25 years, 25 jobs

This past August, I turned 25.

I constantly think about my story and future, and the “quarter-life” mark seemed like an adequate-enough opportunity to deep-dive on the matter.

“What are you doing with your life, Monik?”

Recently, James Gross (co-founder at Percolate) delivered an inspiring and forward-looking presentation titled “What’s Your Thesis?”. It was a call-to-action for everyone to think about their own envisioned future and to act in the context of that rather than just getting by.

“So, what are you really doing with your life, Monik?”

While I've spent a lot of time thinking about the future, I was inspired by this Rick Webb post to reflect on the “jobs” I’ve held in the past.

I loosely define jobs here as any well-defined roles in organizations where I contributed some value-add and gained some insight or pay, sometimes both. Though I’m not entirely certain, these are generally in chronological order.

1. Interdepartmental intern at a hospital for 15 weeks during high school (admittedly, I was given more responsibility than I probably earned at that age); this counted towards class credit!
2. Managerial assistant at motel, or “how to run a business”
3. “Volunteen” at a hospital through various departments over two summers; my second hospital gig in what would become a love/hate relationship with the healthcare sector
4. Salesclerk at a community college bookstore; I anticipated disruption by Amazon
5. Intern at a dental office; I didn’t get a plaque for this one (badum-tish!)
6. Dancer on a fusion dance team that competed nationally; these were the best road trips in college
7. Fundraising director for a business fraternity; the next two roles are direct results of this one
8. Stand manager with Lincoln Financial Field (Eagles) and Citizen’s Bank Park (Phillies); we were on the selling side of those ridiculously long lines that get you a $10 personal pizza and $8 12-ounce beer; this is where the background picture for this post comes from — getting to the Linc super early while players warmed up wasn’t so bad for an Eagles fan
9. Party promoter; I was both hated and loved by my peers during these days, as you might imagine
10. Warehouse worker at UPS Freight; I unloaded and loaded crates of packages, and even had my forklift license!
11. President of a social fraternity; where I first learned the principles of leadership amidst chaos (my startup CEO training)
12. Community Manager for a cultural events organization; not on social media, this was good old fashioned in-real-life community management
13. Treasury Intern with the City of Philadelphia; the city’s finances were never the same
14. Portfolio Analyst at private equity shop; when I applied to this job, my resume promised “excellent analytical, written, and verbal skills”
15. Analyst for Drexel University’s Dragon Fund portfolio; we analyzed and pitched stocks for inclusion in a live endowment fund — real money, people!
16. Amateur writer of many things: short stories, blog posts, marketing copy, hip hop songs that would never be performed, and a soon-to-come movie script*
17. Cofounder and contributor to an amateur blog; we’re planning to do a full relaunch of this blog as a Medium collection: Semi Prose*
18. Mass resume & cover letter editor for friends & friends of friends (this inspired the next idea)
19. Co-founder of a 2.0 recruitment firm (nixed the idea before launch, and I won’t say anymore about it except that we learn quickly from our failures)
20. Analyst at a strategy consultancy; we delivered go-to-market strategies to technology companies like Microsoft; this was my first role out of college, held for 2+ years
21. Co-founder of wireless, reusable mobile charging device company (we haven’t given up on this one yet)*
22. Strategy Associate for an early-stage passion-driven sharing platform; this was fun to contribute to for a couple of months; also nice to see these guys recently raise a seed funding round (BeSomebody, for inquisitive minds)
23. Co-founder of e-hookah brand; we got through branding of a no-nicotine product called MSTK (“mystic”) and had several manufacturer conversations before scrapping this one due to lack of affinity for the product class (I learned during this process to only dedicate my time to things I was passionate about)
24. Hybrid analytical/sales role at an early-stage e-commerce startup; piloted this role for a short period before deciding to pursue more ambitious opportunities
25. Strategy Manager at an awesome enterprise SaaS startup building the system of record for marketing

This exercise was fun, and reminded me that my career path is filled with interesting roles and stories. Looking beyond a resume or LinkedIn profile is important, because those things are just the tip of the iceberg.

So the next time someone says, “Tell me about a time…”, maybe I’ll bring up that time I was promoting parties in Philadelphia.