Episode 2: Emily Drewry ’15 on Creating Her Own Role at Forbes
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Transcript:
[MUSIC PLAYING] CASSIE PETOSKEY: Welcome to Northwestern Intersections, a Northwestern network podcast where we talk to alumni about their careers. We'll hear what they've done, what they've done wrong, and the stories behind both. My name is Cassie Petoskey and today we're talking with Emily Drewry.
Emily is a recent alumna from Northwestern who, after graduation, moved to New York City and, over time, ended up creating her own role at Forbes. Emily, thank you so much for being here.
EMILY DREWRY: Of course, happy to be here.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Great. So Emily, we'll start off with an easy question. What was your first job?
EMILY DREWRY: I think technically-- well, I should say, very, very early on, I babysat. But I don't know if that counts. But my very first official job was a cashier at the Piggly Wiggly grocery store in my hometown. And I was there forever. I ended up going from being just a cashier to working the front desk, which was a really big deal for me at whatever age I was at. But I started working there when I was 14.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: That's great, 14. And look how your career has grown over time.
EMILY DREWRY: I know. I actually, I still go back to the same grocery store when I'm home. And I still know some of the people who work there. And they are really excited when I tell them that I moved to New York. And they always are thrilled that I remember them. And of course, I have to go back to my Piggly Wiggly every time I'm home.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: That is so awesome. And where are you from?
EMILY DREWRY: Wisconsin.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: So what drew you to New York City originally, since you're born and raised Midwest?
EMILY DREWRY: Yeah. I mean that was a surprise to even me. I grew up always wanting to live in Chicago. Even throughout most of my time at Northwestern, I planned on staying in Chicago after graduation. But as neared graduation senior year, I felt this need to try something new. Because a lot of people that I knew were staying in Chicago.
And I felt like the opportunities that I had in New York versus the ones that I had in Chicago were a little bit more challenging and would put me out of my comfort zone. I had only been to New York twice before to visit. And both times, I found it very, very intimidating, which, when I thought about things, was probably exactly what I needed right after graduation. So I decided to go the challenging route and move to New York about a week after graduation.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Wow. And you said you thought it was a little intimidating. Was it like that when you moved there? Or was it a different experience when you were actually there?
EMILY DREWRY: Oh, no. It was absolutely intimidating. But I did have a lot of very close friends from Northwestern who came out here as well. I lived with a very good friend from Northwestern for the first two years that I was here. My boyfriend who went to Northwestern as well lived out here, and his family was out here. So I had a big support system who helped me get to know the city. And when I started to become familiar with it, it was way less intimidating than I actually thought it was. But yeah, the first few weeks were terrifying.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah. That's so interesting. And did you ever question is New York City my place?
EMILY DREWRY: Absolutely not. No. I love it here. And even when I don't know where I'm going or when I take the subway the wrong way or something like that that I still do three years in, I don't regret it at all. I absolutely love it here.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: That's great. So you're at Forbes. And I'd love to hear more about your role and how that's evolved over time.
EMILY DREWRY: Absolutely. So this is the second company that I've worked for since I moved to New York. And I ended up finding the original role. It was an assistant social media editor role. I just found it on LinkedIn when I was job searching and ended up applying and coming in and meeting the, then, social editor. And it was a good fit.
So I started. And my role, specifically, when I began was just running the Twitter account. They had an editor who ran each platform. And that's actually still true. We have one editor who runs each platform. And so the first year that I was here, I moved from assistant social editor to just social editor, but I was doing Twitter the whole time.
About a year after I'd been here, I got the opportunity to transition into a new role. And it was one that didn't exist before. I created the name myself with help, of course, of the director. But that social contact manager became my role. And what that really means is it's kind of a role that helps our editors communicate with everybody else in the company. So there's a lot of assets that we get, whether it be from our video team or our graphics team or many other teams at Forbes. And I kind of help all of those communications flow and make sure that everybody is on the same page.
So it's a role that I'm still building out. I'm a year into it. And it's changing all the time. But basically, I'm just a liaison between the social team and everybody else. So like I said, there was nobody in this role before me, so I'm kind of getting to invent it as I go. And it includes a lot of different things that you wouldn't necessarily fall under whatever social content manager means. But it's a really good in-between between our director of social and our social editors.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah. This is so interesting that you actually created your own role and kind of developed it over time. And I'm wondering what the unique challenges were of the creation of your role. Were their frustrations in your old role that you were, like, this could help? How did this develop?
EMILY DREWRY: There were frustrations in my first role, most of it, being that I felt like I did the same thing every day. And that was really hard for me because, while there were things that I could grow up and improve upon, I really felt like I was lacking these big goals that I could kind of work towards. So when we created this role, it was both challenging and exciting that I got to decide what I would be working toward.
So in some ways, it was tough that I didn't have somebody's path to follow. I didn't know six months into this, OK, I have to have achieved X. Or I'll have been successful if I achieve Y. Instead, I kind of set those goals myself. And that's where my boss, the director of social has been fantastic in helping me really build this job and grow as an individual.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah. That's great. And can you talk a little bit about your goal in your role and within your department, what that is, and then how that plays into the bottom line at Forbes?
EMILY DREWRY: Yeah. So I would say, if I had to pick one overarching goal, it would be to highlight the work our social team does to the rest of the company. So as social becomes a bigger and bigger part of every company, really, but specifically a media company, it's kind of my job to make sure that everyone in the company is aware of how important the work that my team does and knows exactly what we need to succeed. So that might be editing videos a certain way so that they do the best that they can on all of our platforms.
Or when were launching list, getting certain information ahead of time so that were not blindsided when that list goes out to everybody else. So its really-- my job, I think, is to make sure that everybody knows what we need to be successful and how, in turn, our success is their success as well.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah. That's really cool. And I'm curious what the future of social at Forbes looks like to you. You kind of developed your own role. You clearly have a vision of how to do things strategically. What's the next step in your team, your department?
EMILY DREWRY: Getting bigger and better I think. Our team has grown a ton since I started from about four people to nine right now. And I expect that to continue growing. We're working a lot now with our sales team to create the right kind of products that they want to sell and the right kind of products that clients want to buy. So that's been a huge, huge change for us.
But really, just trying to figure out every platform seems to be launching something new these days. And it's every other week that Instagram changes the way that you can work on stories. And we have to adapt to that. So I think in the next year, at least, I just see us growing as a team, not just by numbers, but also by skill sets-- so just always trying to figure out what you can and can't you on certain platforms and how to be the best that.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah. That's so interesting that you're in a field that's constantly changing how they post and how they work. And so the fact that your team changes pretty quickly isn't that surprising.
EMILY DREWRY: Yeah. I keep joking that, if one more platform comes up with their own version of stories, we're going to lose it at this point. It's getting a little excessive.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: So now where does Forbes have stories?
EMILY DREWRY: We do a lot of Instagram stories. We have not touched Facebook stories.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Snapchat?
EMILY DREWRY: We do have a Snapchat account. It's not as active now that Instagram stories are so big. But we joke that, if LinkedIn wants to get on the stories game, we're not quite sure we can handle it.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Oh, that's so funny. Yeah. When I told one of my colleagues that I was going to interview you and that you work at Forbes, they're like, oh, my god, I love reading about Forbes, all the stuff they post on LinkedIn. So it's out there.
EMILY DREWRY: Yeah. That's great. Actually, today the article came out that-- we have the farthest reach of any publisher on LinkedIn. Which is--
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Oh, wow.
EMILY DREWRY: --amazing. And yeah, a testament to our LinkedIn editor. She's great.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: That's awesome. So how big is your team?
EMILY DREWRY: We're nine right now, which feels big, but it also doesn't feel big enough.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Wow, and you have a huge reach.
EMILY DREWRY: Yeah. Yeah. We've got, I think, somewhere between 30 and 40 million followers on all of our platforms combined, so it's a huge reach, which to me, I feel a huge responsibility to make sure that all of the content that I'm getting to my team and that my team is distributing, far and beyond, that it's really high-quality content and accurate content. Because millions and millions of people are seeing it.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Definitely. That's such a huge platform. And you talked a little bit about how you feel like this responsibility. But what is that like? Have you had a posts where you-- I don't want to say regret. But you're like oh, maybe we shouldn't have pushed that out?
EMILY DREWRY: I don't know if I would say I regret pushing anything. But we're always learning and trying to figure our what our audience will and will not accept. We know, at this point, we know our audiences really well. But it's less of an idea of catering exactly to what an audience wants to see. Because we don't want to do that.
We're a media company. We want to push out the best quality content that we have, but in a way that our audience understands and is interested in and wants to share. So it's always kind of a learning experience to figure out, hey, our LinkedIn audience really doesn't engage well with political content.
Maybe we should keep the political content on Twitter and Facebook because that's where it tends to do better. But that's not to say that we won't ever share political content. Because we have really strong political content on the site. So it's really more curating the content specific to the platform.
But everything that we push out, even if it doesn't perform well, we learn something from it. So I think that that's an environment that we've been taught and led by our director is that you can always learn something from a post that doesn't do well or that an audience isn't particularly happy with.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah, yeah, always learning from different things and, even if the response is negative, that's great. And Emily, you seem like such an expert in this area. You've been in the workforce for three years now. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about how your Northwestern education has influenced your work.
EMILY DREWRY: Yeah, well, I mean, I think, first and foremost, wanting to go into the media world, you tell people immediately that you went to Medill and that opens doors. So even at that very, very ground level, it made a difference for me. But in the actual lessons that I learned while at Northwestern, I learned a lot about prioritizing things that are important, whether it be in class, which projects to work on when, or also with extracurriculars and social life.
And there are so many things happening at Northwestern that I really became a master prioritizer. And I use that all the time in the real world, all the time, making sure that I'm on top of everything that I need. But at the same time, I think a lot of what I learned at Medill. I use all the time working in media, even though I'm not an on-the-ground reporter. I still have to value accuracy and timeliness and all of the different things that I learned at Medill I use all the time.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah. That's great. And more broadly speaking, in terms of your Northwestern connection, can you talk about how the Northwestern network, the 230,000 alumni out there, has impacted your career?
EMILY DREWRY: Well, for one thing, I keep running into people or working with people or working on projects people and not knowing that they're Northwestern alumni till we get to talking, which is amazing. Because one of my coworkers who I work most closely with here at Forbes also went to Northwestern. And we found a really fun kinship through that.
But I've interviewed a few individuals for an interview series that I host who went to Northwestern as well who I found through knowing, in part-- in part, in what they're doing right now is why I wanted to interview them, but in part also that connection that I felt to another Northwestern grad and was really kind of a connective tissue for that.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: And this interview series you're talking about, tell us about this.
EMILY DREWRY: So I have, for about six months now, been producing and hosting an interview series called Seat of Power. And it's live-streamed on the Forbes Twitter account. And basically, I sit down and interview people who are using their power, whatever it may be, for good. So it's kind of got a social good aspect to it.
So I sat down with a huge variety of people, Scott Harrison who founded Charity Water, or Randi Zuckerberg, who's working really hard to get women and children interested in STEM. So there's a huge, wide range of people. And it's been a really fun series to work on. I think we're on our 10th episode right now. And the person is actually a Northwestern grad.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Oh, my gosh, cool.
EMILY DREWRY: I can't share yet, because it hasn't come out. But--
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Spoiler.
EMILY DREWRY: Yeah. Spoiler alert. But it's been really fun. And it's been one of the products that I would have only been able to do while at Forbes. And it's been an amazing experience that our director has let me kind of experiment with a serious like this. They've never done a live-streamed interview series. And it's been a huge learning experience for us with live content, just trying to figure out what our audience wants to see.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah. That's so interesting, such a cool project. We'll share a link to in our show notes of the episode. And it sounds like you're meeting some really cool people. Who has impacted you? Have you gotten any advice from these interviews where you're, like, wow, this is an epiphany moment?
EMILY DREWRY: Oh, man-- so many people. That's one of my very favorite things of working here is the connections that Forbes has with some really powerful and influential people who are so inspiring. Just last week, I sat down with Arianna Huffington for a brief interview.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Wow, that's awesome.
EMILY DREWRY: And speaking with her, first of all, she's incredibly eloquent. And she's a talented interviewer. So interviewing her was a daunting and exciting experience. But she spoke a lot about health in the workplace and balancing and not bring your phone to bed with you and looking at it first thing when you wake up.
And I feel like that's something that's really hard for me working in social media is that I'm always on, and I'm always reachable. And so that's something that I'm kind of trying to take her advice to heart a little bit and just managing when and how much I'm working. Because it really makes a difference to employee health.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah, that's so interesting. I remember that from reading her recent book. I can't remember the name of it, but that definitely made an impact on me. But I'm in a career where I can turn it off versus you're working with social content that, who knows what could be happening? At the middle of the night, people are posting on your stuff. I don't want to give you nightmares or anything.
EMILY DREWRY: No. No. And I'm lucky that Forbes isn't a breaking news organization. So we're not real-time covering everything that happens in the world. I have a ton of respect for the editors who do do that. So for the most part, we get to have pretty regular hours.
But that said, like if something happens well within our subject expertise, like if something happens to a really notable billionaire, and it happens on the weekend or the evenings, my team will kind of work together to make sure that we adequately cover that. And that's one of the reasons that it's so fantastic to have nine of us now at this point. Because there's always somebody to lean on. And we have a really supportive team that makes it all possible that we're one of us isn't working all the time.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah. And do you have a recent example of a time that you can share where, over the weekend, something happened, and you just had to drop everything and deal with it?
EMILY DREWRY: I do because it happens a lot. Well, I guess, one that kind of keeps happening is any time Jeff Bezos-- his wealth has been spiking a lot lately. So his wealth spike kind of late in the evening or after hours. And our audience really wants to know about that. They love Jeff Bezos. So that's where we'll usually have to have somebody who's able to post about it as soon as possible.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: That's interesting. So you're just following Jeff Bezos' every move?
EMILY DREWRY: Oh, totally. Jeff Bezos and Amazon are kind of gold on our social platforms.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: That's so interesting. Cool. Well, I'd love to hear more about another network I guess you have in your life. How has your family impacted your career trajectory?
EMILY DREWRY: That's a good question. My parents have always told me that I could do whatever I wanted to do. And when I set my sights on Northwestern. I decided really early on-- I was like eighth grade-- I told my parents, I'm going to go to Northwestern and study journalism. Not kidding. And they were like, you're in eighth grade, just if you want to work toward that, go ahead. But just make sure you keep your options open. And sure enough, I applied early decision and went to Northwestern School of Journalism.
But that story aside, my parents were very supportive of that. And I have an uncle who I look up to a lot. He was a publisher at the small town newspaper. He's now retired. But he let me come out to Idaho and shadow him at his small town newspaper when I was probably 16. And that was really a defining moment for me in deciding that, yes, I did want to go into journalism. And much to his dismay-- I think he wanted me to kind of get a little nervous about it and maybe decide for something that may be a little more stable.
But he showed me so much about how-- even if it isn't the most secure job right now, it's something that you have to be passionate about. When you are, you can really take it to amazing places. And I think that now, I would never have guessed that I'd work in social media. And neither would any of my family.
But I am still kind of using all the skills that they helped me define throughout. And they've been nothing but supportive in watching my content and sharing my content and having a really good time telling everybody that I work for a business publication now.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: That's awesome. First off, that's really cool. That's a really cool story about your uncle and how you knew what you wanted to do in eighth grade. I can't believe that. I feel like that has to be rare.
EMILY DREWRY: It almost makes me sound a little weird, but--
CASSIE PETOSKEY: No. That's cool.
EMILY DREWRY: [INAUDIBLE]
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Well, you know what? You knew what you wanted to do, and you went, and you did it. And the second thing I find really interesting is that you said your parents never thought you'd be working in social. I wonder if you could talk more about that?
EMILY DREWRY: Well, when I-- my earliest memories of using social, I remember I used to read every single tweet on timeline when Twitterverse came out because I only followed, like, five people. And now the idea of that is preposterous. But it was such a leisure activity. And so I couldn't have imagined then. But they couldn't imagine-- they're still kind of getting into social now, but that it could be something that it could be a full-time job plus more.
So I think they're very-- yeah, I think they're not surprised that I'm doing something that's so interconnected because I've always wanted to be very connected and informed. And that's why I loved journalism because I always was reading, and I always was wanting to know what was going on in the world. But now I just do that on a social media platform versus-- I mean, I still read newspapers and that. But it just didn't exist back when I was deciding what I wanted to do.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Now I am curious. Do you get print newspaper, or are you everything digital?
EMILY DREWRY: I don't get a print newspaper delivered to my door, but I read my boyfriend's parents' print newspaper. So I don't know it that--
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Love it. That counts.
EMILY DREWRY: But I do still read print newspapers whenever I can.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah, that's great. Very cool. And I'm wondering over-- you can talk about your career, your professional career, or if it's something before that. But I'm curious, what have you been the most proud of, personally, over the last handful of years?
EMILY DREWRY: Well, before I went to Northwestern, it was-- well, when I got into Northwestern, it was getting into Northwestern, and then it was graduating from Northwestern. So one after the other because I had-- like I said, it was such a phone goal for me. But probably now, I'm really proud that I've settled in to my own as somebody in New York, a place that I never thought I'd live, doing a career that I never thought I'd have, and that I'm very comfortable and confident doing what I am doing.
And some of the projects that I've done at Forbes, while they've been all very collaborative, and I couldn't have done them alone, a lot of the grunt work, whether it was kind of deciding what this interview series was going to be, a lot of that grunt work was me trying to push really hard and push beyond what we were already doing and push myself out of my comfort zone.
Because I never thought that I'd be interviewing people. And so I'm really proud of that kind of determination to decide this is something that I should be doing and that I'm good at doing. It just might not be the most comfortable. But it will be successful.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah. And it'll probably become more comfortable as you do it more.
EMILY DREWRY: Yeah, oh, definitely. Definitely. I still get nervous though. Interviewing is always a little bit nerve-wracking, but a lot more fun now than it used to be.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah, that's great. And you're 10 interviews down the road. I'm definitely going to have to check out this interview series on Twitter. I just recently started dabbling in Twitter. So--
EMILY DREWRY: Oh, welcome.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yes. New world to me. I know it's 2018. What have I been doing? So it sounds like, obviously, Northwestern has played a big role in your life, both at college and beyond. And I know you stay connected to Northwestern doing various things. Like I believe you have something coming up in April, is that right?
EMILY DREWRY: Yes. So I'm moderating a panel of fellow alumna from Northwestern. I'm really excited about that because every time that I meet somebody in the city, whether it's a direct connection from somebody I know who's connected me with another person from Northwestern, or it's chance, it's always led to something good. So I'm really excited to moderate this panel and to learn from the other women who are on it and also then, hopefully, to stay in touch with them and meet other people through them.
I actually just had coffee this morning with a fellow woman from Northwestern who-- we didn't overlap. But we got in touch, and now have been in touch for almost two years and get coffee and just kind of talk about life. And that's amazing to me that she opened up to me just because we went to the same school, not even at the same time. And she's been such a mentor to me. So yeah, even if it's a connection made on purpose or accidentally, it's been really rewarding for me.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: That's great. And taking a little bit of a transition, I'm wondering if you've had any career missteps or times when you were just, like, why did I do that?
EMILY DREWRY: I don't think-- so like I said earlier, I try to think of everything that maybe doesn't go perfectly less of as a misstep and more of an experience.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: That's great.
EMILY DREWRY: I am grateful that I don't think that there's been anything that-- any decisions that I've made that have been major mistakes so far. As somebody who constantly overthink things, I'm always thinking, did I make the right step in going to a big company like Forbes? Should I have gone to a startup?
Should I have struck out on my own as a freelancer? And I'm always kind of thinking about those things. But I definitely don't think it was a mistake coming here. I should clarify that. I love my job. But yeah, I don't know if there's been any missteps that I can think of. I feel like I should say that I have.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: No. I mean, you know--
EMILY DREWRY: Everybody makes mistakes. I just can't of any major ones.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah. No, that's great. I think the mindset of everything being a learning experience makes it hard to think about those times that, well, it wasn't a mistake. I don't think of it as that way, so nothing comes to mind. So I think that's really cool. Definitely a theme I've been picking up on my interviews with successful people is that the missteps are learning opportunities not mistakes, totally.
EMILY DREWRY: Definitely. And I think-- now that I'm [INAUDIBLE]. But I'm sure that there have been problems. And I tend to overthink things. So I know that there's been projects at work that frustrate me more than they should. Or I'll obsess about this one minute detail that there was communication among teams or something like that. And I'll let it grow bigger in my head than it actually is.
And that's something that I am constantly trying to work on is making sure that I have perspective. So I guess that would be, maybe like on a-- I don't want to say on a regular basis. But every now and then, that might be a mistake that I've made is letting something grow out of proportion internally when it actually wasn't that big of a deal to begin with.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah. Those smaller details that seem bigger to us, but may not be as big in someone else's mind. So I feel like we can all relate. All of our listeners can definitely relate to that.
If you can enjoyed this episode of Northwestern Intersections featuring Emily Drewry, join us in person in New York on May 2 for a panel event moderated by her. This Opening Doors event will be held from 7:00 to 9:00 PM on May 2 at Union Square Ventures. Emily will moderate a panel of young female leaders. Your $15 registration fee includes apps and drinks. Register today at alumni.northwestern.edu/openingdoorsnyc2018. That's alumni.northwestern.edu/openingdoorsnyc2018. As a Northwestern Intersections listener, use the promo code Podcats, that's P-O-D-C-A-T-S for $5 off your registration fee. Don't delay. Space is limited. Now back to the show.
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You've had a lot of great mentors, it seems, in your life. Can you remember any advice that you have been given over the years that has really stuck with you?
EMILY DREWRY: Wow, I have met so many incredible people since moving to New York. I swear, that I just keep getting lucky and entering workplaces where there are a lot of incredible women who are around me who give me great advice. So to think of one piece of advice is tough. But I think, in my very first role, out in New York, because I was new to the workplace, and because I was new to New York, I got a lot of great advice about not rushing the process of finding myself.
Because for a lot of recent grads, I think you want to end up in the first role and immediately feel like, oh, yeah, this is what I was meant to do. But for most people, that's not true. And trying to rush yourself into being somebody is probably going to take you in the opposite direction of who you're actually supposed to be. So a lot of mentors have given me kind of really great advice about slowing down and not trying to look too far in the future and embracing where I am right now. And that's been remarkable for me to try to enjoy the process of growing and learning.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: That's great and really great advice for our listeners. I also feel like so many students that I meet at Northwestern are just like go, go, go. There's always something. They're so involved in everything on campus.
EMILY DREWRY: That is the number one trait of Northwestern students.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Yeah. And then, to know, from a recent alumna getting out of college, like, you don't have to continue to rush that process, that's great. So Emily, I'd love to get into our speed round.
EMILY DREWRY: Oh, fun.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: So I'm going to give you 60 seconds to answer each of these next four questions.
EMILY DREWRY: OK.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: And I'm going to set a timer when I ask you. And you'll hear the buzzer when it goes off.
EMILY DREWRY: Oh, great, OK.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: OK. In another life, what would you want to do or be?
EMILY DREWRY: A photographer.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: What would you want to photograph?
EMILY DREWRY: The world. I'd want to be kind of like a travel photographer.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Very interesting. OK. If Northwestern gave you $1 million grant right now to use on something that makes the world better, how would you use that money?
EMILY DREWRY: Oh, wow, that it is a hugely amazing question. I would probably do some sort of-- I would want to do like an educational trip and try to go around the world and try to inform people and give people access to information that they might not necessarily have.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: That's great. Tell me about your favorite time or place when you ran into a fellow Northwestern alumnus. Five seconds.
EMILY DREWRY: Oh, well, I ran into a fellow alumnus at yoga the other day, which was really fun.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: That's great. So you're a yogi?
EMILY DREWRY: Yes.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Oh, that's great. OK, perfect. Well, that was awesome. Great, quick answers. And it definitely shows the things that you care about and prioritize, both in your personal and professional life. And to kind of close out our conversation today, what advice would you give to fellow Northwestern alumni listening to this podcast knowing that they're in a variety of different places in their career and are across the world?
EMILY DREWRY: Definitely, don't rush any process trying to find out what you're meant to do, what role you're meant to be in. What you are supposed to be working on day to day is not an easy situation. And while some people fall into the right thing right away and thrive, that's fantastic. But not everybody does.
So for me and for a lot of people I know, it's all about enjoying that process and learning from everything and trying to slow down. Because Northwestern students tend to do, like you said, do everything, and do everything really efficiently. But sometimes that kind of takes away the enjoyment in learning and growing.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Emily, thank you so much for spending this time with us.
EMILY DREWRY: Of course.
CASSIE PETOSKEY: Thank you for tuning into today's episode of Northwestern Intersections. To find more information about the podcast, please visit northwestern.edu/intersections. Have a great rest of your day, and go Cats.
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