Dream Jobs: Business or Pleasure? These Alumni Choose Both.
Business or Pleasure? These Alumni Choose Both
Business or Pleasure? These Alumni Choose Both
Smith undergraduates Kirk Morris and Hamza Choudery both landed dream internships in summer 2015 with Facebook. The current juniors will return to the social networking giant this summer for another internship as part of the 37-person inaugural cohort of the two-year Facebook University for Business program.
Project manager Chau Hegg, OMBA ’15, knew her Smith School program would be challenging. But she got an extra surprise during the first week of classes. “Right after the opening residency, I came home and discovered I was pregnant,” says Hegg, who also has undergraduate and graduate degrees in industrial engineering. “Suddenly it made sense why I was so hungry when they fed us steak.” She already had three children at home, plus a new job at Fannie Mae in Reston, Va. But the working mother didn’t panic. Instead, she sat down with her husband and figured out a path forward. By the time she graduated in September 2015, she had a 1-year-old daughter and a new position lined up at Fannie Mae managing software testing for a high-profile initiative. “I had kids, but I still kept going,” Hegg says. She shares four keys that have guided her career to this point.
Former New York prosecutor Michael-Sean Spence ’04 could have hammered the owner of an auto repair and body shop in April 2014. The paper trail pointed to under reporting of close to $1 million in income from various insurance companies, and the Queens District Attorney's Office had a case for full restitution and incarceration.
Nearly 850 alumni, faculty and staff gathered Dec. 18, 2015, at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., to celebrate the holidays.
When Maj. Vickee Wolcott, PhD ’15, arrived at the Smith School to work toward a doctoral degree, she had to hit the ground running. The Army was paying for the degree, and it allows soldiers only three years to complete what takes other students four or five years, or longer, to accomplish. “Basically, every class assignment, every paper I wrote worked its way into my dissertation,” she says.
Class notes from alumni.
More than 10,000 Smith School graduates live and work in Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia, and now they have an alumni chapter to help them connect with one other.
Business leader, Navy veteran and Smith School benefactor Leo Van Munching Jr. ’50 died on Feb. 14, 2016, at his home in Darien, Conn. He was 89. Van Munching Hall, home to Smith and the School of Public Policy, bears his name.
New technologies and employer expectations are pressuring traditional colleges to innovate instruction. Despite predictions of higher education disruption, “smart and agile institutions will respond and even thrive alongside new competitors in this changing environment,” says Sandra Loughlin, Smith School’s director of learning and innovative instruction. “The key is to provide appropriate faculty and program support.”