Relationships Are the Resume: Career Pivots, Tech Ethics, and Finding Your Place in Policy

Virginia Ross has one of those careers that sounds impossible until she explains exactly how each step led to the next — and even then, it barely seems planned. Because it wasn't.

After getting kicked out of college twice, pivoting from government consulting to culinary school to a startup acquired by a Utah telecom company, Virginia landed at Amazon's Ring, and accidentally became one of the rare voices inside Big Tech asking hard questions about what their products were doing to the world outside the app.

Today, Virginia leads Amazon's state and local AI policy portfolio. She analyzes proposed legislation, engages civil society and advocacy organizations, and translates between the engineers building the technology and the lawmakers trying to regulate it. She loves it more than any job she's ever had.

In this conversation, Virginia talks about growing up as one of only three Asian kids in a Northern Virginia suburb, what it really means to build a career through relationships, why she's still convinced that curiosity and a willingness to pick up the phone matter more than credentials, and what she'd tell her daughters about the future of work.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What great advice. I wish I had it when I was in college was to just lean into your curiosity and keep exploring because you just never know. Like I remember shooting ideas down so quickly in my head, thinking it was dumb or stupid and not fully exploring what that could be. I would say continue to lean into that curiosity and continue exploring and just talk to as many people as you can, even though it's a scary or not all that bad.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

Hi everyone and welcome to Pathfound, the podcast about the real, messy, unexpected journeys that lead us to the work we love. I'm Monica Argandonia, and every week I talk with someone whose story proves there's no single right way to build a meaningful life. What does it take to become the person in the room who asks, but what does this technology actually do to real communities? Today's guest, Virginia Ross, didn't set out to answer that question. She set out to survive college twice. She dropped out of culinary school, co-founded a startup, and spent years building products before anyone gave her permission to care about their consequences. Today she leads Amazon's state and local AI policy portfolio, analyzing legislation, engaging advocates, and bridging the gap between how technology actually works and how governments want to regulate it. Virginia's story is about a lot of things: being a Korean American kid in a predominantly white suburb, building a career through relationships instead of a plan, burning out and starting over, and the wild moment when you realize the job you're doing is the one you were always supposed to have. Let's get started. Super happy to have you here with me, Virginia. Can you just give us some background? Where are you from? What were you like growing up?

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Sure. So I guess we could start with my parents. My mom and dad immigrated here in the late 70s to, I think they started in Chicago but ended up in Virginia. My dad was in the military. He enlisted in Korea, and that's where he met my mom. And I am the middle child. So I have an older sister and a younger brother, and we are all five years apart. So big gaff there. So they came over to Virginia and they kind of chased in the American dream and settled in Fairfax County, which is a suburb right outside of Washington, DC. And yeah, we just let lived a quiet suburban life. I have to say, like when I was thinking about this question and what I was like, in some ways I was a typical middle child, but you can't like talk about that without talking about growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood. And look, there were like three Asian kids in my school and they were my siblings. So, like, I mean, it looks very different now. Northern Virginia is very diverse, I would say. But when I was growing up, there I was very much like othered. And I think that probably, I mean, that had a probably bigger impact on who I am today than I probably realized while I was growing up. I think, you know, when I went to California and I met more Korean Americans that had grown up around more Korean Americans, I realized like their sense of identity was different than mine. I think we're diving straight into it. There's a lot like internalized racism when you grow up and you don't see other people like you. And, you know, I think the goal was to just blend in. And my parents wanted us to assimilate so much that I completely lost the Korean. So my first language was Korean. And I completely lost it by five or six years old.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

Really?

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Yeah. I can understand it. And, you know, I think after college, I went back to embrace everything. And when I moved to California, it was like, oh, I'm I'm around other people that look like me and other Korean Americans, and we have this shared identity because we're not quite Korean and we're not quite American. You're not really accepted in either world. But I was in the gifted and talented program. I always had a lot of friends, very popular, I think. And I think part of that was just always wanting to belong.

SPEAKER_02 3:52

Right. To fit in.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

To fit in. I think that's probably where I got my sense of humor, also being a middle child. But yeah, I just wanted to have fun. I think my parents were they were typical tiger moms. I was pressured into getting really good grades. Academics was always very important. I played musical instruments from the age of four. I played classical piano and violin, and then later taught myself how to play guitar as like a rebellion. I was like, oh, I'm quitting. And my dad was like, well, fine, we're not buying you any more instruments. So I got my first job and bought my first guitar when I was 15. So that sucks. Yeah. So musical, I loved theater. And by the time I graduated from high school, I had poor grades, great test scores. I was the president of my senior class. And I had only gotten accepted into two colleges out of the dozens that I applied to. My only remit was to get into college and go. And my parents would have preferred a very prestigious one because my sister ended up at a top college in Virginia. And I went to kind of like a just a nice state school called James Madison. And I had no idea what I wanted to do. I hated school. Like I liked school for the social aspect, and I was a curious person. I liked what I liked. But if I wasn't interested, it I would just fail or get a seat, the bare minimum.

SPEAKER_02 5:13

Okay. So poor grades but good test scores.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

Yeah, I did great on my SATs. I don't know why. I mean, my parents put me in the Princeton review, which is I don't know if they still have that now, but it's like this intense SAT tutoring program that basically gives you the cheat codes. You know, it's like teaches you how to do the analogies and the math equations, and they really like push the SAT curriculum. So I picked that up quickly. And I think that's really the only reason I got into college because I think I had like a C average.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

So when you didn't know what you wanted to do, you go to college, you had to major in something eventually.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Oh, your girl didn't declare a major until her third year because I kept checking undeclared. I had probably like 200 credits by the time I graduated, and I got kicked out twice. When I first started, I think getting that taste of freedom after living under such a strict household, I didn't know what to do with myself. And I had fun. I just had a lot of fun. Woke up late, you know, had all 8 a.m. classes because I didn't know. My parents didn't go to college, like my mom did, but you know, and it's not their fault. They just like didn't know how to guide me. They didn't sit me down, like go, hey, Virginia, like by your second year, you're gonna want to know what you want to do, and then you're gonna declare a major. And that just wasn't something that I felt I didn't have that self-motivation to do that. I was literally checking a box. I was told I had to go to college.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

Was there even a push, like you have to be a doctor, lawyer?

SPEAKER_01 6:39

Yeah, but I think by the time I was 18, they were like, Yeah, this shit's not gonna happen forever. Maybe a lawyer, but they were like, just can you graduate because you've gotten kicked out so many times for bad grades? And every single time I had to kind of appeal to a board to get back in. In my last and final time, I had tapped a professor I had that was also a the mother of a friend. I think the common thing we're gonna see here is that I've made really good relationships throughout my life, and that's what's got me to the next step. And my friend's mother was a professor who I also I attended her classes, and she wrote a letter on my behalf and was like, Virginia, don't mess this up. This is it. And so before that, I had taken a whole year off because it, I mean, the school had written me and said, you can't come back until you get your appeal letter and you get your life together and you can kind of show us that you're serious about this. Because I was also getting my funding cut too, because you can't get the loan if you're not meeting a certain GPA. And so I spent that year bartending nights and I was like a long-term substitute teacher during the day, and I just worked around the clock sleeping on my sister older sister's couch because I didn't want to go home to my parents because I was like, I was a little ashamed. And I also couldn't go back under their roof after having that taste of freedom. Makes sense. And after you're that I was like, okay, I think I'm ready to go back and do this. I had saved up enough money, so I didn't actually need the loan because back then college was a little bit more affordable, and went back, killed it, got all A's and B's, and graduated. And that was seven years in. What did you what did I major in? Yeah. History.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

It was the only class I was doing well in. And literally, like it wasn't like, oh, I'm so passionate about the past or history. I was like, this is it. I can do well here. I enjoy researching. I like how I never have homework and I just have to write one paper at the end of it. Literally. That's how I thought about things. I was like, this will be easy.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

So you get through seven years, pulled it together, a history degree, but you're still not like, it's not like you knew why you were doing that.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

No, I was like, I guess this is the best thing I can do. Maybe I'll teach, even though, like, to be honest, when I was doing that long-term substitute stint, I was like, this ain't it for me. Like, I'm not good at this. I truly believe that teaching is a calling, and I really admire the people who can do it. But I was like, I don't think I could do this. Also, like the tea, the kids were mean. Like, I was like, wow, I was cool in high school. I thought I would be cool here, but you guys, you guys are brutal. Yeah, so I had a friend, so I was like three years behind, I guess, my peers at this point, because they had all graduated in 2004, and I'm graduating right at the time where we're about to enter a it was a pretty bad recession. Right. And I had a really good friend from high school who worked at Booz Allen Hamilton, which is like a management consulting firm out here, and they do government consulting. They were really there was a day when they were one of the big five out here with Lockheed and like Bering Point and Accenture. And she was an EA there and she was an executive assistant, and she said, Hey, there's this like business analyst role open at the at the FDIC. And I'm like, What's the FDIC? She's like, I don't know, just go apply. And I'll tell my boss you're a good person and you'll get the job. I I think this is a pretty much like you'll be fine. I didn't even understand like what I was walking into because the FDIC was about to close like a hundred banks that year.

SPEAKER_02 10:06

So, what's the FDIC?

SPEAKER_01 10:07

They're the quasi-governmental government agency that insures banks across the country.

SPEAKER_02 10:13

Okay. And did you even know what a business analyst did?

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Absolutely not. Okay. I had no idea. I walked in and I remember this woman going, I don't know how you got this interview, but we need someone here now. And so I got the job. And the job was because at the time, so this is like 2007, 2008, we're in a financial crisis. Sheila Bear, the commissioner of the FDIC, comes out and says, We're probably going to close like a hundred banks this year. And at this time, it was very much like done by paper. And so they had hired consultants to come in and digitize the claims process. And up until that point, you're only closing a few banks a year. And it was very much you would come at night and you close the bank down and you would do the paperwork to kind of insure all the folks in the bank, right? But this was like a lot of banks, and there was a lot of speculation on whether a big bank would fail that year. I was really young at this time too, and not paying attention. I probably had $100 in my own bank account. So it was not a concern of my, of what was going around in the country, you know, like it is only not until now where I'm like, oh my God, that's a big deal. Like a Wells Fargo could have gone down. And I think we know now they were bailed out. And so that was my first project. And while my peers and other folks I graduated with were struggling to find jobs because the job market was so terrible and we were in a recession, and people were like, you know, and I mean I'm sitting here in a job I thought I had no business being in, but I learned so much. I learned how to actually become a business analyst because I had wonderful mentors who would sit me down and be like, okay, this is what you do. And in that time, the field of like product management really wasn't, it wasn't a thing. You would call you were called like a requirements analyst or a business analyst. You're basically taking the customer need, translating it into something technical to create a roadmap for a technical product. And that's how I got my start in product management. So did you like it? Yes, and no. I think I enjoyed helping folks solve problems with technology. I think that there was a bit of magic happening when it was like, oh, because the second project I was on was at the Penchant Benefit Guarantee Corporation. They're the folks that I worked on a project that if you say worked at Coca-Cola and want to come back for your pension, we would match you up because Coca-Cola would register you as like a missing benefit. And then we would match you up with like your pension online. Because like that was also a paper process a long time ago. So designing that process to come in and claim your pension online, which now you're like, duh. But at the time to actually design that system was really cool.

SPEAKER_02 12:57

It wasn't that long ago, but yeah, it was still that paper digital transition. All right. So how long were you there?

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Oh, maybe three, three or four years. I burned out quick. That's the thing, that's what I do. It's my MO. I get in a honeymoon phase of whatever I'm doing and I go. And then one day I wake up. I'm like, I can't do this anymore. I woke up and I quit. Did you have another job? No. Okay. I don't know why I do these things. I it was like I'm burnt out. I'm working 12 hours a day. I mean, it was that's soul sucking. I mean, that's a little dramatic, I guess. But at the time I was like, I don't want to do this every day anymore. And I just turned in my resignation and I said, I want to go to culinary school. Really?

unknown 13:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

I enrolled into a program in Virginia at like a junior college, and they had a journeyman program. So when you graduated, you would have your journeyman's license. It's the trade, it's a it was a trade school. I mean, there's like fancy culinary schools, and then there's trade schools that teach you how to actually, you know. Yeah. And I did that and I ran a catering business on the side. So I would do like baby showers and like wedding showers.

SPEAKER_02 14:03

How long did that take? How long was that?

SPEAKER_01 14:05

I dropped out because the margins on catering were not great. And there's a like a personal reason. So I was married at the time and I had a very supportive partner. You know, I you don't get the privilege to do these kinds of things without someone behind you being able to help you pay the mortgage and the bills. That that relationship was coming to an end. And I was back on my own again. And I was like, this is too much. So I did a year of that. And I had a friend, again, a friend from high school whose older brother was the executive director of like technology for the college board. And they're the folks who designed the SAT. And he was looking for product managers and business analysts to help. You know that big book that you would get in high school with all the colleges in it, that big like catalog. Yeah. That needed to be digitized, that needed to be put online. And it also, he was building a program that would connect underserved kids with scholarships and like figuring out how they could fund college careers. Because before it was in that big book and they wanted to put that online. So you could create your own profile, you could submit applications, you could kind of get matched up with the different resources out there to help you finance your college career. And I thought, how cool is that? I wish that was around when I was looking at colleges. And so I stopped everything. I still cook to this day, though. Like it's still an incredible passion of mine, and I love cooking. And it's funny having four-year-olds who don't want to eat anything. I cook, and I'm like, I went to culinary school. Like, come on. Like I've cooked at the Austrian embassy. Okay. I cooked salmon there. That's a big deal. I did that for many a couple years, and we launched that website, and I'm very proud of it. It was called Big Future. I don't know if it's still around, but that project came to a close. I was a consultant on that. And so I again was found without a full-time job. I mean, the last one was my fault, but time I didn't have a job.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

How long did you do that with the college? Uh it was like about a year and a half. Okay. Not very long.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Yeah. It was a it was a quick project. And then that same boss I had, the executive director, he resigned and decided to do his own startup and then tapped me to be his first employee and said, I can't pay you, but I can give you equity. I was like, I've got nothing better going on right now. I've saved up a couple of dollars here on this year project. I live a very like frugal lifestyle. I think I've got maybe a year worth of runway on this. Let's do it and see if we can get some investors and then like give ourselves some paychecks. And we did that. And the product was called Speak. Now you're like, duh. But at the time, when you wanted to join a conference call, you had to have like a bridge and you had to boop, boop, beep, boop, you had to put the pin in. And what this did was using voice over like IP technology, you could create your own personal link like speak.com slash monica, and everyone would go there at the designated time and it would call you and patch you in. So it was a really cool product. The problem is like adoption was really hard because people couldn't like wrap you you've got decades worth of, you know, you're just used to calling in a conference bridge and putting in a pen. Like, what do you mean I just put this in a web browser? Now it's of course, right? Right. But at the time, it just people could not connect with that idea. It we had a hard time marketing it. And then Uber Conference came into the space and just swallowed it up. But we were able to get acquired eventually by a small telecom company in Utah. So we were able to exit from that. But it was like three years of like trying hard.

SPEAKER_02 17:42

Did you ever make any money?

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Yes. We got investors and we were able to, it became more of like a B2B product where you could get like your company name and then get your employees using it. But it never quite took off the way we thought it would. But I learned a lot. When you are the only employee, you learn a lot of different jobs, like design, user experience, customer service. I did all their customer service. I was like the chief happiness director. Yeah. I set up all of the ticketing. I hired. I mean, I was kind of like HR. I mean, we were a very small group of people doing everything. So I got a lot of experience.

SPEAKER_02 18:23

That's incredible. All right. So that ends.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

That ends. And I'm like, you know what? I'm still in that job at that point. And I'm like, I need another change. I can't be here anymore. And I went to the Grammys because I have friends in the recording academy and they had extra tickets. And they're like, Virginia, you want to go to Los Angeles to attend the Grammys? I said, Yeah. So I went to Los Angeles for the first time while I was still living in Virginia. And I just fell in love with the city. And we attended the Grammys, and that was they're usually in February. And by April, I had moved out to Los Angeles. Wow. Okay. Yeah. I saw the Pacific Ocean, which I had seen before, but I don't know what it was. I was in Palos Verdes visiting a buddy of mine, and I was like, well, I need to see this every day. I'm gonna move here. And I came home and I broke up with the boyfriend I was with at the time, and I said, I'm moving to California. You can't come with me. I'll probably move, you know, when this lease is over in a month, I'll move into the second bedroom. And then I left, packed my dog up, and we moved to Los Angeles. No job. The job was speak, but that ended very shortly after I moved to Los Angeles. And then again, I was left with no job. And I broke my foot like the first week I'd move out. I know. And so I did what any normal person would do. I took myself on a vacation to Hawaii to just like think about things. I went to a little island called Molokai for like two weeks, made a lot of friends on that island who I still talk to today. Came back and was like, okay, I'm I'm ready to go look for a job now. And I found this was a very small job that I had working for, I was also a business analyst here working on a product that was for kind of like stock market analysis for the Hang Seng. So it was for a Chinese audience. And I'm like, why did I get hired here? That lasted for about a year. And before I was like, I need to go do another startup, and I joined another startup in Los Angeles called Mammoth Media. And there I did some more product management. And again, like this whole time, I'm like, I'm just doing it. I probably, you know, if I'm thinking about it now, I just had like undiagnosed anxiety and depression, one foot in front of the other, kind of like, I'm still kind of aimless, you know, but I'm building a lot of good relationships along the way because this next startup was my old boss at Speak. He was the old CTO. He was the chief technology officer. And he brings me in to this new startup in Los Angeles. And we build products that were, you know, they were like games. They were designed for a younger audience. I learned a lot about kind of how sticky phones are in like design, game design, and like social media design. And like what are the mechanics? And this is why I don't give my kids these things. What are the mechanics inside of like apps and experiences that make people want to keep coming back? Like that dopamine. And product managers are a lot of the time responsible for those types of things because you want to increase engagement, you want to increase the eyeballs, you want to make sure people are watching the ads because that's the revenue. And that was a really interesting study. And after a while, I was like, I don't think I want to do this. I don't think I agree with this. And I also like don't think I was very good at it. Okay. And so I actually switched off a product and I said, maybe I'm better suited to manage the projects instead. So like maybe I can drive people forward and motivate them to keep creating, but I don't want to be the person like designing the mechanics behind any of this. I just want to keep people motivated and moving towards a goal. And so I actually enjoyed that. But as any startup person can tell you, you burn out very quickly from startups. It's very much like passion driven. You're paid mostly in equity, not a lot of cash. And long nights, especially when you support an application that's on the mobile app store, basically working retail, that your users don't care if you're having dinner, Thanksgiving dinner with your family. If something goes down, you gotta drop everything and go try and fix it. At that time I had the chief of product, he had left the company and he had joined Amazon. He had joined Ring and he picked up the phone and called me and said, Virginia, I really need someone over here. Like, can you come interview at Amazon? And I was like, please, yes, I would love to see what it's like under the hood of a big corporation. Up until now I probably I hadn't worked for a company that had like, I mean the startups were probably like 20 people.

SPEAKER_02 22:40

Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

You know, and you're doing everything. I was like, I wonder what it's like to be around like millions. You know, like what's that like? And he actually pulled me in to do product management again. But this time it was for something this is like really what opened me up and was like, oh, I really enjoy this kind of work. And he said, hey, we've launched this app inside of Ring and we just need help kind of thinking through and like looking around corners on like what are the consequences of some of the design situations on the broader community because Ring is a video doorbell and we've built this kind of like online community around it where you are uploading videos and saying hey someone stole a package off my porch what are the unintended consequences of when you upload that into like an online community and we also law enforcement is on the platform community members are on the platform. Like what are the trust and safety measures that we need to design in order for all of those like kind of stakeholders to work together in a way that is not damaging. That's like love it. I'm here for this. And because of that work I got exposure to folks in civil society advocates because what I love about Amazon is not that the resources are endless, but they want to get it right. And so I was able to connect with experts in the field. I was able to connect with academics and say hey we're trying to design XYZ and like bring them in and start designing features that would help the community be safer. I like to say like my remit was to prevent racial profiling inside of our technology because I mean the analogy I would always like for example when you posted I designed like a speed bump because the reason you would sometimes be posting on the app is because you felt like you're like on camera you caught a crime or a safety incident. And so you're gonna be kind of mad when you post about it, right? This person, it looks like this person stole my bike out of my garage and I caught them on my ring camera or whatever, right? And you're probably more likely to use a race descriptor with nothing else. Got it. And I wanted our users to think through like take a beat and think through like what are the unintended consequences and maybe there are two or three other descriptors you can use before using solely race and that became a community guideline of ours.

SPEAKER_02 24:55

But how did you implement that?

SPEAKER_01 24:57

Like how did you so that's like where the technology comes in when you open your Instagram or Twitter or whatever I don't use these things anymore. When you open them up the whole purpose from a product manager's perspective is to get you posting as fast as you can. So any sort of friction that gets in the way, you want to like reduce the number of taps or clicks that gets the information or the media online. And so knowing that I had to kind of go against my product manager instincts and be like, no, we got to put as many speed bumps in there to make it slower and to make them stop and think. So we had like a stop and think screen saying hey think about what you're doing before you actually put this up for all your whole neighborhood to see. And then the second prong was educating our content moderation team on like how to approve the content because we all did a pre-moderation. So before the content came onto the app it was reviewed by humans. So teaching them kind of giving them bias training but then also putting in guidelines saying hey if you are going to describe someone's race you need two other descriptors because for example Asian lady stole my bike that could be me but Asian lady with glasses and lots of tattoos that's that's me I stole your bike like that is me. That's what I look like yeah that's me with a Los Angeles hat on like yeah yeah that's her so yeah so that was the one of the bigger projects and that's what exposed me to this idea of advocacy and like civil society. I mean this is I'm just like living in my own world until I'm like opened up by this job like thinking about wow we have millions and millions of customers and when you've an app or a product that is not only being interacted with by the consumer but the public like your customers now the entire the general public so what a responsibility to have I just had like endless curiosity for like how technology can impact like the world around it. And I was thinking about it but not really think I think it started with me understanding like being a product manager and being like oh my God this is how you design sticky things and right and the consequences. And the consequences of that and then like they're younger you know I think some of these products are geared towards younger minds.

SPEAKER_02 27:16

So you're having a really positive impact.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

I like to think so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

How long are you doing this?

SPEAKER_01 27:22

For three years I'm doing that and helping these product managers while being a product manager myself being that voice and that advocate inside the company saying if we think about this or I'm gonna design a roadmap that is going to further prevent this from happening inside the app. And then I got pregnant after not thinking I could get pregnant my husband and I were told that we would not be able oh yeah during this too I got married again. So we were told we weren't able to have children without some sort of like surgery or IVF. And then during the pandemic I got pregnant and then when I went into look at the babies for my first scan baby there were two egg sacs there. And I was like what is this? I'm like gonna be 40 this year like twins and it's in the middle of the pandemic and I live in Silver Lake which is like not the most kid friendly part of Los Angeles. Like our sidewalks were basically like I don't even know how you could get a stroller around my neighborhood. And so my husband's from Colorado we met in Los Angeles in Long Beach and we don't have family in California and we thought hey maybe we ought to move to Virginia where my folks are and I wanted my kids to be around their Korean family. My husband is half white and half Mexican but I I really wanted my our future children to know their grandparents and their Korean family. And so we picked up and moved and I went on maternity leave and right before I came back from maternal leave I got a phone call saying hey Virginia you're not fired but we did some reorganization and we've done a great job advocating and instilling this idea of trust and safety and so now the teams are going to absorb that pillar into their own work so you don't have to be the standalone service. What do you want to do?

SPEAKER_02 29:12

So it's still with Amazon.

SPEAKER_01 29:14

Yeah yeah okay I was like you know you can't fire me while I'm there no no no no no we love you we just this is a great opportunity is there any part of the business you want to to explore you know or you can join back the team and and do something else what do you want to do? And I said I'll think about it and you know during this time I had worked heavily with our public policy department and because they were able to connect me with the civil society with the academics with the nonprofits to go talk to and oftentimes they would take me I would take a little trip to DC and explain the inner workings of our product or kind of like demystify some of the technology and kind of earn that trust with their policymakers or you know other folks outs externals right and I'd really admired that work. I actually didn't really even know what they did. I just knew that they were the people that told us when laws were passed and that there were bills being proposed and I would be kind of a subject matter expert for them every now and then. And I thought I really enjoyed working with my public policy manager. Maybe he has an opening and I just happen to be in Virginia right outside of where they're building the new headquarters maybe that could be a thing. And so I called him and he said actually maybe this could be a thing. I do have an opening on my team for someone to really lean into these external engagements and we really need to be earning trust out there and having someone be a bridge between the technology and the policy and like can explain how things work on the tech side and then also go back to the business and explain how the policies are working on the outside. And we think you'd be a good fit for that. And I was like well I don't have anything else going on except for these two babies. And so yeah I came back from returning leave to a new job inside of Amazon a new manager a new like department and that is where I came to this that was about four years ago. And one of the reasons I wanted to do this with you is because had I known that this field or this like type of advocacy or like this job had existed when I was younger or had seen people that look like me doing it. I mean I'm very grateful for all of my experiences and I'm very proud of what I've accomplished. But like if I could make that easier for one person, like I'd love to do that.

SPEAKER_02 31:29

The so it's interesting because I just finished another interview the episode's out now and it's these two authors and they wrote this book called Hacking College and they talk about that hidden job market. Like there are these jobs out there that you know people just know doctor, lawyer, teacher, nurse, vet, you know, like kind of the surface law enforcement but you know law enforcement could mean doing fraud investigations for you know the lottery.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

I know like I thought public policy was a group of a hundred lobbyists. That is not what I do.

SPEAKER_02 32:06

And so that is not what I do at all. Yeah. And you know so it is it's trying to get people to understand all those possibilities and opportunities and you know their kind of argument was the major doesn't really matter. You had a history major.

SPEAKER_01 32:22

Oh yeah I barely think about that. Right. No it doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_02 32:26

And you had to build it through all these experiences. So it took you a little bit longer. A little bit but you know but think of all the things that you did.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

Yeah it's so funny talk like talking about it out loud. I'm like wow I guess I have done a lot of weird stuff and I think that's why Anne connected us because she's like God I didn't know you did that. I was like for a whole year of my life just dropped you know quit my job and studied how to cut vegetables and make soup.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

The culinary piece is is the funny part. But you know what you tried it what if that had still been in your head thinking huh maybe I should have done that.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

I mean I also was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that prevented me like it was very painful and it still is for me to be like on my feet for long periods of time. So like all those years bartending too and I would have loved to gone into even hospitality because I really enjoyed being a bartender. But physically you know I have I've like pretty severe arthritis in my joints. I don't think like I could have hacked a life as a chef it just is so hard on your body and it's like really stressful. I mean this is stressful too I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 33:34

What is your title now?

SPEAKER_01 33:36

Now I lead our state and local AI policy portfolio. So every like major piece of AI policy that gets introduced and is could possibly move I am analyzing for risk I am engaging on and advocating for you know positive legislative outcomes for Amazon.

SPEAKER_02 33:58

Very cool.

SPEAKER_01 33:59

Yeah do you like it? I love it. I have not lit this up about a job I mean these past four years have just been so incredible. I've met so many amazing people I've learned so much about our government and how advocacy works and you know beyond I'm just a bill on Capitol Hill like civic engagement how important that is and that coincides with like how I personally live my life. Yeah I just can't believe this job existed and I had no I mean had I paid a little bit more attention in civics and government maybe I would have thought to have gone into some sort of like policy public policy politics. I love all of it and I love state and local politics. I love that's like where the rubber meets the road I mean people are coming out making laws in the federal government I appreciate Congress and how thoughtful it can be but I think I have the temperament for state politics. It's just fast yeah and exciting and I was like I'm gonna be if I had been told you're gonna pay paid one day to have great relationships think about hard problems and influence policy I would have been like get out of here I'm a bartender like that's not that's something people other people do.

SPEAKER_02 35:09

But bartending is incredible people skills yeah right and negotiating and I mean those are all transferable. Yeah never thought of it that way do you see yourself in this for a while?

SPEAKER_01 35:22

Yes absolutely I just I wish I had gotten an earlier start but I'm proud of what I've achieved so far and the relationships I've made and the progress I've made and what I appreciate about Amazon too is you know I started out doing something completely different and it's allowed me to kind of move it was a lateral move but I'm doing something completely different than I was you know seven years ago when I started at the company.

SPEAKER_02 35:45

So you have twins and as they're growing up and you know knowing your experiences, how are you going to guide them? What advice would you give them as they're in high school going off to college or even in college and figuring out the next step?

SPEAKER_01 36:01

I can tell you it's gonna be probably a lot different from my parents just because now they're I guess they're technically third generation second generation because I was told find a steady job, stay at one company, stability, prestige that was like very important. I mean what a flex in the Korean American community when your parents are like my daughter's a doctor not me there's so much to think about that because the job market's gonna look so different even in five years with AI like I can't stop thinking about that. My girls are so creative like they love art. My husband went to art school and I also paint and draw and so we're a very creative family. I want to encourage them to keep doing that and keep keep up the relationships. I think like that's probably been my most valued superpower is just being able to build relationships and earn trust and be a good person. I want them to study hard but and it feels trite to say find something that you love because I've done that too and failed at that I don't know you didn't fail. I tried sometimes I'm like God this was such a hard arduous road did it need to be that hard did it need like did my character need this much building because it was really hard Monica like wish it just been a straighter line but yeah I want them to find I want them to work with their hands. I still think that like we're going to there's still gonna be a premium on human experiences and human art and human created things. If they want to lean into that great if not I'm gonna tell them to get like an HVAC certification. I don't know I'm gonna like tell them how college goes I'm gonna tell them like hey there's more than just one path like there you don't have to become a doctor or lawyer. There's a lot of different things you can do and I hope they're gonna get that exposure just being around me and our friend group and their friends and the community we're in and I don't know what about you what are you telling your students I oh I tell them they have to make the most out of their college experience.

SPEAKER_02 37:59

So you know take the classes that interest you take the classes that build skills take you know don't worry so many of them like I I can take anything I just need three units. I'm like yeah but make it count. Oh my god where were you when I was and go meet people and you know every time a student comes into my office and you know I'm like well what do you want to do with this? What do you want to do? Why? And let's talk about what other major what what what minors could you add on you know like if you're environmental science and policy add on a communications or political science or Spanish because I was I mean I changed my major six times went to three different universities took me six years to graduate oh I love this for us. Yeah so you know I didn't and then you know I was a film major my degree is in film production and now I teach environmental science and policy. So there you go. Wow and I'm an anthropologist but yeah I mean you know it is it's hard. I think students today and I am so glad that you shared this story because I think a lot of young people they're afraid of what's happening with AI and you know I think that needs to be a concern and I think that the cost of living is hard. It's you know they're worried about going into debt and how am I going to get a job and and it's I think harder because those relationships you were talking about those are harder I think to get to make because you know because everybody's on their phone everybody's doing everything on a computer everything's online I mean even some of their internships have been online I'm like don't do an internship online you gotta be with people.

SPEAKER_01 39:43

Yeah and you've got to build those like authentic relationships. Yeah like I I can't say I have a ton of friends but the ones I have like Anne they're authentic. I also think like I have also been very fortunate in it my parents and I touched on this earlier like my parents like struggled a lot to put us in a nice neighborhood we're like the poorest family in the nicest neighborhood. I've grown up in a like a upper middle class neighborhood financially it was hard to be in and I think it was deliberate on my parents' part so that I would grow up with folks who had parents with college degrees. My friends' parents were doctors and lawyers and successful people with generational wealth and those were my friends growing up and those were my friends in college and those were the people that I connected with after college when I didn't have jobs. So I think that my my parents put me in a position of privilege because had they stayed more comfortably I guess if you want to you know in a not as great neighbor you know I don't know if I would have had the opportunities because I was just so adjacent to a lot of other types of privilege that I would have necessarily had if my parents hadn't like been smart I guess about it wasn't without its you know drawbacks. I felt alone a lot.

SPEAKER_02 41:01

But they were helping you build your social and cultural capital.

SPEAKER_01 41:06

Yes and I didn't see that until like much later where I was like oh that's why because I was always so resentful because I started out at like a private Catholic school and I was like what am I doing here? I don't want to be Catholic you know and now I'm like oh I look at my like my best friends from college and growing up they're all their parents were all very successful people and they were the ones taking me on these nice vacations. The other reason I know had a vacation my parents never took me on vacation like that's how I've been to you know any sort of name a beach that's how I you know the Hamptons or wherever like my friends took me there. Yeah I went to like the Virgin Islands for spring break because I had a friend who had a house there. But I would have never in a like my parents would have never in a million years had a little bungalow in St.

SPEAKER_00 41:50

Croix like I had friends that did. And so I think that also plays a part in how I'm able I was able to kind of like it was a little easier for me to blend in.

SPEAKER_02 42:03

So one piece of advice for college students today. Well now I'm stealing yours Monica it's okay.

SPEAKER_01 42:11

I mean what great advice I wish I had it when I was in college was to just lean into your curiosity and keep exploring because you just never know. Like I shot my I remember shooting ideas down so quickly in my head thinking it was dumb or stupid and not fully exploring what that could be. And so I would say that I would say continue to to lean into that curiosity and continue exploring and just talk to as many people as you can even though it's a scary we're not all that bad.

SPEAKER_02 42:41

Virginia thank you so much for sharing you've had an incredible journey. I'm super happy for you.

SPEAKER_01 42:47

Well I'm so grateful that you're a teacher helping the youths and gosh I just I hope there's more monikers out there.

SPEAKER_02 42:54

Thank you so much for listening to Pathfound. If anything we talked about today connected with you or gave you a new perspective we'd love it if you subscribed left a review or shared the episode with someone you care about. You can also find us on Instagram at Pathfound Podcast. To explore more stories, resources and ways to get involved, visit Keystoneetwork.org. This podcast is just one part of the journey at Keystone Network for helping young people and anyone figuring it out as they go build meaningful futures one step at a time. A huge thank you to my podcast editor David Strutt you can find him on LinkedIn for helping bring these stories to life and to Elizabeth Minor at Silvermine Creative for the beautiful artwork and web design. And if you're on your own path navigating the unknown making a pivot or simply figuring it out as you go just know you're not alone. The route may not be linear but there's always a way forward. I'm Monica Argandonia and I'll see you next time on Pathfound.