeping that faculty for 25 years, right? So they don't hire full-time faculty and only full-time faculty get to change the curriculum or adopt new programs. So there's this little bit of a catch-22. so unless the funding is certain, unless the environment is certain, they won't make the investment. So you will see the shrinking of workforce-related programs at a time when it's needed.

Katharine McLennan (43:38)

I see.

Hey.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (43:53)

Even if portions of the Department of Education go over to the Department of Labor as a signaling to tie the two, labor and education together, which could be a good signal, but the chaos and the uncertainty in the interim is going to cause a complete stall out of any movement. so then all the employer actors are going to have to look elsewhere to figure out where their solutions can come from.

Sarah Tang (44:02)

You're so-

Katharine McLennan (44:04)

yes.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (44:23)

Right.

Katharine McLennan (44:23)

And that's what I see if you almost tie it back to education, this AI allows, at least for the people that can be taught it, more systemic thinking. So rather than the chainsaw, maybe our hope is people can actually trace through the whole system. But I don't know, Sarah, like, do you think you guys, are you going to see that in the way we educate the post-secondary people that

It gives you, you know, in Australia, I don't know if they're, but we dumped this whole information and they memorize still, still. And so I'm hoping that not only the teachers, but the students get to stand back from that fact memorization to the systemic thinking we need. And does the content with micro credentials change that way of thinking? I don't know. Interested.

Sarah Tang (45:17)

Yeah, I mean, think a lot of it is still, as Vaughn mentioned, the uncertainty of it. do think there is a lot of, my very basic reading, a lot of bipartisan support for apprenticeship programs, because I think that is very much in this lens of, you know, there's a clear need. This is less political. think that part, hopefully a lot of those programs can still maintain and continue. I think there are some like, maybe outside of my wheelhouse, but some like broader concerning trends around.

a lot of the like big data sets that universities and research institutes are using are actually being deleted. And that's not going to impact perhaps us right now and in this moment, but you know, generations in the future, what is that loss of knowledge going to do? And so I think that's broader educational theme of what does it mean to delete knowledge? And then I think second, I know a lot of the funding that goes towards more of the public K through 12 schools.

is at the state and local levels, but one of the big parts that is funded by the federal government is around like kids and school lunches. And so when you think about that as one input that is at a broader national level and how much you can see how like student wellbeing and being fed actually impacts student performance, especially in communities that are under resource, I think there are some concerning effects that you could see more in the short term, but obviously so much of it is.

each day what is on the news that can make it really challenging to know what's next or how serious about these things.

Katharine McLennan (46:45)

Yeah, those little spots

and the change and the uncertainty is affecting all sectors, including our stock market. But what's interesting is, Von, and I'm gonna, to sort of kind of come to an end, the post GSB experience career for you is what was it like at this time? We're in March of the second year for Sarah.

Sarah Tang (46:53)

Yes.

Katharine McLennan (47:10)

What was it like at this time going, what am I going to do? When am going to graduate? What am I going to focus on? Did you know? Did you know what you wanted to do at this point?

Van Ton-Quinlivan (47:18)

I remember my first job going into a management trainee program at a telecom entity. So, you know, I would say this, where all the GSBers are gonna land somewhere and they're gonna have an impact. I would put it out there that the part that we don't get a lot of training on is actually how to navigate the life part that is paired with the career part, right? Cause we spend like...

Katharine McLennan (47:38)

Yes! Yes!

Van Ton-Quinlivan (47:40)

two years understanding all the tools and everything that we need to do. So my one advice, Kat, if you allow me to put it out there is it's really important to be able to look ahead on how career and life intertwines. And that has to do with family, it has to do with health, it has to do with relationships. And if you wanna get married, like,

Katharine McLennan (47:44)

my god

Please.

Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (48:05)

how career and the trade-offs between relationships, marriages, and your work. And I was so fortunate. I was selected in my early 30s to be in this program with the International Women's Forum. There were 14 of us, including an Australian, someone from South Africa and Canada. And I was on the young side. Most of the other women were in their 40s.

Katharine McLennan (48:20)

Yay!

Yes.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (48:29)

and I got to see their lives play out. mean, these are all like really, you know, successful women in all ways, but to see how they were dealing professionally with the ups and downs of careers and children going, you know, leftwards or rightwards and marriages, you know, going into the valleys and on the highs. And so being able to watch that and decide for myself,

Katharine McLennan (48:41)

goodness.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (48:55)

what do I want for myself? Because as you're making decisions about how do I make this move, this career move that requires everybody to relocate, there are trade-offs involved. And to be able to talk to some of those women in here, like how to prepare for those types of conversations was really helpful so that I didn't end up

on this side of the equation at this age, having left beside a part of me, Left behind a part of me, trading that off. So I would have to say, in reflecting back, getting the career you want is also about designing the life that you want. And it's very hard to do that without seeing from others' lives what comes ahead. So that's my one advice.

Katharine McLennan (49:41)

that's amazing.

How many failures, for example, did I have? I can tell you the massive failures had so much to do with that rather than career. The failures actually made me stronger, but I didn't have any mentors at all. So Sarah, take us to an end and forecast. You hate this. What are you going to do when you leave business school?

Van Ton-Quinlivan (49:46)

Yeah.

Katharine McLennan (50:06)

Sarah what is your hope that you'll be the person that you want to be and we're talking March 2026 how did that happen anyway 2026 what do you want to be who do you want to be

Van Ton-Quinlivan (50:06)

Hmm.

Sarah Tang (50:20)

Yeah.

Big, big, questions. And I think, and very relevant as there's a world in which I go back to consulting and go back for sponsorship. And I think a lot of the questions I'm having is like, okay, if I end up back in the same career that I left before, what has changed? And I think there is something about taking two years where so much of your day is spent integrated. do an hour of class and real estate. then.

Katharine McLennan (50:23)

You

Sarah Tang (50:49)

you know, spend an hour, some other guest speaker lunch on an incredibly different topic related to AI. And then you go and spend time with, you know, four of your friends who all in different fields. And I think so much of what my mind has been thinking about for the past two years has just been that exposure to so many different ways of thinking. And I think that in itself is one thing. I think just being a more curious and informed someone who is able just to learn, you know, like

the short version of something and be able to have a conversation and think about that critically and not feeling the like, well, I'm not an expert in that space. So I can't have a say or a role in it. And I think the second thing, think to our earlier conversation on the Arbuckle Leadership Program and Leadership Labs, I think a lot of the benefits here have been those soft skills of how do you...

Like think about yourself as a leader, what are your own strengths and how do people perceive you when you show up and you're managing people? And so I think a lot of that is, I want to be in the workplace, just a manager that can motivate and make their people and their teams feel supported. Whether that's a direct report or just people around them, how do you be that person in any kind of organization that people look to and say, like, I want to be that kind of leader. I want to work with them.

And then I guess on the personal side, I'm getting married in September. so that's also a life change too of what does our life look like now that we're integrating both of those pieces together and how do you set up some of those new routines in a new place to make sure that we're both feeling supported in our jobs at home and what is that new life that we want to create? So working on being a better partner too.

Van Ton-Quinlivan (52:07)

Woo! All right. Congratulations.

Katharine McLennan (52:09)

Yay!

Sarah

that is so did you happen to share a partner that you're marrying happen to come from business school just out of curiosity.

Sarah Tang (52:38)

No, we actually have been dating, it'll be seven years in November. And so it's been a longer journey that I'm lucky to have him along for and he's been a very supportive SO.

Katharine McLennan (52:44)

I see.

Okay, so the fact that you guys survived seven years is telling of, know, especially the last two. Vaughn, do you want to close the conversation?

Van Ton-Quinlivan (52:56)

question.

I need to do a call out of my husband who is a GSBer, so David Quinlivan, right? So he's been an awesome supportive spouse and he's been awesome.

Katharine McLennan (53:04)

Yes.

Sarah Tang (53:04)

Yeah.

Katharine McLennan (53:10)

I'm gonna end it there you guys are such providing me such hope and excitement for the next step in our world of education.