Tell us about your background. When did you graduate from Brown? What has your career path been like since graduating from Brown? What made you choose your employer/position?

I graduated from Brown in 2015 with a degree in Biomedical Engineering. Upon graduation, I took a job as a Product Manager at Athenahealth and have been there for about 3 years. I found Athenahealth at a Brown career fair when I was a Senior. I chose the job due to the awesome culture of the company as well as the opportunity to try out a problem solving role in a fast paced environment.

 

How did your experience at Brown help you find your first position after graduation?

Brown helped me find my first position after graduation not only by hosting many great companies on campus, but also by always encouraging me to try out new things. At Brown I was able to study engineering, but still have time to check out a variety of other courses. This gave me the opportunity to try and figure out what I liked doing, and even more importantly, figure out what I did not like doing.

 

What experiences and/or personal qualities would you look for if you were in the position to hire new graduates from Brown?

I would look for candidates who are excited to learn new skills, eager to problem solve, and are open to being flexible and collaborate with others.

 

What is your current position? On a typical day (or week) in your position, what do you do? What are the toughest challenges you face? What is the most rewarding part of your job?

I'm a Product Manager on a scrum team working with developers, UX designers, and other stakeholders. I work with clients and internal teams to help determine the business problems that we need to solve. I then work on writing acceptance criteria, use cases, and prioritizing the backlog to ensure that the UX designers and developers have everything they need to build a solution. The toughest challenges are determining how to balance the time for development, client impact, and business outcomes of the work we are doing. The most rewarding part is seeing the impact that the improvements have on clients and business metrics.

 

Are there any courses at Brown that you would recommend taking as preparation?

I don't have any specific courses in mind, however I think that courses that push you to think outside of the box and creatively problem solve are most useful in the real world. I certainly don't need to remember an equation that I once memorized, especially since everything can be found online, but it is helpful to have experience solving difficult problems with various interpretations and correct answers.

 

If you had it to do all over again, what would you do differently?

I think the only thing that I would have done differently is to try out even more things. Concentrations in undergrad and jobs often don't map one-to-one. I didn't anticipate how many different non-engineering jobs an engineer could take after college. I think being more aware of this during undergrad and trying out new things would have accelerated the ongoing process of figuring out what I want to do when I grow up.