Category: Spring 2020

by Zinta Aistars

When Harold Phillips ’88 filled out his SAT and ACT tests in preparation for college, he made sure to check the boxes requesting information on various institutions. Colorful brochures soon arrived, touting the qualities of each college and university. Phillips set the stack of brochures aside to read aloud to his grandmother. 

“I started reading the brochure about Kalamazoo College to Grandma, and she just lit up,” Phillips says. “She burst into song, singing Glenn Miller’s number, I’ve Got a Gal in Kalamazoo. So I set that brochure aside for a closer look.”

The K-Plan with its promise of study abroad…the small and intimate size of the student body…the rich curriculum… 

Phillips liked what he saw when he took that closer look. He asked his mother if they could travel to Kalamazoo from their home on the south side of Chicago for a campus tour. 

“I fell in love with K,” Phillips says. “Out of all those brochures, Kalamazoo College was the only place I applied—that’s something I would not recommend to others, only applying to one college—but it certainly worked for me. I knew I had to be there. ”

Phillips knew what he wanted. He had wanted to be a lawyer since he was 11 years old. 

“I grew up in a neighborhood that wasn’t the best, and I saw a lack of representation that colored the lives of the members of my community,” he says. “I’ve always wanted to help people.”

Phillips took on a double major—political science and English. Yet as he immersed himself in his studies, campus life, and giving back to the college community, doubts began to arise. His studies at K were opening his mind to a wider range of possibilities.

“I told my advisor in political science that I wasn’t sure any more about being a lawyer,” Phillips says. “And he said it’s ok to not have all the answers, that it was important to be a lifelong learner. He told me to keep asking questions.”

What held firm in Phillips’ mind was his desire to work at something that would help others, especially those who are in some way marginalized. He explored possibilities on the outer edges of a legal career. For example, during his sophomore year, Phillips worked with Dr. Wen Chao Chen at the Kalamazoo College Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement. He worked on a project to make the Michigan Supreme Court more “user-friendly” by providing information in the most plain, everyday language possible. He says, “The court itself was an overwhelming institution for most people. It was important that we provided as much communication as possible before individuals arrived, and once individuals arrived, they needed information about the process, including the expectations and how to interact with the court system.” 

During his junior year, Phillips lived for six months in Strasbourg, France, on study abroad. It was his first time overseas.

“I took full advantage of that experience,” he says. “There were about 20 of us K students living in dorms, but we visited a local family on weekends. I traveled across Europe, taking a train to London, Manchester, Scotland, Amsterdam, Venice, Florence, Rome, Paris, Brussels, Monte Carlo—dreams from my childhood were coming true.”

During his senior year, Phillips went to Washington, D.C., to work on his SIP—his Senior Individualized Project—which focused on how political expression can sometimes turn into terrorism when people are marginalized and feel they no longer have the means to express themselves. 

“I suppose that was a project ahead of its time,” Phillips reflects. “I researched people who felt their humanity had been taken away from them.”

After graduation, Phillips headed back to Washington and spent a year at a large law firm. Then he worked in real estate law for a couple of years, where he learned the business of mortgages, deeds, title searches, real estate closing and refinances. This was the early years of gentrification in the capital, when affordable housing options in the city began to shrink. 

“I kind of stumbled into urban planning,” he says. “I thought that might be the direction I wanted to go, developing housing for the elderly and disabled.”

He began working on a master’s degree in urban and regional planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was the early 1990s, and Phillips wrote his thesis on the housing crisis among people diagnosed with the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV. While still in school, he helped to set up a housing project in North Carolina, the first of its kind in the state, for people affected by HIV. 

After earning his master’s, Phillips returned to Washington, where he continued working on HIV prevention, learning federal grant requirements and helping small community-based organizations across the country, as well as South Africa, in 1996. He joined the federal government in 1997, working for the Health Resource and Services Administration in the HIV/AIDS Bureau in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

“Back in 1997, HIV was a death sentence,” Phillips says. “Today, it’s a chronic disease, a manageable disease. Our challenge continues to be getting the word out about the medications that are available today, about overcoming the racism and stigma associated with the disease.”

In September 2019, Phillips rose to the position of senior HIV advisor in the United States Department of Health. He will be coordinating and managing federal efforts to end the HIV epidemic within the coming decade and encouraging state and local governments and communities to join in this effort to end HIV.

While HIV may no longer be a death sentence, sexually transmitted infections and viral hepatitis are on the rise, Phillips says. 

“We have to get people to understand this fight is not over,” he says. “Young people are heavily impacted, not just the gay and bisexual population. Women make up a third of those living with HIV, and 59 percent of those women are African-American. We need to get these populations tested and treated.”

Phillips says the U.S. Department of Health launched a new program in December 2019 that will work to prevent HIV before it happens. The initiative is called Ready, Set, PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis medications). 

“We want to get two new and highly effective medications—free of cost—that can prevent HIV in vulnerable, high-risk populations prior to exposure,” Phillips says. “We estimate about one million people could benefit from this. The initiative has a goal of reducing infections by 75 percent over the coming five years and at least by 90 percent over the next 10 years. We will diagnose those who are not yet aware of their status and quickly link them to treatment so that they are virally suppressed and can’t transmit the disease to others. Treatment for those who have HIV, comprehensive prevention that includes medication to prevent getting HIV, syringe exchange programs, and condom distribution are all part of the effort to end HIV.” 

Since 1981, more than 700,000 lives have been lost to HIV. More than 1.1 million people are living with HIV today in the United States with nearly 38,000 people newly diagnosed each year. In 2018, young people ages 13-24 accounted for 21 percent of new HIV diagnoses, Phillips says. 

The Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative partners with federal agencies and leadership in state, city, county and tribal health departments to work with health care facilities, health care associations and the business community to reach high-risk populations. Community- and faith-based organizations along with academic and research institutions will also be brought into the circle. 

“The initiative has four pillars for the goal of reducing transmissions—diagnose, treat, prevent and respond,” Phillips says. “We can end this epidemic. Science tells us this can be done. We must be innovative and work to reach disenfranchised communities who don’t trust government agencies or health care institutions. We need to listen to the community and have them tell us how to redesign support and medical services to improve our efforts to reach them. A large part of this effort is to remove the stigma of HIV and AIDS.”

Phillips voice warms as he recounts meeting a 24-year-old HIV patient who had gone to school with dreams of becoming a great dancer. The young man had learned that he had HIV when he was 20, and his disease progressed, as he had no knowledge of the care available to him. 

“He didn’t know,” Phillips says. “Help was available; he didn’t know. He spent three years believing his life was over. He later found out about his options and may yet go back to fulfill his life dreams.”

That is what continues to drive Phillips in his work—remaining open to the possibilities, continuing to be a lifelong learner, and realizing his desire to help people and make a difference in the world around him. Thinking back to that advisor, the one who told him to keep asking questions, Phillips says, “I’m still that guy—when others say we ‘can’t,’ I want to understand and ask the question, ‘Why can’t we?’” 

by Jim VanSweden

In 1912, Mary Corcoran’s great-great-grandfather, a young physician, died  in a shoot-out on a Mississippi train platform. 

That’s a story strand, a tendril that, over time and like a neuron, stretches to and entangles with the story strands of other individuals and families, creating unexpected connections that remain unknown until archivists (like Mary Corcoran ’11) uncover them.

The young physician killed on the train platform leaves behind a wife and five children—four daughters and the one son who witnessed his father’s death. To help support his mother and sisters the son takes on a succession of jobs, menial work mostly. One day we find him sweeping floors and stocking shelves in a small-town pharmacy in Mississippi. And there we’ll leave the strand for a moment. It’ll come back, years later, in Michigan, where it will entwine with a strand of another family’s story, and later stretch to Queens, New York.

Lives are archives of stories. Archivists follow story strands: interviewing people, reading documents, searching libraries and organizational records repositories, sifting through attics, fact-checking someone’s memory or diary, organizing things. The pursuit may uncover new strands to be woven into the fabric of “this-is-what-happened”—a nonfiction narrative, most likely incomplete, with some strands thin or missing, yet nevertheless, a story approaching the truth.

Ninety-five years after the shootout on the train platform, high school senior and Queens native Mary Corcoran contemplates college, considering, among other options, a small liberal arts school in a vaguely familiar place called Kalamazoo. Corcoran’s grandmother, who also lives in New York, is quietly excited about that Kalamazoo College option. She had grown up in Kalamazoo. Her father, the boy on the train platform, had become a pharmaceutical sales representative for a national firm called The Upjohn Company. He’d been successful in Texas, where in 1935 he was named the first head of the Dallas branch office. He continued to rise through the company’s sales ranks. In 1943, Upjohn transferred him from Texas to its Kalamazoo home office, and in 1946 he was named vice president and director of sales.

Sixty-one years after that, in Queens, his great-granddaughter chooses K. She dreams of becoming a writer, maybe a novelist, or a teacher with thirty-or-so students in a classroom. She would become both—and neither, precisely—because of an epiphany she experiences at K.

It started with an unassuming email. Gail Griffin, the Ann V. and Donald R. Parfet Distinguished Professor of English, circulated an ad on behalf of a local woman who was seeking a part-time summer research assistant. Answering that ad becomes Corcoran’s epiphany, her baptism in archival work. The woman was the late Martha Gilmore Parfet, granddaughter of W.E. Upjohn, the founder of The Upjohn Company.

“Mrs. Parfet was intent on preserving the intertwined story of her family and the more-than-century-old company,” says Corcoran. The summer internship grew to a four-year commitment and resulted in the publication of the two-volume book, Keep the Quality Up, co-authored by Martha Parfet and Mary Corcoran. The title refers to the company’s corporate motto, purportedly a direct quote of its founder.

In addition to research and writing, Corcoran’s work on the project involved the exploration and organization of Martha Parfet’s personal archive as well as trips to institutional archives as nearby as Western Michigan University and distant as Denver, Colorado.

“The project changed my life,” says Corcoran. “When I first told my grandmother that I got the internship, she corrected my pronunciation of Martha Parfet’s surname.” Her grandmother had known the family.

“When I first met Mrs. Parfet in her home,” adds Corcoran, “I explained that I thought she might have known my grandmother’s parents, my great-grandparents, Fred and Pauline Allen.” Corcoran remembers that Mrs. Parfet smiled in surprise and proceeded to show her a piece of art—a collage, framed and hanging in Mrs. Parfet’s front hallway, a retirement gift to her husband, Ted Parfet, who had served many years as the company’s chief executive officer. “And there, beside Mr. Parfet, were the faces of several other Upjohn Company executives, including my great-grandfather.” 

“It was a very moving connection forme,” says Corcoran.

There would be more. Martha Parfet’s home and garage contained a trove of archival treasures, according to Corcoran, including the diary of Martha’s mother, W.E.’s daughter Genevieve Upjohn Gilmore. The diary mentions the 1975 death of Fred Allen with the notation: “Fred Allen died this morning. A blessing but we have lost another friend.”

Corcoran had chosen K because it encouraged pluck and risk-taking, values explicit in the adventure of K-Plan components like study abroad and the Senior Individualized Project (SIP), “or choosing a major like English,” grins Corcoran. She loved the department’s “dream team” faculty members (which included Griffin). Yet she worried (“just a bit”) about how robust and broad-spectrum the vocational possibilities of such a choice would be.

Turns out the K-Plan did more than inspire courage; it also confirmed its role in turning a calling into a career. 

Corcoran studied abroad at Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Her father had grown up in Dublin and immigrated to New York in the 1980s, where he met Corcoran’s mother, the great-granddaughter of the boy on the train platform. Corcoran still has family in Ireland, so in addition to studying alongside Irish students in the classroom, she was welcomed into the homes of her aunties and uncles, spending weekends immersed in their daily lives and reconnecting with cousins on outings with their Irish friends. Corcoran says, “Dublin is a tiny city and the Irish have a way of making it seem even smaller, of making connections and tightening the web. My life and career are about making connections between and among people, so it was very cool to be in a city where that sort of thinking seems like a given.”

As a K student, Corcoran gained a great deal of practical experience writing for and editing The Index, Passage and The Cauldron, the College’s student newspaper, study abroad magazine and literary magazine, respectively. She struggled with her SIP, a difficult personal memoir, and credits that challenge with teaching her to write (and helping others write) “the hard parts of a story with grace.” This strength has become a vital part of her archival work.

For Corcoran, her internship with Martha Parfet clarified a calling. Corcoran discovered she wanted to help people research and write their stories and those of the people and communities they loved. She wanted to help them explore and organize the historical artifacts that were a vital part of their stories. Corcoran’s K-Plan helped her develop the courage to make that calling a career.

“I remember sharing Keep the Quality Up with one of my graduate school professors,” says Corcoran, who earned her Master of Science in Information degree from the University of Michigan. “She warned me that such work, career-wise, would do little more than ‘keep the lights on.’ She was wrong.”

Indeed, word of Keep the Quality Up spread, and new clients came, people who wanted to have their stories written and family history collections archived. Many, like the Parfets, have an abiding love for Kalamazoo and Kalamazoo College.

That’s when Corcoran discovered that K’s “Fellowship in Learning” extends beyond the close relationships between faculty and students. As a growing number of local clients sought to hire her, Corcoran learned the fellowship in learning also means the many connections, past and present, among the College and the Kalamazoo community.

And Corcoran has done her share in broadening the fellowship in learning. Following publication of the book, Mrs. Parfet encouraged Corcoran to hire two summer interns to assist with an ongoing archival project. 

“I placed an ad with the Center for Career and Professional Development and had a dozen applicants,” remembers Corcoran, “many more than I expected.” She interviewed eight and narrowed the selection to two, both of whom were “absolutely outstanding,” says Corcoran. When she couldn’t choose between the final two applicants, Martha’s son, Don Parfet (a former Kalamazoo College board chair), allowed her to hire both Lauren Seroka ‘16 and Zoey Blake ’18. 

Like Corcoran, Seroka and Blake were inspired to careers in archival and library science. Seroka now works at the Library of Congress. Blake is a librarian at the Portage (Michigan) District Library. 

Says Corcoran: “In high school I’d thought about being a writer or a teacher, and today I’m both, in ways I hadn’t imagined. I love working with interns and realize I ‘teach’ much more effectively in one-on-one situations than I suspect I would have in a classroom setting.” Corcoran recently hired her third intern, current sophomore, Fiona Holmes ’22, who will assist Corcoran with a publication about a prominent St. Louis (Missouri) builder.

Our stories are lived and lived in; each person’s life like a house. “When I walk in my house,” writes the poet Donald Hall, “I see….” Perhaps we see first what’s prominent and valuable—the big events and relationships, the things that will tend to be included in our obituaries. Yet maybe what beguiles the eye most often is the trivial, the “detritus, valueless yet unforgettable,” and therefore indispensable to the weight of a story and a life. A good archivist, like Corcoran, weaves together everything she can so that as little as possible is lost, and the story is shared.  

A Fellowship in Learning

Lauren Seroka ’16 was looking for a post-graduation job at K’s Center for Career and Professional Development when she saw the posting for an internship with Mary Corcoran. Seroka was a history major who had already gained some archival experience at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum and the Henry Ford Museum while in college, and she found herself deeply engaged in the process of cataloging and digitizing the Upjohn and Gilmore family histories. “Mary was the one who really taught me the foundations of archival work. I’m so appreciative of the opportunity I had to work with Mary and the Parfet family. It put me in a really good position for graduate school.” 

Seroka went to the University of Michigan for her master’s. While in school, she had various jobs in the U of M library system, as well as an internship at Harvard Library. Seroka recalls, “One day at work I found myself holding a letter from the Salem witch trials, and it was exciting because I had taken the Salem Possessed first-year seminar at K. It’s really powerful to have that physical connection to the past.” 

Seroka has found there’s no better place to weave connections to the past than at the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States—the Library of Congress. That’s where Seroka works now as a digital collections specialist. “My internship with Mary really inspired my love for archives,” she says. “And now I have a job that I love.”  

Zoey Blake ’18 was working in the archives at the Upjohn Library Commons her sophomore year when her supervisor, Lisa Murphy ’98, shared the posting for an internship with Mary Corcoran. A history major with a concentration in American Studies, Blake was considering a career in library sciences; she thought this internship might help her discern what direction to take within the field. Blake was thrilled when Corcoran offered her the position, and within hours of finishing her final exams, she was on the job. She spent the summer scanning photos, stitching together old newspaper clippings in Photoshop, assembling digital scrapbooks and researching the Gilmore family. Blake loved the work and appreciated the opportunity to see another side of archival work, different from her job at the College. 

Today Blake, who is originally from Ypsilanti, Michigan, is a library assistant at the Portage (Michigan) District Library. “I’ve worked in libraries since high school, and my mother is also a librarian,” says Blake. “I’ve always been fairly certain that I wanted to be an archivist; however, working in a public library has allowed me to consider the importance of the library science field to local communities and society as a whole. I have a new appreciation for my chosen field of study and can’t wait to get back to archival work.” As she evaluates graduate schools, Corcoran has counseled her on programs and career options. “She’s given me advice about school and has encouraged me to take my time,” says Blake. “I really admire how Mary has carved out this career for herself, and I’m grateful for the opportunity I’ve had to work with her.”  

by Sarah Frink

The Amazon spheres feel as far from a classic corporate setting as you can get: In this verdant tropical biodome, 40,000 varieties of leafy plants crawl up walls and adorn pathways; lush trees hang over benches; the smell of damp earth lingers in the humid air. Patio tables sit on overhangs for meetings, couches circle small tables, and wooden nests and jungle-like nooks invite workers and visitors alike to gather. Amidst the din and bustle, you catch the accents of the world—Spanish, Dutch, Chinese, to name a few—as Amazonians escort guests around the scenic central sphere. The spheres are a place where employees can think and work differently, the kind of environment that might attract and keep the kind of talent Amazon is looking for: customer-centric innovative leaders at all levels. 

This is our first stop as we catch up with three Kalamazoo College alums who are building their careers at Amazon, each of them leaders in their own departmental spheres: Michael Zak ’09, Claire Amsler ’10 and Jeff Hotchkiss ’97.

MICHAEL ZAK ’09

If you’ve bought a soccer ball for your grandson or a pet bed for your puppy on Amazon, chances are you’ve come across items near and dear to Michael Zak. Zak is a senior product manager of global sourcing for Amazon’s private label business. He is responsible for product development for the “AmazonBasics” offerings for pets, sports and outdoors, working on everything from cat trees to yoga mats to tents. On a typical day, he might be working with people from China, collaborating with the office that handles sourcing and factory relationships. He’ll attend meetings on topics ranging from product changes to marketing to how products are forecast and purchased. His primary focus, however, is on developing and managing product from ideation to completion.

Zak didn’t know he’d end up working in the tech sector when he came to Kalamazoo College from Clarkston, Michigan. His decision to go to K was based in large part on study abroad. “I took a high school trip to France with my French class. It was the first time I’d been abroad and I absolutely fell in love with the experience,” Zak said. His decision paid off. “Study abroad was amazing. In Strasbourg, France, I stayed with a French family who spoke virtually no English, and I was forced to acclimate to the culture and language.” That study abroad component has served Zak well in his work at Amazon. “My job has a global scope. When I want to launch a product, I can’t just think about how it’s going to impact people in the U.S. How can people in India use this? How about in Japan? I think that international focus that K instilled in me has been a big help.” 

Zak also played club hockey at K and was a member of the International Student Organization. He majored in history; Professor Charlene Boyer Lewis was his mentor and advisor in the history department. As he went through the normal deliberations about what path he wanted to take, he says, “Dr. Lewis was really understanding and framed the major in a way that made me comfortable with my decision to study something I just really enjoyed. She had a wealth of knowledge about history that went beyond ‘this is the day that such and such happened,’ to the broader ramifications and what happens when people don’t have agency over their stories.”

After graduation, Zak interned at the International Visitors Council of Detroit before taking a position as a writer and editor at AOL. “That was in the automotive space. I reviewed cars, driving cars all around the world and doing basic reporting about technology—things like green powertrains. I managed writers; there was a lot of cool, creative talent at AOL. I worked first in Detroit, and then Los Angeles, and then moved up to the Bay Area for a couple of years.” 

He joined Amazon in 2014, starting out as a brand manager in automotive, managing the business relationship for two major vendors, before moving into a larger vendor management role for the automotive equipment and tools business. From there, he took a marketing position in video games, where he spent about two years before switching to product management. “We tend to move jobs here frequently,” Zak says, “It’s highly encouraged as a way of making sure people continually learn and grow.”

In his current role, Zak’s enjoys scoping out the customer reviews for the products he manages. “I like looking up, say, pet beds, and seeing all the pictures of pets that people have uploaded into their reviews. It’s a nice reminder that people appreciate the work that we’re doing.” 

Zak notes that while he wasn’t a business major, what’s contributed to his success in the business world are the critical thinking skills he developed at K, and the ability to take ambiguous information from many sources and piece together solutions to problems. “Coming from a liberal arts background, maybe you don’t know how to code, or you don’t have a background in finance. That’s okay—there are still a number of places here for you, because companies like Amazon and Google value that kind of thinking.”

CLAIRE AMSLER ’10 

Amazon wouldn’t be the giant it is today without hiring and developing the best talent, and that includes the people who build and manage Amazon’s human resources (HR) strategies, programs and systems. 

Claire Amsler has been a part of Amazon’s HR team for nearly four years. After a year as an HR business partner, Amsler worked as a specialist within the global talent management program, focusing on performance management and coaching, before returning to a senior business partner role last summer. In this capacity, she provides strategic HR support to a business unit within the company, running and supporting cyclical processes like talent and performance reviews, compensation and rewards, succession planning, and career development. She also provides coaching and consulting, as well as performing day-to-day tasks like data analysis and employee relations activities. 

Amsler majored in psychology at K. As a sophomore, she attended an informational meeting hosted by the Michigan State University master’s program for human resources and labor relations, and it piqued her interest. By the time Amsler graduated from K, the U.S. was in a recession, so she took a gap year to join the Teaching Assistance Program in France (TAPIF), a program that places Americans as assistant English teachers in French schools. While there, she decided to apply to the master’s program at MSU and start graduate school as soon as she returned. “The MSU program parallels the MBA program, with strong corporate connections and a recruiting season for summer internships—a lot of those internships turn into full-time offers, which is what happened for me.” 

Amsler was an HR operations management intern for Avaya, a digital communications company in New Jersey. After her graduation from MSU in 2012, she was hired into Avaya’s Santa Clara, California, location as an entry level HR advisor. After a couple of years in the Bay Area, she and her now-husband, Michael Zak, decided they wanted to move to Seattle. Zak applied to Amazon and was soon hired; Amsler continued to work for her company remotely until they settled into the area. She then worked briefly for a start-up before Amazon recruited her.

Amsler is a fan of Amazon’s culture. It’s fast-paced; it’s data-driven; it operates as a big company in some ways and as a smaller company in others; and it gives employees the opportunity to develop their passions and skills. Amsler is most passionate about the work she does in coaching and consulting. “The coaching piece is an inquiry-based process to help people find clarity and decide on actions they want to take—and then create accountability for them. I really love being able to help leaders think through tricky challenges and give them a supplementary perspective to help with their decision-making.”

Amazon touts its 14 Leadership Principles—attributes like customer obsession, learn and be curious, and bias for action—as underpinning everything they do. From an HR perspective, Amsler says that Amazon holds true to these principles in hiring decisions, promotion processes and how they develop people. “You hear the Leadership Principles used in conversation every single day,” she says. “Concepts like ownership, or showing up as an owner—there’s no saying ‘it’s not my job;’ you see a problem and you try to solve it. It’s earning trust by following up on what you say you’re going to do. It’s also about actively working to build strong, productive relationships with partners, team members and stakeholders who may have diverse backgrounds and competing priorities.”

A K education, Amsler says, is an excellent base for the types of hires Amazon is looking for. “Amazon has a catchphrase you might hear: Work hard. Have fun. Make history. I think back to K, where it’s Saturday night and we’re all at the same party. On Sunday, we all see each other at the library. You work hard, you play hard, you become well-rounded and able to relate to different types of people—and you get things done.” 

Like Zak, Amsler studied abroad in Strasbourg, France. “It was the first time I’d ever lived independently in a city and I just thrived. After I went the second time, I knew I wanted to work for a company that has a global presence so that I could work abroad if I wanted. Amazon is that place. There are fulfillment and corporate presences in dozens of countries around the world.” 

For students and graduates looking to migrate to the tech sector, Amsler advises, “Every experience counts. You don’t have to demonstrate that you’ve spent years at one company or have experience in any one particular job. Take advantage of externships, internships, finding ways to take on more ownership. If you’re a barista—can you be a team leader? Can you expand the scope of what you’re doing, the level of autonomy, the level of influence in whatever you’re doing? Find ways to push yourself and then develop an elevator pitch to promote who you are and why you add value. Stay curious and say yes to opportunities.”

JEFF HOTCHKISS ’97 

As a principal in business development, Jeff Hotchkiss works in the Amazon Devices organization with scope in the U.S. and overseas, including Alexa and household consumer technology gadgets, such as Echo, Fire Tablets, Fire TV, Kindle and Ring doorbells. This role requires complex contract negotiation with partners like Microsoft, focusing mainly on search (like Bing, which is now the default search engine on Amazon devices), browsers (like Edge) and knowledge, which Hotchkiss describes as making Alexa smarter. Additionally, Hotchkiss manages special projects to support Alexa with other partners.

At K, Hotchkiss was a political science major from Fenton, Michigan, who completed his career internship at a law firm in Washington, D.C. He studied abroad in Oaxaca, Mexico, and worked on a political campaign for his Senior Individualized Project. His future seemed destined for politics and law. After graduation, two of his classmates, Aaron Malenfant ’97 and Colin Evans ’97, moved to the Bay Area to work for tech start-ups and they urged Hotchkiss to come and be a part of the new digital frontier. “I decided to do a radical U-turn,” Hotchkiss said. “I was working for Senator Debbie Stabenow at the time, and I decided to leave and head out west to San Francisco. I was about 25 years old, with no money and just my car and everything I owned, ready to fight it out and make it work. I worked there for 13 years in different start-ups.” 

Along the way Hotchkiss met his wife, Shannon, who was from Seattle. When they were ready to start a family, they decided to relocate. Hotchkiss joined a small start-up in Seattle in 2014, and was a director of business development there when Amazon recruited him; he joined the company in 2016.

Hotchkiss is a firm believer in the value of a liberal arts education in preparation for the tech and business world. There are three foundational skills that students learn at K that apply in any role, Hotchkiss asserts: First, recognizing that detail matters. “At Amazon, we focus on detail and use a very rigorous scientific method in how we make decisions.” Second, understanding context. “Professors like David Strauss [history], David Barclay [international studies], Don Flesche [political science]—all of them taught me how context frames a situation. I think if you don’t study the humanities, you may not have that deeper perspective and the ability to read situations quickly.” Finally, the ability to think critically and question everything; in this area, Hotchkiss credits political science professor Amy Elman for opening up his eyes and re-orienting how he engages in his work and the broader world.

As an example, Hotchkiss notes that when it comes time to make a proposal, Amazonians write white papers—several page narratives that require the author to dive deep, then crisp it up and bring it back to the bigger picture so that an executive can quickly make a decision. The theory is that if you dive into the details, you’ll hash out the best possible decision. Hotchkiss relishes this process.

“These papers can inform strategic decisions, decisions that make the news,” says Hotchkiss. “The scale of Amazon is such that anyone can work on a project that might touch millions and millions of customers. In business development, situations arise where we have to very quickly develop a paper that will outline a course of action—sometimes within a week. Sometimes I’m framing decisions that are one-way door decisions, meaning, once we make that decision, we can’t go back. It’s important to ask the right questions, and to get the context and every detail right. It’s very rewarding and very motivating.” 

Hotchkiss says that a willingness to experiment is another a highly valued competency learned at K. When Amazon works with software developers and engineers, they encourage them to take risks. “If we try to get things perfect all the time, it slows you down, and you miss an opportunity. One thing liberal arts teaches you is it’s okay to iterate and it’s okay to fail fast. You build up almost an inoculation to failure, and then you keep iterating. This is what we do at Amazon, and in my experience, it’s also true across most of the technology business world.”

Hotchkiss adds, “One of the things I’ve learned in my career is that your ability to move your career forward is dependent less on how you specialize, and more about how you can master multiple domains of specialization. The breadth and rigor of a liberal arts education prepares you for any career, whether you’re going to Africa to do development work, working in higher education or in the private sector and tech in particular.”

The long-term return on investment is key. “If a parent is looking at a college decision based on ROI, you have to think about it over a 10-, 20- or 30-year horizon. People are working longer, starting families later, trying different careers until they find their fit. If you look at it that way, the foundational benefits you get from a liberal arts college like K are very, very worth it.”

By Sarah Frink

In the fall of 1963, two students travelled from Hong Kong to Kalamazoo, Michigan, to pursue their dreams. Each made the journey alone, unsure of what exactly they would find in this small Midwestern town with a funny name—yet they knew it would bring them one step closer to a better life. At K they found each other and became best friends. Almost 60 years later, their bond is as strong as ever, and their unconventional yet quintessential journeys to K and beyond have led to life-changing opportunities not only for themselves and their families, but for future generations of students as well.

The Small School with a Zoo in its Name

Alfred Lee ’66 was the oldest of six children—five boys and one girl—growing up in a poor neighborhood of Hong Kong. As a child, Lee’s family moved several times, living in small apartments with communal kitchens and bathrooms, apartments so small that there wasn’t room for a bed. The family didn’t have much, but Lee’s parents were always able to provide rice to eat and a roof over their heads. “We were thankful for what we had, and we were probably fairly lucky to have what we did.”

Lee was not the best student growing up—a bit of a class clown, always third or fourth from the bottom of his class. In middle school, he enrolled in the school where his father, a school teacher, was now the principal. At that time, Lee’s family was living in a tenement building that was four stories high, one of 10 buildings connected together. His father’s school was on the fourth floor, as was his family’s apartment. “The room we lived in was about 8’X10’; there was a bed for my mom and dad and the two youngest kids. The rest of us would roll out a bamboo mattress on the floor at night. The apartment had these milky white cockroaches…they were terrible!” 

As the children grew and it became more crowded, Lee’s dad suggested he sleep in one of the schoolrooms, where he could pull together benches for a bed. One evening, as he was getting ready to settle in for the night, he spotted a book lying on the floor of the classroom. “I still remember the name,” Lee says. “It was Fundamentals of English.” He picked it up and flipped through it, studying it a bit before turning in for the night. It was the moment that would change his life. 

Soon after, Lee took an English test in class and aced it. He chuckles as he recalls the teacher summoning Lee to his desk and saying, “You did pretty well…how did you cheat?” Lee says, “Most people knowing my background would have asked me this question. I said to him, ‘Honest to goodness, I didn’t cheat!’” The teacher sent Lee to see his father. “My dad just said, ‘C’mon, we know you too well. Just tell us how you cheated.’” Lee again protested his innocence, and his father decided to have Lee retake the test. “They set me down with a new set of questions and they watched me like a hawk—same result! They looked at each other and said, ‘You gotta give it to this kid, even with two pairs of eyes staring at him, he still managed to cheat!’” Lee laughs. “I said ‘I’ll show you!’” 

Lee went on to secondary school, where he was number one in his class. He took the citywide Form Five exam at the end of school and did very well. The top 30 were granted a scholarship for what was called the matriculation courses—two additional, selective years of secondary school that would lead into university. Being from a large family, however, Lee knew he didn’t have the resources to go to college. Reluctantly, he turned down his scholarship and set out to find work. 

Lee took a job at the Hong Kong International Airport in the control tower, a good paying job for a high school graduate. One day he saw an advertisement from the International Institute of Education (IIE), an organization that distributed scholarships to study abroad in the United States. Lee applied, and about six weeks later he got a call. Lee says, “The man at the office said, ‘Congratulations! We have a scholarship for you at Columbia University.’” The man told him that he would have to teach Mandarin while he was there. “I said, ‘I don’t think I know Mandarin well enough to teach it.’ And he looked at me and said, ‘No Mandarin, no Columbia.’” So Lee went back to his job at the airport. A couple of weeks later, the IIE called again. They told him, “We can’t send you to Columbia, but we can send you to Kalamazoo College.” Lee admits he nearly turned down the offer to go to the small school with a “zoo” in its name. “The man said something to me that I remember to this day,” Lee says. “‘Don’t be so impetuous, young man! What have you got to lose?’ And there I was, 21 years old, and I thought, he’s got a point.” So Lee went to the American information center to do some research. “I found out K was one of the top liberal arts colleges in the U.S.,” he says. “I thought, well, that’s pretty good!” 

Lee gathered enough funds to buy his boat ticket and start his journey. When he got to the U.S., he took a train through Chicago to Kalamazoo. “I had a very good first experience in Kalamazoo. I’m standing in the station with my two suitcases and my thick winter coat, at a loss for what to do next, and this nice woman came up and said, ‘You look kind of lost. Where are you going?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m from Hong Kong and I’m going to Kalamazoo College.’ She said, ‘Well, I’ll give you a lift,’ and she took me all the way to Hoben.” 

A Bond is Formed

Chung Wu ’66, meanwhile, had a slightly different path to Kalamazoo College. Wu grew up in a middle-class family in Hong Kong. Wu went through the technical high school system, which in addition to language, mathematics and science classes, included classes such as woodworking, metalworking and engineering. Unlike Lee, Wu was able to pursue his secondary education after Form Five. For two years, Wu went to Kings College, where he studied physics, chemistry and mathematics. “We already started to specialize in Form Six; every student chose three to four subjects. I chose the science path.” 

Like Lee, he applied for scholarships to study in the U.S. through IIE. “Kalamazoo College was generous enough to give me a full scholarship. And of course at that time, I hadn’t heard of Kalamazoo, like many people outside of Michigan or the Midwest.” His first impression of K was “wonderful.” He says, “In Hong Kong we were used to the idea of specializing early, so the idea of a liberal arts education was a little bit strange to me. Now I really appreciate that aspect and wish I could have taken more of those subjects outside of science and mathematics.” 

Lee and Wu did not know each other in Hong Kong, though they later discovered that Wu’s older brother took his high school exams at the same time and place as Lee. “In those days, there were not too many foreign students, especially not from Hong Kong. We were very homesick, so after we met at K, we stuck to one another,” says Wu. 

Both students were hungry to learn. Lee says, “Since Chung had his two additional secondary years, one of which was a year of university equivalency, he didn’t want to start at K as a freshman. He wanted to be a sophomore. He figured that there was strength in numbers and my command of English was a little better than his, so he said, ‘Let’s go talk to the dean.’ And we went in to talk to Dean [Paul] Collins, and I was preparing for a battle. I had rehearsed all my reasons why we should be sophomores. To our great surprise, without hesitation, he agreed.” It turned out that technically, they were at K as exchange students, and were therefore only supposed to be at the College for one year. Freshman, sophomore…it didn’t really matter, so the dean readily went along with their request. 

Lee and Wu enrolled in sophomore classes. Wu says, “I was a nerd. I was crazy about studying, trying to learn as much as I could about physics and math.” For Lee, it was more of a challenge. He had been out of school working for a couple of years by this point. So Wu tutored him through calculus and electricity and magnetism, until Lee got caught up. As for their one-year exchange…both Lee and Wu did so well academically, the Dean was able to procure scholarships for them, to allow them to stay and earn their bachelor’s degrees.

Lee and Wu joined the same fraternity at K, the Delmega Society, and took part in the same accelerator project in the physics department. They went to fencing classes together and played ping pong in tournaments. Dr. Wright in physics was Wu’s most formative mentor, and they still stay in touch. He was also very fond of Tish Loveless, who taught them fencing. For Lee, Dr. Ralph Deal was a strong influence. “I remember the first time I met Dr. Deal,” Lee says. “I went to the Mandelle library and saw him squatting between two racks of books, flipping through books. Coming from Hong Kong, where the professors can be extremely snobbish—they would die before being seen by a student sitting down on the floor. It made such a strong impression on me.”

As graduation approached, they applied to graduate school. Wu was accepted to Yale, and tried to convince Lee to go there also. Lee earned an assistantship at Harvard, and was accepted at Yale with a scholarship, so he was torn. The assistantship required 12 content hours of teaching, plus prep. “My girlfriend, Nancy, was in Boston—we weren’t married yet—so between teaching and classes and visiting her, I thought, when would I sleep? So I chose Yale.” 

From Theoretical Chemistry to Finance

Lee’s area of study was molecular dynamics. He studied with Dr. Richard Wolfgang, a pioneer and leading expert in the field of “hot chemistry.” When Lee first got to Yale, Wolfgang was embarking on a two-year leave of absence to Colorado, where he was forming a team to study molecular beam dynamics. Lee followed, giving him the opportunity to work with some amazing minds, including Dr. Dudley Herschback, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1987. 

In 1970, Lee earned his Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry and went on to do post-doctoral work in Colorado and the University of Washington. At that time, the Nixon administration was making cuts in federal funding for scientific research and development, and Lee was unable to secure a faculty position. While he could have pursued further post-doc work, by this time Lee and his wife Nancy were married with two children. “She told me it was time to get a real job,” Lee laughs. 

Lee shifted gears entirely and started a new career with Lincoln National Life, first in sales and eventually as director of agency development. He took over an agency for a few years, then went out and established his own company, specializing in personal financial planning, particularly estate planning. Today Lee and Nancy are happily retired. Their oldest daughter, Karen, is a University of Chicago law school graduate married to a fellow law school graduate, and a partner in her law firm. Their son Paul is an emergency room physician. Their second daughter Vicki married another University of Chicago law school graduate. Their youngest daughter Grace is also a Chicago law school graduate married to a fellow graduate. “They’ve all done very well for themselves, and we are very, very blessed,” Lee says.

Engineering the Future of Aviation

Meanwhile, Wu went to Yale with the goal of becoming a research physicist. He earned a Master of Science, Master of Philosophy and a Ph.D., and then went to work at the University of Singapore. “I was given a contract of three years, teaching electrical and electronic engineering,” Wu says. After his contract was up, he decided to move to Canada, which offered more advanced research opportunities than Singapore. A professor he knew from Yale was in Montreal, so Wu accepted a research associate position with him. He worked for him almost two years, researching magnetism and polymer physics, before finding a position in Pratt and Whitney Canada designing and building jet engines. “Pratt and Whitney Canada was a subsidiary of Pratt and Whitney in Connecticut, where they built the big engines. In Canada we had smaller projects—similar technology, smaller in size.” Wu worked there for more than 20 years before transferring to Connecticut. “There was technology that I invented and developed in Canada that the head office had interest in applying to their big engines. I worked there for 15 years on the same technology, which has to do with the design and manufacturing of fans and compressors in jet engines. I spent 32 years on this technology. When I felt like it was fully developed, I decided it was time to retire.”

Wu and his wife, Hing, now live in Bellingham, Washington, close to family and friends. Wu and Hing met in Hong Kong his last year of high school. After his first year in graduate school, Hing joined him in the U.S. and studied library science at Simmons College in Boston. They married in 1969. “She was very career-minded, so even though we moved to Singapore and started having our children, she kept working. And every time we moved it was because of my career requirement. She changed her workplace quite a few times because of such moves, so I’m really thankful to her for that.” 

Their son Kai was born in Singapore. Kai studied physics at Cornell, earned a Ph.D. in renewable energy, and worked in computer-related fields for a number of years; he’s now working at a start-up company in the area of plant-based whole foods. Their younger son, Tsan, was born in Montreal and was very interested in humanities and social sciences. He learned several languages in school and in his travels around the world. “French, English, Chinese, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, German—he could pick them up, just like that,” says Wu. Sadly, Tsan passed away at the age of 23. The Wus established a scholarship at K, the Tsan Wu memorial scholarship, for students who study foreign languages and culture, to commemorate Tsan’s love for travel and the humanities.

Lee, too, is working with K to establish a scholarship. This one will be for international students, inspired by his own experiences. “I would never be where I am today without the opportunities that K has given me,” Lee says, “and I would like to make it possible for someone whose background might be similar to mine to be able to have the opportunity to move ahead.” 

The Journey Comes Full Circle

Now that they are both retired, Lee and Wu are able to visit with one another several times a year. 

“At K, we often talked about our future plans and wondered what our future would be,” says Wu. “Whenever we meet now, we talk about K—the professors and our friends.” Wu says. He smiles. “As the years have gone on, our friendship has become more meaningful. We’ve influenced one another in ways we didn’t even realize.”

Like Lee, Wu deeply appreciates the opportunities that his K education provided, and is grateful to be able to support similar experiences for future students through a scholarship.

“Kalamazoo College was so kind to us. It changed our lives, broadened the opportunities. When I was in high school in Hong Kong, I was thinking I would go into a teacher training college and teach school. I saw this as the only opportunity. If that didn’t work out, I would be an office helper. That’s what a lot of high school kids did in those days. Getting a scholarship from K, that made all the rest possible. It is something we can never pay back enough.”  

Lee went from working in the control tower at the Hong Kong International Airport to earning a Ph.D in theoretical chemistry, thanks to his opportunity to attend K on a scholarship. 

After K, Wu went on to earn a Ph.D. at Yale, and spent much of his career designing and building jet engines for Pratt and Whitney.

Wu and Lee enjoyed spending time in the physics lab. “I was crazy about studying, trying to learn as much as I could about physics and math,” Wu says. 

Wu and Lee share a deep affection for Kalamazoo College and hope to provide similar opportunities for aspiring students through endowed scholarships.