A lot of people don't grow up with family support for their career or didn't grow up with seeing networking because our, you know, my parents didn't network. My parents were not very, did not advance and you know, careers they weren't community leaders. And I really didn't know how to do that. I really thought, you know, this is my gig. I've got to get there myself. I don't know. You know, I don't ask other people for help. That was very foreign to me. But then as I was in the community more and saw that this is how it works and people actually take joy in supporting you. Especially people who grow up in maybe a lower socioeconomic level like I did. You don't see it. We didn't have, you know, I didn't have my dad's friends giving me internships or that kind of thing and so, but I really try to encourage people that I know to seek it out. Because everybody else is doing that and why not you? You know I think mid-career switching is the most interesting thing and I still tried to, because I do have, I don't know if you, I do a podcast and that's the question I ask. And I think it is really difficult and that again is where you decide if you're looking for a change. Be a part of the network you see yourself in, and that's really, you're going to have to do some research. If you say, you know what? I want to now be in the nonprofit world. Figure out who the players are of the nonprofit world. Go on Linked-In, see if they'll, if they can give you advice, take you to coffee. Engage with them on Twitter. You know that is the way that you start creating a persona off- online that you can then move to online. And again if you're not sure what you want to do, right? You know, I'm not happy where I'm at, let me, I wanna explore. There are so many people that would be willing to have that conversation with you. Because everyone's been there. There's very few people that have, like, gotten out of college and known exactly what they wanted to do and have never changed jobs. That's no one, right? So I think that there is a real understanding and a real empathy for people that are, that are looking for a new opportunity or a shift in their career. And I just think you have to be bold and go for it. The most surprising and the most meaningful and moving for me, was the support of all the relationships that I had built over the previous 10 years, working in the nonprofit philanthropy world in San Diego. Just the, how much people supported this move and supported me in this position and just kind of came with me to the hunger coalition. I've never been somebody who- when I first came into this sector, I saw all the networking happening and it was kind of a turn off the way I was seeing a lot of it happen. And I thought, it's really not for me. I pride myself on being a pretty authentic person. I'm not the kind of person who goes to a networking event and says I'm going to collect 10 business cards and that's my mark of success. I'm more like, I kind of, you know might float around until I get into a conversation with somebody where there's some chemistry happening, you know. Just like clicking and I think it's better to stay with that person for 10 minutes than try to keep scanning the room to make sure that you've, you know, cast a wide net. I would say follow your connections because that's how these relationships last, right? They're on real, real connections. And so I think, kind of doing it in my own way. I always wondered if that was the right path because a lot of people have this very, I don't know, structured sense of how you do networking. It's the, you know get all the business cards, follow up immediately. It's very formulaic. And- but doing it my own way, you know right before I left, when I announced that I was leaving and Voice of San Diego did this interview with some different community leaders about emerging leaders to watch in 2015. And two of the, you know, five people said me. And I, you know, I haven't necessarily gone through, like, OK I need to do this fellowship. I need to do this internship. I need to do all these things. Kind of just did it my own way and was authentic to myself and not, I just can't emphasize enough how much that path draws the right people to you. Networking, relationships, much overused term but, in fact, is critical to any kind of career or personal success. And these networks, and my good fortune to be in multiple networks, are not transactional at all. I mean, it's not about I do you a favor, you do me a favor. They're much more about the complementarity of interests and the mutuality, reciprocity is a better word. And throughout my life I benefited from networks. I spoke a moment ago about my old girl network from college and the network of business leaders I got to know. And community leaders I got to know through my work as in women's programs of all things. That ended up benefiting the university in all kinds of new initiatives. So that the chancellor of this university wanted to build connections with the business industry and I'm going to share two examples with the viewer that I think may be instructive. Because, UC San Diego in those days was a Ph.D. granting institution, very much a city on the hill. No business school, no school of nursing, no School of Education, not about practical business affairs. And yet, the research that was going on here in biology and in applied physics, and in chemistry and in oceanography, was transforming the content of products. I mean, think about wireless telephony and Qualcomm. In the early days, Irwin Jacobs, the founder of Qualcomm was a professor here on the campus. And was helping build satellite based communications systems called remote signal processing. And he and his colleagues developed some algorithms one of which is the Viterbi algorithm which is what runs cell phones in about 80 billion cell phones around the world. I mean, incredible work was going on on this campus. And so the fact that I knew many of the, at that time, men who were leading these companies turned out to be a terrific asset for my boss who had moved here from Washington D.C. and wanted to get connected. And so I helped him in the early days organize lunches of six or seven people working in industry sectors that were of interest to him. And he actively listened. You know what would you need from the university to be more successful? And he didn't just do it in the industrial and economic arena. He was very very committed to improving K through 12 education. Well, I happened to know the superintendent of schools. And I happened to know, again through a couple of women friends, organizations that were focusing on girls in science and other things. So I helped him organize those kinds of lunches. So that the university began as an institution, to be connected to many of these kinds of organizations. And so networking has great value because you're able to bring in people with specialized knowledge, specialized connections, specialized experience, to augment your specialized knowledge, experience and connections, and the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. And so you can solve big, hairy problems in a much more effective way.
