3 interviews: interesting career paths edition
Hi guys! For the next two weeks, I’m going to run back a few of our favorite Q&As from the past; feel free to take this time to also hit reply and let me know who you wanna see interviewed for the rest of 2020!
For today, here are three Q&As that feature some extremely fascinating career paths:
1. Best-selling author R.O. Kwon, on the consulting job she took before quitting to write:
Before I took the job, I’d promised myself I’d write on the side, and not only did I have no time or energy to write, but I also didn’t have the wherewithal to read. Which was so disorienting. I hadn’t been writing all my life, but I’d always been an obsessive reader, and now, for the first time, I wasn’t. I’d taken the job in large part because, well, I’m an immigrant, my parents often had serious money troubles, and I was afraid of the financial insecurity of a life in the arts. I thought I needed minor things like health insurance, a regular salary. The small things.
2. Designer & illustrator Joan Wong, on becoming a book cover designer:
I was an avid reader and always took special notice of covers. It was junior year of college when I realized that book cover designer was an actual full-time job, and it was the first profession that I had an emotional connection to. It married storytelling and visual art. I took a book cover design class with Gabriele Wilson at Parsons, and then became her intern to learn more about designing in the publishing world. By the time I graduated college, I was able to secure a designer position at Vintage Books of Random House.
3. The New York Public Library’s Chris Gorman, on how he got into marketing & branding some of the world’s biggest cultural institutions:
I started at The Met as a security officer. From there, I worked in design, public affairs, and marketing and communications. Looking back at my time in security, I realize that the daily interactions I had with visitors from around the world was the beginning of my work in audience engagement, and more broadly, marketing.
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