October 1, 2011
Barnard College Career Development Elliott Hall, 2nd Floor www.barnard.edu/cd
212 854-2033 EMAIL: ocd@barnard.edu
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STAFF Robert Earl, Jr. Director Alexandra Nestoras Senior Associate Director Won Kang Associate Director / Student Employment Rachel Tannenbaum Associate Director Valerie Chow Program Director / Internship Programs & Civic Engagement Purnima Taylor Program Director / Employer Relations & Campus Recruitment Victoria Passarella Career Counselor Sarah Noel Alumnae Counselor Katherine Hendry Assistant Director Lindsey Allen Assistant to the Director Hiraida Crespo Office Assistant Bruce Ross Administrative Assistant Nancy Ferro Recruiting Program Assistant
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ONNECTIONS
WHAT TO DO WITH A MAJOR IN PSYCHOLOGY? You’ve decided on a major and are not sure what career path to follow after college. To help you out, we asked three Barnard alumnae who majored in psychology to share their career experiences with you! Sara Kornfieldʼ03 - Psychologist, Department of Veteran Affairs Like many other clinical psychologists, I began my undergraduate education planning to be pre-med. However, after taking several biology courses, I realized there was a part of me that was not happy in this line of study. I was interested in more than the biology of what makes a person who they are. I declared a Psychology major after taking Psychology 101 and realizing that Psychology was a field that combined the biological aspects of behavior with psychological and social aspects. Interestingly, the biopsychosocial model of behavior, which captured my interest at Barnard, still informs my practice today. After graduating from Barnard I got a job as a research assistant at the New York State Psychiatric Institute's HIV Center on a study looking at young women's knowledge about safe sexual practices. Continued on Pg. 6 Pauline Shenderʼ99 - Director of Human Resources, Thomson Reuters I did not choose psychology; it chose me. By the end of my sophomore year I realized that I had pretty much completed the requirements for the major, so I was set. However, I knew I was never going to take the traditional path for psych majors so I added an Economics minor to my studies. I joined Accenture, the global consulting firm, upon graduation and was fortunate to spend six years consulting for media companies on all sorts of business issues including: technology, strategy, and acquisitions. I left for Carnegie Mellon's business school since I wanted to strengthen my finance skills and further my career. At CMU, I studied Finance and Organizational Behavior. After my MBA, I joined Thomson Reuters' MBA Management program and within a year I was working in Human Resources, managing the Global MBA Program. Today, I am a stay at home mom to a 9 month old boy. I also do business interview coaching/ resume preparation in my spare time for candidates at all career levels. Cara Krantrowitzʼ07 - Senior Research Analyst, The Nielsen Company Initially, I wanted to be a therapist so that I could better understand people and help them. After taking statistics and social psychology, research intrigued me. I worked in a lab with a Barnard professor for 2 ½ years studying stereotyping and prejudice; I even co-authored a scholarly article with him, which was published about a year ago. Post-graduation, I wasn’t ready to commit to a PhD program, so I chose to work in research. I spent the next 3+ years working at a legal research firm, doing mainly archival research where I learned a lot about working in an office and the business world. When I felt that I had reached my potential at that position I decided to change careers to Market Research to get back to analytics involving numbers & statistics and studying people’s behavior. Continued on Pg. 6
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