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Spotlight on Alumni Fortune 500
What is it like to work at a Fortune 500 company? We caught up with five Singapore American School alumni who currently work with some of the world’s largest corporations to find out.
Linda Sun (Class of 2015)
investment bank analyst, Goldman Sachs
From balancing multiple leadership roles at SAS to training for multiple sports, her eight years at SAS helped prepare Linda Sun (class of 2015) for her current fast-paced work environment. After graduating from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s degree in finance and management, she moved to New York to work as an investment bank analyst at Goldman Sachs.
As an analyst, Sun’s roles and responsibilities primarily involve the execution of projects, including financial analysis, business due diligence, and assisting with client decks. She shares, “Goldman Sachs offers a plethora of opportunities, and I've been fortunate to take part in some of them, including a non-profit project, campus recruiting efforts, and talk series with leaders across all fields. These possibilities have made the job more interesting and allow me to meet new people and learn new things on a daily basis.”
Sun offers three important pieces of advice that will help students or alumni hoping to enter the field of investment banking: 1. Meet many people from all different backgrounds or interests and stay in touch—you never know which door will open. 2. Your attitude is important. Everyone likes working with someone who makes the job easier or better. You will be able to produce higher quality deliverables when you have a positive mindset. 3. Take on challenges, even if it means staying up later at night. It will pay off in the long run. Who knew that playing card games, chess, and brain teasers in elementary school were signs that Craig Friske (class of 1974) would one day become a senior software engineering manager at Rocket Software, a company with a long-standing partnership with IBM.
After graduating from SAS, Friske attended California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, he accepted a job at a Control Data Corporation in Silicon Valley.
As a manager of the Db2 Utilities team at Rocket Software, Friske’s main task is to oversee the engineers responsible for developing and servicing the utilities critical to the function of IBM’s mainframe database. He notes that his job can be quite stressful at times: “If an important, aggressive schedule must be met, then you can work lots of hours. If a bank system came down because of a bug in our code, it must be diagnosed in a timely manner. And these are very hard puzzles to solve!”
Friske’s advice for students or alumni who want to enter the field of software engineering is to embrace hard challenges and classes. He typically hires employees with a bachelor’s degree or master’s degree in computer science. But that’s not all that it takes to be in this field, he emphasizes: “Focus on being a well-rounded person. The degree and a high GPA will get an interview, but my team is filled with people who care for each other and help each other. We have a company slogan we live by—a Rocketeer will never let another Rocketeer fail.”
Craig Friske (Class of 1974)
business and strategy manager, Caterpillar
Nathan Button (class of 1998) graduated from the University of Iowa, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in economics. After graduating, he moved to Peoria, Illinois to work for Caterpillar. It has been over 18 years since his first move, and since then he has lived in Australia, Singapore, Switzerland, and the US. He muses, “I have held many different positions in numerous functional areas—on four different continents!”
Currently based in Geneva, Button is the business and strategy manager for Caterpillar’s global construction and infrastructure division, which serves as the company’s sales and marketing division for their core machine product line. He manages a team responsible for the company’s sales forecasting and order management, budgeting and cost management, communications, compliance, and data analytics. In addition, he supports the vice president with strategy development and implementation.
“I am glad I graduated with my bachelor’s degree in economics because I think it helped teach me how to think through issues and problem solve,” Button shares, “but any success I’ve had has been based more on common sense, communication, and a little analysis capability than on any specific academic theories.”
Derek Dieu (Class of 2001)
head of commercial excellence for Janssen Pharmaceuticals (owned by Johnson & Johnson)
Critical thinking is one of the many skills Derek Dieu (class of 2001) picked up while a student at SAS. As he reflects on this time, he shares, “I feel like my bent to always consider things critically began from my days at SAS. AP Psychology and Journalism broadened my view on learning and gave me an appreciation to think critically about topics.”
Currently based in Beijing, Dieu shares that there is never a dull moment at work as his role involves a fascinating mix of responsibilities. He leads a team of 70 dedicated professionals who work on capability-building, data and analytics, and innovation. With the exponential growth of big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, he is uniquely positioned to apply these technologies in strengthening the company’s processes, ultimately driving business growth.
Dieu did not take the traditional route to get to where he is today. He graduated from Tufts University with a degree in psychology and international relations—both majors not obviously related to pharmaceuticals.
After having taken both backward and linear steps in his career, Dieu feels that it is important to consider the impact and learning opportunities of a position, rather than its title or pay. He shares, “A lesson I have been glad to learn is that a career is less of a ladder and more of a marathon. As most of us won’t stay in one career our entire lives, this idea of a wide base of experiences and skills is important to ensure you are properly equipped when the right role comes up.” Living abroad was a transformative experience for Katie O’Gorman (class of 1999), and especially spending six years at SAS. She explains, “Those years were some of the greatest in my life. I made amazing friends, received a terrific education, and got to travel Southeast Asia playing on sports teams and becoming a team player.”
“I love being on social media, having direct sight into consumer conversations, and learning how we can impact people in a positive way,” says O’Gorman. As the director of social media strategy and content for Coca-Cola, one of the most recognized brands in the world and ranked number 88 in the 2020 Fortune 500, she continues to reinforce the brand’s image on social media. Driven with a passion to learn, she finds ways to improve herself by seeking feedback from her colleagues or consumers of the brand.
Growing up, O’Gorman’s family moved almost every two years. She reminisces, “In each place, I have loved Coca-Cola, and it has always been a comfort to me because it was a part of many of my favorite, most fun times. I am grateful to work for a company whose brand I have always loved.”
O’Gorman encourages students to put in the effort to look for opportunities in the digital marketing industry. Her career path is an example of how important it is to do so—she landed her first job out of college by sending her resume, personal letter, and letter of recommendation to every person who went to Furman University (which she attended from 1999 to 2003) and was in the marketing industry. She shares, “I have always put in the extra effort to get more experience, which has led me to where I am today.”
