To The Editor:
I would like to congratulate Erik Assadourian '00 for his thoughtful piece ("Career Advice," Jan. 6) in which he maintained that the profession one chooses should be enjoyable and, ideally, make a positive impact on society (although the latter objective remains open to individual interpretation.) I particularly applaud Erik for encouraging other students to think broadly about the variety of opportunities, both leave term and entry-level, that are available to Dartmouth graduates.
To underscore his point, we invite students and others in the community to view our Alumni(ae) Stories Project. Headquartered in Career Services and made possible by the John B. Kovas Career Discovery Program, the Project presents photographs and brief biographies of alumni(ae) at work in a variety of settings. In this evolving gallery, entrepreneurs and restaurateurs are portrayed beside dancers and urban planners. The intent is to showcase success stories from many different fields of endeavor in order to expand notions of what Dartmouth graduates do to earn a living. Or, should I say, to make a life.
One alumnus featured in the Stories Project is Michael Chu '68, currently a candidate for Trustee. In many ways, his story epitomizes what the Project is all about: an attempt to freeze frame a number of alumni(ae) who have sought to make passion their work.
Chu currently serves as president and CEO of ACCION International, a private nonprofit corporation which provides short-term loans to self-employed poor throughout Latin America and the United States. Before assuming his current post, Chu held senior management positions in both investment banking and management consulting after beginning his career as a political organizer in Uruguay.
Like the others who share wall space with him, Chu's career is a series of zigs and zags. His ability to do well and do good over the course of his career, serves as a ready reminder that every achievement attained and destination reached results from course corrections made along the way.
With apologies to Robert Frost (Dartmouth '96), something there is that does love a wall, especially when the wall in question celebrates the diversity of occupational pursuits favored by Dartmouth graduates. Come check it out; at the very least, it challenges you to ask what you may be walling in or walling out by considering only a narrow range of career options.
