2008 Major: Economics; certificate in Markets & Management Studies
"Being an Econ grad from Duke explicitly landed me my first job in the downturn of 2008. I was hired to run Econometrics analyses for UPS in Atlanta. My time there gave me a taste of working with not only the numbers, but the people around them and their expectations as well. When I moved to California and switched to the tech industry, that experience helped me bring a sharper eye to the tech I was working with, rather than just pushing buttons. I've continued to hone that sense of what's important in my current role as a pre-sales engineer: someone who's specializes in both the underlying tech and the sales process."
"Economics is an excellent foundation to build your understanding of the world from. My approach to my career is from Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You. In short: build rare and valuable skills, and leverage them to move into other fields you would like to explore. An understanding of how businesses map to each other (or even just how others *think* they map to each other, even if you don't agree with the math) is a great place to start from."
Economics Department