How Muslim High School Girl Inspires Education Reporter - Yoav Gonen

Yoav Gonen returns to Capture Your Flag to build upon his 2009 interview with a 2010 conversation with host Erik Michielsen. In Chapter 1 of 17, Gonen, a New York Post education reporter, shares why the human element in his reporting makes his job so fulfilling. Gonen regularly meets people in extraordinary circumstance and gets to tell their stories. In one instance, a young Bangladesh-born Muslim girl living in New York overcomes family and cultural obstacles to study her passion, biology, while in high school. Gonen details his experience discovering, researching, and writing the story that ultimately ended with the Muslim girl receiving a scholarship to study at Cornell University. Gonen is a University of Michigan graduate and also earned his Masters in Journalism from New York University.

Jullien Gordon on How Experience Checklist Empowers College Student Career Planning

In Chapter 13 of 14 of his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon tours 30 college campuses in 10 weeks to provide guidance to students finding difficulty finding jobs. Gordon cites how only 20% of graduating college students have jobs and creates a novel approach, a 66-item list, to build student intellectual, personal, financial, and social capital. The National Society of Collegiate Scholars (NSCS) backs Gordon and his effort to complement the career planning, curriculum, and counseling students receive while in school. Gordon holds an MBA and Masters in Education from Stanford University and a BA from UCLA.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  How did your thirty college, ten week speaking tour, Route 66, reshape your ideas on how to reform college career planning?

Jullien Gordon:  Oh, man.  So, I did this college tour called the Route 66 in partnership with the National Society of Collegiate Scholars, went to thirty campuses in ten weeks all across the country.  It was amazing.  Reached thousands of students and as – the tour was based on sixty-six things that a college student needs to do before graduation because I woke up one morning and saw a statistic from the National Association of Colleges and Employers and said only 20% had jobs on hand at graduation.  So, college use to be this guaranteed path to a job and you’re telling me that only 20% of college graduates in the class of 2009 had job at graduation?  That tells me that college isn’t doing what it’s suppose to, and for me college is a four-year stepping stone for your forty year career.  So, out of that I was inspired to list all the things that I think would help students develop their personal, intellectual, social and financial capital during college to position themselves for the career that they wanted after.  It ended up being a list of sixty-six things and as I was sharing this with them on this tour during this ninety minute presentation, I would say, ‘How many people have done this?” And only two people would have done any given item on the list. 

They were being exposed to things that they had never considered using the college environment for in that space and it just showed me that there was a huge, huge gap.  That the career center wasn’t giving it to them, their major counselor wasn’t giving it to them, their classes weren’t giving it to them, their extracurricular activities wasn’t giving it to them and that they all need it packaged it in one space and that’s what the Route 66 is all about.  I touch base with some of the students on Facebook saying, ‘How’s your Route 66 going?” “I’m crossing off my things off one at a time and I’m so glad that you came to campus and shared this with me.”  And I truly believe that any student that graduates having taken Route 66 is going to be ten times more ready for the world than any student that hasn’t.

.

Jullien Gordon on Why a Modern Resume Should Be More Portfolio and Pitch Than Paper

In Chapter 11 of 14 of his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon shares why the traditional resume is dead and what should be included in a modern resume. Gordon focuses on value creation, not job responsibilities. The resume should communicate the value you create wherever you go. He also believes the next generation resume should not be a one-sheet resume; rather, it should be a pitch complete with a portfolio of previous projects. Gordon holds an MBA and Masters in Education from Stanford University and a BA from UCLA.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: How do you define the modern resume?

Jullien Gordon: The resume 1.0 is dead.  There is just so much information A-symmetry in the career search process.  A lot of people think of resumes as a job description, ‘I’m going to take the job that I did and I’m going to put the job description as the bullet points.’ But at the end of the day, what you really want to show an organization is how you moved something within that organization from point A to point B.  So, this is not your job description and what you did on a daily basis, but what value you created while you were actually at that organization.  They could care less about the education – the school you went to and your GPA.  That might get you in the door and decrease that barrier to entry but at the end of the day your resume should communicate the value you create wherever you go. 

In addition to that I also believe in this notion of the resume 2.0.  It’s more of a – it’s in the same way that business do these ten slide decks.  I think you should have a deck about who you are, what your purpose is, what your passions are, how you create value, what problem you are committed to solving, everything that’s a part of the 8 Cylinders of Success, and you should also have a portfolio of your best work.  That can be a business plan that you wrote in school.  It can be a paper that you wrote in school.  It could be an even that you coordinated.  When you go to an interview, instead of coming with this one sheet resume, you should come with your entire portfolio and lay that out on the table and say, ‘This is how I’ve been creating value at all the organizations and spaces I’ve been in the past five years and this is what I can bring to your organization.’ That alone, bring your portfolio and your resume 2.0 and your resume 1.0 written in the value creation way will set you apart from any other candidate.

.

Jullien Gordon on Why Groupthink Limits MBA Student Potential

In Chapter 9 of 14 of his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher and Stanford MBA Jullien Gordon shares why groupthink limits so many MBA career plans. During his MBA, Gordon was stunned to see a group of extremely talented and passionate classmates focus on a limited set of career options, namely brand marketing, management consulting, investment banking, private equity and venture capital. Gordon implores MBA students to focus first on applying their passions toward solving the biggest problems rather than making the most money. Gordon references a young Bill Gates and how that problem solving - getting a computer in every home - translated to later career philanthropic efforts. Gordon holds an MBA and Masters in Education from Stanford University and a BA from UCLA.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  How does group think limit MBA student potential and why is this a problem worth solving?

Jullien Gordon:  Oh my goodness! So, I wrote this blog post recently called “A Letter to an MBA” and it came after sitting at a panel at Columbia Business School and just realizing – and I went to Stanford and when you think about the admission rates there. These are literally the most talented – some of the most talented people in the entire world – 350 of the most talented people, and it just makes no sense to me how 350 of the most talented people can all want to be the same five things.  They all want to consultants, bankers, private equity marketers, whatever.  And it just makes no sense to me. 

Instead of thinking of the career paths based on the recruiters that come to campus and what makes the most money, really what MBAs should be thinking about is ‘What is the biggest problem I can solve in the world?’  When you look at Bill Gates, that was the question he asked himself. “How do I get a computer in every single home?”  And what Bill Gates has done is, instead of – he really is a problem solver, technology was the one avenue that he explored his purpose but at his core he’s a problem solver.  Now, he’s taking his problem solving ability and taking it to Malaria, education equalities and other health issues in the developing world because at the core he’s a problem solver. So, if MBAs thought of their career paths in the sense of “What is the biggest problem that I can solve in the world?” then I think that could transform the world in general.

Jullien Gordon on How Stanford Grad Uses MBA and Education Masters Degree in Career

In Chapter 7 of 14 of his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon shares why he chose to earn both a masters in education and a masters in business administration (MBA) from Stanford University. Coming out of college at UCLA, Gordon works for Students Heightening Academic Performance Through Education (SHAPE). There he learns his passion is education, but not of the classroom type. Gordon chooses to attend Stanford to craft a career as a motivation teacher, using education classes to provide the tools, systems, and processes to help people self motivate and learn. He pairs this with business school knowledge - marketing, finance, etc. - to create value and make a living doing what he loves.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  What motivated you to purse dual master degrees in education and business administration when going back to Stanford University?

Jullien Gordon: Coming out of UCLA, I was committed to – I was working at an education outreach program called The Shape Program – and so my passions were both in education and business but I never saw myself necessarily in the educational system but I really wanted to understand – the education degree was to understand how people learn and the business degree was to how to create value, and that’s what I do. I’m a motivation teacher now.  So, I teach people – not a motivational speaker.  A motivational speaker comes and get you excited, “Rah, Rah” and as soon as they leave all the energy dies.  As a motivation teacher, I leave people with tools, systems and processes that allow them to motivate themselves and self motivate.  So, I’m a teacher and I understand how people learn and how they consume information and what sticks and on the business side, that just gives me the skill set to make a living doing what I love.

Jullien Gordon on How Auschwitz Concentration Camp Story Inspires a Life of Purpose

In Chapter 4 of 14 of his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon finds inspiration and purpose, his "why", by reading Viktor Frankl's book, "Man's Search for Meaning." Specifically, Frankl's quote, "Nietzsche's words 'He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how'" helps Gordon align his why, or purpose, when pursuing goals, no matter how challenging. The book chronicles Frankl's time as an inmate at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp during World War II and details his quest to find reason, or meaning, to live.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: How has Victor Frankl’s quote “A man who knows his why can bear almost any how” reflected in your own sense of purpose?

Jullien Gordon:  I read that book A Man’s Search for Meaning in high school, it was in a class called Living and Dying and that quote just stuck out to me [asks Andrew a question] So I read that quote… I read Man’s Search for Meaning in high school in a class called Living and Dying and that’s where that quote came from and so for me your Why is your purpose, right? And so when you are clear, crystal clear on what it is your purpose is no matter what obstacles stand in your way in terms of living in alignment with that, you can over come them and of course Man’s Search for Meaning was about being… stuck and trapped in Auschwitz and how his ‘why’, which was a love of his family, helped sustain him during that try, trying time and so when you are clear of your ‘why’ and your reasoning for being in your own self worth, no matter what obstacles come your way you actually over come them.

Jullien Gordon on How Stanford MBA Creates His Own Career Path

In Chapter 3 of 14 of his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon learns from an alcoholic parent that choosing from a career option menu is not the only way. Instead, Gordon creates his own career path as a motivation teacher and purpose finder. Gordon believes we all have the capacity to create our own careers. Most importantly, Gordon advises others to pursue a career where you answer "What do you do?" with "I'm just me all day." Gordon holds an MBA and Masters in Education from Stanford University and a BA from UCLA.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: What did your mother’s battle with alcoholism teach you about self-education?

Jullien Gordon: In the past generations they were under the premise that ‘go be a teacher, doctor, lawyer, engineer ’ and you’re just guaranteed success and happiness and so people were actually choosing from a menu of career options rather than exploring who they are and who they wanted to be and coming out of business school at Stanford, I realized that ‘You know what? I’m looking on all these recruiters coming to campus and things like that and I don’t see myself – see any opportunities for me to step into one of these organizations and actually be myself’ and I had to carve out or create a career path that I wanted to be – that I wanted and so that’s where the notion of purpose finder came in, I mean how many purpose finders do you know? Right? So, it was a career path that I created. 

I think the number of career paths that are actually in the world are exactly correlated to number of people in the world, right? But instead we try to fit ourselves into these boxes, ‘I’m a marketer. I’m a banker. I’m a consultant. I’m a teacher.”  When at the end of the day, the best career is the one where you can say – when someone asks you, ‘So, what do you do?’ – ‘I’m just me all day.’  That’s really what we want and so – but you have to have self awareness or else that fear and that gap will force you or cause you to choose something you think you know.  Because many times we don’t even know the career path that we say we want to be.

Jullien Gordon on Why to Use Alcoholic Anonymous Model for Personal Development

In Chapter 2 of 14 of his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon shares why Alcoholics Anonymous and its flat, sustainable, results-oriented, and empowering personal development model defines his own leadership style. Not only does the model promote accountability at the individual level, but also Gordon finds that personal development is most transformational in group settings. Gordon looks past the one-time personal development experience provided in conference settings to group settings that provide sustainable guidance and monitoring. This has led Gordon, who graduated from Stanford with an MBA and Masters in Education and earned a BA at UCLA, to start his "Career Change Challenge".

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: What defines your leadership style and how would you like to evolve it?

Jullien Gordon: Alcoholics Anonymous defines my leadership style in terms of wanting to build a very flat, flat organization where everybody feels like a leader. I think AA from a personal development standpoint is transforming more lives than any other personal development organization out there today. When you look at the personal development usually there’s a guru on stage speaking to the masses and AA just flips that entire model on it’s head. It’s more sustainable, I think it’s more empowering and leads to more long term results than the traditional models of personal development and that’s where the Thirty Day Do It Movement comes in.

You have a group of people who care about you and you step into that group and you set a goal.  But, when you set that goal you also create a cost. So, that cost might be, ‘I’m going to give everybody in this group $50 if I don’t accomplish that goal.  I’m going to wash everybody’s car with a toothbrush if I don’t accomplish this goal.”  Whatever it is that is going to be embarrassing but bearable, right?  So, when you create that cost your likelihood of you achieving that goal increases and now you have people that care about you holding you accountable.

Erik Michielsen: How have you applied the Alcoholics Anonymous model to help others plan careers?

Jullien Gordon: One notion that I have is that personal development isn’t personal, right? And we have this idea of personal development being ‘I get this book, I read it, go in the corner of a room, I read it, then I’m transformed’ but then if the world around you doesn’t change then the likelihood of regressing is a lot easier and when you have a powerful group of people moving forward together I think you just have a better outcome rather than people trying to do it on their own.

Again with the personal development industry you go to this conference and then you meet all these great people there, but then you fly back to home or you back to your own world and you step into your family, your work environment and nobody knows the language and things that you’re talking about and therefore it’s so easy to go backwards and so when you have a group of people who is there to support you and understands the language you’re talking and understands the systems and processes that are behind you I think that that’s where you actually can have the most power results.

And so the next thing on the plate for me is actually something call the Career Change Challenge and it’s going to be a seventy-day tele-seminar where groups of people are being guided through a process to change their careers and so again… again it’s groups not individuals because I just feel like I can have more impact by empowering groups of people than I can by empowering one person. Now, every life is equally valuable but I think that there’s a collective wisdom that you tap into when you are actually moving in a group.

Jullien Gordon on How to Achieve Success by Aligning Purpose to Career

In Chapter 1 of 14 of his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon aspires to help others better identify and align purpose to professional goals. Gordon does this by helping others make ideas happen by providing a 30-day goal support framework. Gordon finds inspiration in studying clarity of purpose in growing up with an alcoholic parent rich with material goods but lacking in fulfillment. He builds upon this focus by creating methodologies, including a "30-Day Do It" framework to help others execute on ideas and achieve incremental goals in set time periods. Gordon earned both an MBA and Masters in Education at Stanford University and a BA from UCLA.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: To what do you aspire?

Jullien Gordon: There’s two things. One is to help as many people as possible get clarity on their purpose and align that with their profession, since I think our profession is what we spend so much of our core life and that’s where we have to make our highest contribution and then secondly is to - in the concept of the New Years Resolution, introduce this idea of the New Month Resolution where people set goals and community every single month.

Erik Michielsen: What was the genesis of those two core goals?

Jullien Gordon: Having an alcoholic parent who had a three story house, Mercedes Benz, all that and seeing them still feel empty and so that’s where the purpose and the profession piece came in, where it’s like you can these notions of success and chase these things that people deem successful and still feel empty inside. So at an early age my notions of success got challenged and it made me just think differently about success and start defining it for myself. Next for the Thirty Day Do It Movement, which is the goal setting – nation wide goal setting movement, it was really all about people just having great ideas and not getting done.

It frustrates me so much when people are talking about all the great ideas that they have and the next call you get on with them and it’s just a new great idea and then it’s another one and another one and I really just want to see people move aggressively – not aggressively but progressively towards what ever it is that they truly, truly want in the depth of their heart.

How Fulbright Scholar Overcomes Anti-Americanism Abroad - Adam Carter

In Chapter 16 of 16, micro-philanthropist and humanitarian Adam Carter earns a Fulbright Scholarship and travels to Spain to pursue his studies. On the anniversary of 9/11, Carter finds himself in Morocco confronted by Anti-American sentiment. Carter asks these individuals to respect his opinion and not stereotype based on his nationality. This approach allows the conversation to be human, not political. The respect also opens dialogue to discuss challenging topics such as politics and religion once the individual bond is made. Carter continues to travel the world as founder of non-profit Cause and Affect Foundation (www.causeandaffectfoundation.org).

Why to Prioritize Patience When Building Your Career - Adam Carter

In Chapter 15 or 16, micro-philanthropist and humanitarian Adam Carter meets a Tasmanian attorney traveling the Middle East in 1998 who teaches him the value of patience in building a career. Carter, uncertain and stressed about his own career, finds wisdom in the attorney's words, specifically the need to understand what you want before jumping into a career. Carter uses this experience to continue cultivating his experiences and shaping them into his own micro-philanthropy career. Along the way, Carter creates the Cause and Affect Foundation (www.causeandaffectfoundation.org).

How to Win Parents Support for Non-Traditional Career Path - Adam Carter

In Chapter 12 or 16, micro-philanthropist and humanitarian Adam Carter highlights the importance of involving one's parents in the process of defining a career, especially a non-traditional one. Carter learns early that continuous communications, inclusiveness, and sharing with his parents creates a supportive, versus a combative, relationship built on trust and understanding. This gives Carter the confidence necessary to develop a non-traditional career built on a cultural anthropology education and extensive international travels. Carter, a micro-philanthropist, founded the Cause and Affect Foundation (www.causeandaffectfoundation.org). He also is a beer vendor at Chicago Cubs and White Sox baseball games each summer.

How South Asian Archeaology Class Informed Anthropology Career - Adam Carter

In Chapter 9 or 16, micro-philanthropist and humanitarian Adam Carter derivates from his cultural anthropology major to take South Asian Archeology at University of Michigan. There, he learns the formative historical and cultural ties developed through urban city development and planning. City culture and urban development go on to play a major role in Carter's life as he travels the world as a micro-philanthropist for his Cause and Affect Foundation (www.causeandaffectfoundation.org).

How Micro-Philanthropy Projects Complement NGO Efforts - Adam Carter

In Chapter 4 of 16, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter shares how his small, focused humanitarian project financing efforts complement work done by institutional non-governmental organizations (NGO). Carter highlights an instance in a Rio de Janeiro favela shanty town. A Dutch NGO purchases drums for a children's music class. Carter, noticing unmet demand, finances purchase of fifty new drums needed to increase class size by fifty students. The efforts shows how micro-philanthropic organizations such as Carter's Cause and Affect Foundation (http://www.causeandaffectfoundation.org/) serve those in need.

Why to Pursue a Joint MBA and MPH Degree - Michael Olsen

In Chapter 16 of 16, social entrepreneur and technology consultant Michael Olsen finds his passion by starting and developing non-profit Kilifi Kids (www.kilifikids.org). The intersection of developing world scope, public health, and technology captures his interest and Olsen decides to immerse himself further in these areas by pursuing a joint Masters of Public Health (MPH) and Masters of Business Administration (MBA) from Emory University in Atlanta.

How Stanford Global Health Education Reshapes Non-Profit - Michael Olsen

In Chapter 5 of 16, social entrepreneur and 2003 Stanford graduate Michael Olsen starts a non-profit, Kilifi Kids - www.kilifikids.org - with his brother to provide secondary school scholarships to Kenyan children.  After working with Rotary International on scholarships, Olsen references his Stanford International Health class and his studies on high impact, low cost interventions.  Using notes, Olsen steers his organization to finance deworming medication for 30,000 school children at 25 cents or one quarter per child. 

How Stanford Symbolic Systems Studies Direct Career - Michael Olsen

In Chapter 2 of 16, social entrepreneur and technology consultant Michael Olsen channels his broad interests into studying symbolic systems at Stanford University. Olsen's studies take a multi-discipline perspective - computer science, history, philosophy - in his studies. Upon graduation, Olsen continues to work in insurance industry and founds an Internet consulting firm. The interdisciplinary approach helps Olsen balance pitching clients ideas and technology project execution.

Courtney Spence on How Students of the World Develops Documentary Filmmakers

In Chapter 5 of 15 of her 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit executive and Students of the World founder Courtney Spence answers "What do you do and why do you do it?" She shares her organizational purpose to empower college students to travel abroad and tell the story of NGO work fighting problems on the frontlines. These locations range from New Orleans to India to Cambodia to other challenged areas. Students receive both impactful travel experiences gathering community stories on-location as well as post-production experience in Austin, Texas where projects are completed and, over time, distributed.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: What do you do and why do you do it?

Courtney Spence: So I created students of the world back as a sophomore at Duke University with a purpose to tell stories of progress. What we do is we take university students, we partner them with some of the most innovative organizations working all over the world, our students spend about four weeks on location where they immerse themselves in a community, form relationships, form friendships and really purpose to tell the stories of those that are the front lines fighting some of the worlds most pressing problems and whether that be in Cambodia, India or New Orleans. We are a chapter based nonprofit so we have chapters at various universities across the nation, one of our chapters is here in Austin, the University of Texas, and when the students return from their four weeks of production we bring them back to Austin for a six week sort of mega post production creative brainstorm where we all work on various multi media projects so it’s short films, it’s photo essays, it’s audio documentaries, audio documentaries over photo essays so it’s really sort of up to the individual student to figure out how they want to best tell the story of that organization, that individual.

Erik Michielsen: How do you define success in what you do?

Courtney Spence: There’s a few things that we look back every year, first and foremost the student experience, did our students, you know, were they safe? Did they enjoy themselves? Do they feel like they really had a purpose in doing what they did and do they feel that they were successful in helping craft these stories from these organizations and these individuals on the ground? How many people heard these stories? What sort of impact did that have? For example, we had our team from the University of Texas in Northern Thailand working with a woman who basically had taken in children that were being trafficked, children from off the streets, it was a really impactful experience for the students, they showed it to a single individual person here in Austin and the next thing we knew, a five thousand dollar check was being written to go directly to this woman to build a new house for the children she was caring for. So seeing those small moments where people are moved by the media, moved by the story and want to get involved, that is certainly successful for us.