Even when guest Andrew Friedman didn't have much experience with something, but thought it would be a fun challenge to try, he would go after it. For example, having never played football in his life, he walked onto the college team. Having taken only a couple computer science classes, he started building websites for area business while still in college. In hindsight, trying to get a job in a growing internet company such as Amazon or Yahoo would have fit his self-taught skills and passions. In...
Mar 21, 2022•28 min•Season 6Ep. 87
Guest Sarah Lugaric was drawn to the study of religion and the myths and narratives that all cultures have to help us understand ourselves and our place in the world. Leaving college without the clearest sense of who she was, but with a job on Wall Street, she learned the culture of business and found that she was still interested in what that said about being human. She didn’t love banking, though, and when she finally quit, she took a 30-day sea kayaking trip, rekindling her relationship with ...
Mar 14, 2022•34 min•Season 6Ep. 86
Welcome to Roads Taken, the show that reminds us that you don’t have to know exactly where you’re going, you just need to be open to the adventure that awaits. Each Monday we release another episode in which a classmate from Dartmouth’s Class of ’96 sits down with host Leslie Jennings Rowley to share their stories about who they were in college, who they thought they’d be, and how they’ve meandered down various roads to get where they are today. We invite you to be open to the many ways you can ...
Mar 08, 2022•2 min
Guest Dan Gonzalez left college most concerned with keeping his options open. In the pursuit of breadth, he dabbled in everything from health care consulting and after-school drama programs for kids, and even considered med school. But then he heeded the oft-proffered advice to "follow your passion," realized music-making had been a source of earlier joy, and enrolled in a song-writing program at Berklee College of Music. To make ends meet, he had been tutoring at a test prep company and got hoo...
Mar 07, 2022•22 min
Guest Shuhei Sekiguchi had moved halfway around the world to attend college in the Northeast U.S., having been raised in Japan. Though he came from a family steeped in the health professions, he took an interest through internships in advertising and found his first job in that field upon graduation. Not fulfilled by having clients inexplicably shooting down ideas, he found work in sales at an educational start-up to be aligned with a field that felt more fulfilling. What he realized, though is ...
Mar 01, 2022•23 min•Season 5Ep. 85
Guest Doug Asano had always had a fascination with Wall Street and could envision himself there. In the middle of sophomore year, the impetus to get a job there became less theoretical and more practical when his father said that Doug would need to pay the rest of his way through college. With an upperclass mentor already working in investment banking, he was able to get internships at prestigious banks and land a job at JP Morgan at the end of the summer before senior year. That summer, however...
Feb 21, 2022•36 min•Season 5Ep. 84
Guest Elizabeth Manheim Ades had known medical school was in her future but decided to take advantage of a liberal arts education and major in history. A senior year course on topics and ethics in assisted reproduction and a related research project solidified that a life in medicine—specifically IVF—would be hers. So when a first attempt at med school admission didn’t work in her favor, she sought out post-bac medical programs that would qualify her. Instead she found herself in a PhD program i...
Feb 14, 2022•39 min•Season 5Ep. 83
Guest Holly Parker went to college knowing she’d be an English major and a squash player and stumbled upon a passion for the environment and sustainability. She graduated with the thought of being a journalist and tried her hand at it at a boating publication. Though she didn’t want to turn into her mother—a teacher—she did have a small itch to try teaching. What she thought would be a short stint at a private school near her Massachusetts hometown became a 12-year career in which she led the En...
Feb 07, 2022•29 min•Season 5Ep. 82
Guest Kishan Putta —who boldly introduced himself to everyone the first week of college as Kishan, like fishin’ —always knew a life of public service would suit him. His parents both immigrants from small villages in India, worked for the state of New York, his mother in biology and his father as an engineer in environmental issues. To Kishan it just made sense to want to give back. But he was unsure the type of service that he would want to do and on what scale. His first step to figuring that ...
Jan 31, 2022•25 min•Season 5Ep. 81
Guest Christy Hansel Lohof grew up on a dairy farm in upstate New York, attendant with all the feed and milking duties. Her parents were sure to leave time for other activities such as competitive sports, which Christy continued in college. With a biology major and geology minor, she left college without a clear picture of what was to come next, assuming that she would go to veterinary school. After a year of living at home and working for a veterinarian, she realized she wasn’t committed to tha...
Jan 24, 2022•23 min•Season 5Ep. 80
Guest Jorge Motoshige felt as though college surrounded him with an interesting, diverse group of people that helped him land in a number of different places with some comfort, because he didn't have any concerns about being able to get out there and meeting new people of all kinds of different backgrounds. Get out there, he did, becoming employee number 113 at Yahoo upon graduation. After a number of years in producing there, he timed his departure right before the first dotcom bust and left th...
Jan 17, 2022•16 min•Season 5Ep. 79
Guest Jennie Tranter decided to try on a new persona in college and be more outgoing and social than she’d been previously. Academically, having desired to be a doctor, she loaded on the science classes. She took a religion course to fill a distributive requirement and was completely taken by the idea that, unlike in science, there may not be just one right answer and she may have to become more comfortable with uncertainty. She became a religion major and, after a study abroad program in Europe...
Jan 10, 2022•26 min•Season 5Ep. 78
Guest Mary Romano was sure she wanted to be a doctor. But she really loved Latin and Greek and didn’t want to give up everything for her medical dreams too soon. So she majored in the classics and stayed on the pre-Med track. When others were getting into medical schools—or letting their med school dreams go, Mary did neither. Without a place to land, she went back home and regrouped. She ultimately went to medical school in the Caribbean, an experience in itself. And returned to the U.S. for he...
Jan 03, 2022•27 min•Season 5Ep. 77
Guest Erika Meitner was raised in a household where reformed Judaism revolved around justice and social action. As a first-generation American, her immigrant parents expected her to go into a medical career or something established. Raised with an eye toward social justice and a voice to say something about it, though, she was drawn to both the arts—particularly creative writing—and religious studies in college and spoke up for women's rights and other issues. Upon receiving a fellowship to stud...
Dec 27, 2021•25 min•Season 5Ep. 76
Guest Ken Lee had not really thought he would be a lawyer; he went to law school as a means for kicking life’s decision-making down the road. After a summer job at the Attorney General’s office in Boston and a course of study that pointed him to litigation, he had a couple of views of paths he could take. He started in litigation at a number of firms but found, over time, that he didn’t find much joy in it. He figured that if a partner position came, he would continue the toil. The partner job d...
Dec 20, 2021•29 min•Season 5Ep. 75
Guest Morgan Flatley had a job in non-profit consulting after college, but felt motivated more by seeing the female owner run her own small business than the content itself. After traveling a bit and taking personality inventories from her parents’ home, she realized that she loves being around people and ideating creative solutions. This led her to the advertising world, business school, and a career in marketing. Over the years she has had opportunities to work on some of the world’s most icon...
Dec 13, 2021•28 min•Season 5Ep. 74
Guest Shawn Snipes Gasparini loved science and thought she would be a pediatrian so that she could be a role model for other kids with diabetes or kids of color. But when she started taking electives in English and film studies, she knew she was pursuing medicine for people other than herself. She changed her major at the end of junior year and left college bound for NYU film school. She deferred for a year to make money and get a little experience so she could launch herself fully into film and...
Dec 06, 2021•29 min•Season 5Ep. 73
Guest Karen M. Smith DeBolt always rocked a put-together look—an important expression of her cultural and individual motto “Dress well, test well.” As her Colombian mother had made clear, in looking the part you could eventually feel the part. This was key for Karen who didn’t really feel as though Dartmouth was the right choice for her until she met her tribe of women friends sophomore year who she knew had her back. After graduation, she understandably expected to live a fabulous life in New Y...
Nov 29, 2021•27 min•Season 5Ep. 72
Guest Mariya Rosberg felt as though she had lived a somewhat sheltered beginning of life. At college, she leaned into everything that could expand her world, from languages to travel and found herself particularly drawn to ideas around gender equity. She married classwork in gender studies with real-world applications both on campus and abroad. She always felt the pull to adventure and believed she would just follow her free spirit into the life of a wanderer. After a little independent travel, ...
Nov 22, 2021•21 min•Season 5Ep. 71
Guest Adam Wollowick figured he would go to medical school but also brought a love of art history with him from high school. He took on an art history major along with his pre-med classes and bounced from fraternity basement to library, living the “work hard, play hard” ethos. With a father in orthopedics, he followed in that practice when he realized he liked working with his hands and selected spine surgery because it was the hardest thing he could try. At every turn, though, he wondered if me...
Nov 15, 2021•26 min•Season 5Ep. 70
Had Dartmouth offered a course of study in architecture, guest Julie Kline Dixon may have taken it. At an early age, she would cover her school notes with sketches of floor plans and seemed drawn to the field. She had sat through one day of the sole architecture course she saw offered, but dropped the course when she realized it was mostly focused on the structure of bridges and that didn’t appeal to her. When, as a history major, she approached graduation, she didn’t have an idea of what she wa...
Nov 08, 2021•27 min•Season 5Ep. 69
Guest Soraya O’Brien Jollon started her career in management consulting but realized that there were elements of corporate life that didn’t suit her. She also realized that she wanted to do something that made people happy and she was also a bit of a control freak. Enter event planning. She found she liked all the things that make most people panic, dealing with other people's emotions and with the stress around planning stemming from such uncomfortable topics as family, religion or money (or al...
Nov 01, 2021•28 min•Season 5Ep. 68
Guest Kate Kelly had grown up thinking about herself as an athlete. But she also was someone who sought out joy in all aspects of her life. She liked being around kids, so figured she would be an educator. But something whispered to her that educating kids wasn’t all about being in the classroom. She started working in admissions and coaching at an independent school in Massachusetts but wished she could make a longer relationship with the students. Working in residential life, she was on the ac...
Oct 25, 2021•33 min•Season 5Ep. 67
Guest Tim Chow took a long time to make peace with who he was. As a closeted gay man in the mid-nineties—not a particularly open time—his college rah-rah spirit masked a feeling of not living authentically in his skin. He found pockets of interest, tucking himself away in the small Italian department, often working one-on-one with his professors, and studying abroad. But when he left college he still didn’t have a clear sense of who he was. In going to law school, he was following someone else’s...
Oct 18, 2021•24 min•Season 5Ep. 66
Guest K.C. Danzansky could barely believe that one could make a major by reading classic literature, analyzing it, and writing about it. She considered her English major not only fun but a good grounding in the liberal arts that would prove useful in a career. But because she loved the literary world, she figured she would remain in it, working at a publishing house or something similar. The famously low salaries and the prospect of living in the publishing mecca of New York City did not appeal,...
Oct 11, 2021•20 min•Season 4Ep. 65
Guest Kate Shanahan , Dartmouth ’96, had grown up in Hanover in her elementary years and searched for colleges elsewhere. But nothing compared to the College on the Hill and so returned to rediscover the campus she knew so well. It took her time to find her groove but English literature lit a spark for her. Later, she found the Education department and the encounters she had there with professors and the material was life-changing. Upon graduation, she spent six more months in Hanover in the tea...
Oct 04, 2021•27 min•Season 4Ep. 64
Guest Ryan Donovan , Dartmouth ’96, felt as though his priorities were running, drinking, and studying in that order. But a guest speaker in a course on Sport and Society opened his eyes to how a government major might be able to marry his love of sport and a career. Dick Dunham ’53 talked about his career working with the U.S. Olympic Committee and Ryan reached out for some mentoring and a recommendation letter to an Olympic Committee internship. He didn’t get that internship but did land somet...
Sep 27, 2021•18 min•Season 4Ep. 63
Guest Carrie Kuss , Dartmouth ’96, was at first sure that she was a future veterinarian. But after a few chemistry classes and more government classes, she was equally sure she was a future attorney, if not Supreme Court justice. Being waitlisted for law schools, she decided to make sure the law would be the right path and so served as a paralegal for a few years. While in a large firm in Boston, the law partner for whom she worked decided he wanted to run a charity golf tournament. The opportun...
Sep 20, 2021•20 min•Season 4Ep. 62
Guest Wendi Potter McKenna , Dartmouth ’96, has always been one to look for what others found impossible and pursue it. In college, she found her passion and home among the women’s rowing team and considered it a big part of her identity. When she got a diagnosis of an athletic career-ending injury, she wasn't willing to accept it. Instead, she found a physical therapist who asked “What do you want?” and helped get her to do the impossible and get where she wanted to go. In the process, she real...
Sep 13, 2021•24 min•Season 4Ep. 61
Guest Bill Tovell , Dartmouth ’96, left for college shortly after Hurricane Andrew ripped through Miami and destroyed his boyhood home and everything in it. He went as far as he could, to the wilds of New Hampshire, and looked for something new. He tried new things, such as rugby, and even set aside some preconceptions he had about a life in medicine. Economics and corporate recruiting took him into banking in New York despite a tantalizing set of discussions with the CIA. His work within financ...
Sep 06, 2021•31 min•Season 4Ep. 60
