What’s been going on with you, since you left Biola?

After graduating, I worked in Biola’s IT department until my wife and I moved up to Seattle because her law school was there. I worked as a sales rep for 12 days in a church tech startup before I quit and threw my fate to the wind. After interviewing well for a temp job, I got involved in a data privacy role at Getty Images. Being able to take on huge data privacy projects with Getty, I somehow ended up an expert in the field and transitioned to the consulting world, where I am now.

Tell us about your current position and how studying English helped prepare you for the job.

I am a Data Privacy Consultant for Teleion Consulting. The best term for what I do is managed service consulting. A company decides they want to ramp up a privacy service and I am hired to manage that work under the ownership of the company that hired us. Right now, I am at Microsoft’s Azure team helping with internal inquiries on data privacy and process improvement, which is being affected by California’s Consumer Privacy Act, or the CCPA.

My English education in being teachable and how to write effectively have made my career. Data privacy was an entirely new frontier for many companies starting in 2019, and it’s only becoming more needed as time goes on. By being teachable early on and going through hours of dense legal reading and hearing from law firms about how privacy laws will be interpreted around the world has made me a subject-matter expert. Being able to write (emails, policies, memos, FAQs, etc.) effectively, and being able to clearly communicate new and hard subjects to a variety of audiences, is literally what makes my time billable to the companies that hire me (and I charge quite a bit).

What were some of your favorite experiences as a Biola English major?

Dr. Shelley Garcia had this amazing class “Modernism and Masculinity” that radically challenged the way I view myself. Understanding my own brand of masculinity, and how it can come across to those around me, allows me to navigate the progressive corporate world I’m in in a way that helps me better respect my colleagues while also knowing what I need to keep to in terms of my values.

A specific experience from that class I remember was reading Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett, a story that defined the detective noir genre. I wrote my final paper on the book and how masculinity can create a vicious man vs. man scenario that only benefits the survivors. Dr. Garcia’s encouragement to absolutely go for it and reach for the moon made it my favorite paper to write in college.

What about life after college has been most surprising to you?

Freedom can sometimes suck! I was paralyzed for an hour when my newest job gave me three options for my healthcare package.

In all seriousness, so many things changed for me in my first year after college that it was hard not to feel whiplash. Having to make constant hard decisions, along with hundreds of tiny decisions, can fatigue you quickly. Taking inventory of what is truly valuable and building systems/habits for decision-making have been essential to my mental health.

The two examples I will share come from my spiritual life and my finances. Every morning at 8 am, I open my bible app and go through a daily reading and prayer ritual that takes me about 15 minutes. Because I’ve systematized the time and activity, the action is not a decision but a habit that keeps me grounded. In my finances, everything is automated. Parts of my paycheck get automatically filtered to my bills, to my savings accounts for specific purposes, and even to a certain checking account that my wife and I know stores our guilt-free spending money. Having such a system means I haven’t worried about money in months.

What advice would you give to a current Biolan majoring in English? Or what’s something you did in college that later helped you professionally?

Start networking with anyone in any field you are interested in. A reference is the fastest way to get a job, and knowing people in the field and getting advice on how to approach others in the field is the most valuable thing besides work experience.

On that note, start building a portfolio of work. If you want to be a writer, go write for The Chimes on campus and start submitting to any other publications you’re interested in. Every resumé I submit comes with a link to my work on The Point magazine from Fall 2018, when I was managing editor. At every interview I have had the interviewer has told me how great that magazine looks.

Quicker tips: take time to understand personal finance. A good understanding of 401k, IRA, and HSA accounts can make and save you hundreds of thousands of dollars over a period of 20 years. Also, take yourself seriously, be teachable but never meek, and stand up for your virtues and values. Have a unique and aesthetically pleasing business card.

Are you reading lately, and if so, what?

I have been reading nonfiction lately since I was nearly exclusively in fiction throughout college.

I finished Grant by Ron Chernow recently and can’t part from the book, which tells the story of the humble and unambitious [Ulysses S.] Grant coming to political might by being a good man manipulated by bad people and worse times. It’s a necessary story for understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the way we do government.

Right now, I am reading The Many Lives of Michael Bloomberg by Eleanor Randolph and Factfulness by Hans Rosling. The first is a story of one way to handle riches, and the second is a guiding framework for what the world is really like and how absolutely abysmal our understanding of it can be.