“I knocked on 19,000 doors full-time for 15 months, and that’s how I won the election.” – Stanley Chang, Honolulu City Council, District 4
How a high school dropout and massage therapist became an MIT robotics engineer working at McKinsey and Pixar
“Pixar is unique in the way it balances the need for the artist to explore with the need to get things done.” – Naomi Davidson, Pixar Animation Studios
How a McKinsey alum volunteered her way to becoming the Chief of Staff at Khan Academy
“I spend a lot of time thinking about scaling our organization and figuring out how to preserve the culture.” – Jessica Yuen, Khan Academy
What made a P&G brand manager say “F” it and go full-time as a stand-up comedian, how he told his parents, and how he keeps his sanity and stays focused every day
“In entertainment, people think success is binary: you’re either Russell Peters or you’re working at Wendy’s. That’s just not true.” – Rajiv Satyal, Comedian
What an engineer, Stanford MBA, and pro photographer (who did a photo shoot with Barack Obama) has learned about careers and relationships (oh, he also founded a VC-backed social gifting startup)
“We’re building a social gifting framework that allows me to get a gift for you by crowdsourcing the creativity of our common friends.” – Dana Underwood, The Muse Factory
Why this Harvard lawyer left the Boston Consulting Group to start an online language learning company
“We help people learn Chinese through video content, like music videos, commercials, news, and inspiring talks.” – Alan Park, founder of FluentFlix
How this entrepreneur started out selling on eBay, founded a Mashable-rated career site, and raised $1M to start a merchant loyalty company
“Investors want to rush in and invest when you position their fear and greed together: their greed to make a billion dollars and their fear of losing the deal.” – Yu-Kai Chou, RewardMe
What this state school graduate learned about cold e-mail subject lines that helped him get into finance (he’s now founder of a venture-backed Bitcoin startup)
“One small trick I learned involved e-mail subject lines.” – Avish Bhama, founder of Vaurum
How a lawyer and Peace Corps volunteer started a China-focused media company followed by thousands (eventually acquired by the Washington Post)
“In any career transition, what you are gaining potentially in the future is never going to feel as concrete as what you’re giving up now.” – David Wertime, Tea Leaf Nation
How a finance and consulting professional leveraged his network to land a product manager job at a well-known tech company (and his networking advice on paying it forward)
“One of the most helpful things in figuring out what you want to do is to actually just start the job search process.” – Gemmy Tsai, OpenTable