Welcome to “3 Questions with …”, a recurring feature on the Career Center blog. We’re asking alumni of all graduation years and career interests to share a bit of their experiences and advice.
1. In just a few sentences, please tell us about your current job/graduate program/vocational endeavor.
My focus for over a decade has been marketing in technical industries related to energy. I currently oversee marketing, communications, and sustainability strategy for Energy Recovery, Inc., which designs and manufactures energy efficiency technology for industries including desalination, wastewater treatment, and commercial refrigeration. Prior to Energy Recovery, I led communications for a leading large-scale solar project developer.
2. How did your time at Tufts influence your career journey?
Tufts emphasized learning how to ask good questions and evaluate conflicting information and perspectives to arrive at a clear point of view. That’s a valuable skill in business because it allows you to translate ambiguity into a concrete path forward. In practice, this skill makes your boss’ life easier because they can tell you their high-level goal and rely on you to ask the right questions and recommend the best next step. I am also grateful for the Tufts alumni network – the Career Center connected me to a Tufts graduate who helped me to find my first full-time role at the height of the Great Recession.
3. What advice would you offer to a student who wants to pursue a career path like yours?
Marketing is often one of the first teams to adopt generative AI tools in a company, which means anyone who wants to go into marketing needs to be AI fluent. The more that you can help to identify how AI can help to improve business processes, the more valuable you’ll be to that company. The other caution is not to become reliant on generative AI to do all the work. We’re already seeing convergence in marketing where everyone’s message looks the same because they’ve all used the same AI tools. You need to be able to do your own critical thinking so you can help push beyond the sameness and help your company stand out.
