Weinberg College
of Arts & Sciences

Waldron Career Conversation with David Ngene Jr '08: Innovative Design Director at Nike

This episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast features a conversation with David Ngene ’08 who is currently an Innovation Design Director at the NXT Space Kitchen at Nike after Graduating from Northwestern with an Art Theory & Practice Major.

David Ngene shares tories about changing majors at Northwestern, the Art Theory & Practice Major, his first job after graduating, heading back to school, working at Nike, the value of an Arts & Sciences Degree, and the experience and memory of being a student athlete!

0:00: Insight Unpacked
2:30: Weinberg College Experience
4:30: Plans Heading into Northwestern
6:25: Changing Majors to Art Theory
11:55: Art Theory and Practice
16:50: After Graduation and First Job
20:20: Deciding to go to Grad School
23:55: Working at Nike
26:45: Learning Design at Weinberg College
30:05: The Impact of being a Student Athlete
33:10: Closing Advice for Students

Jess Love:
Hi, this is Jess Love, Editor-in-Chief of Kellogg Insight at the Kellogg School of Management. And I want to tell you about a new podcast we have in the works: Insight Unpacked. In Insight Unpacked, we go deep into a complex business topic. In our first season, we'll tackle branding, because these days it's easy to build a brand, but if you want your brand to stand out, you will need to build an amazing brand. Whether you need to build that special brand from scratch, or you're hoping to reinvigorate an existing brand, on Insight Unpacked, our faculty will help you figure out how to stand out from the crowd.

Cassie Petoskey:
Weird is great, weird is wonderful and magical.

Jess Love:
You'll hear how to make sure your brand is hitting the right mark.

Speaker 5:
Stop being so obsessed with what you're saying, and pay attention to what consumers are saying.

Jess Love:
And you'll learn how to use storytelling to bring your brand to life in the digital world.

Speaker 3:
If you can connect your brand to one of these stories, it creates a much deeper and more visceral response from customers.

Jess Love:
We'll also take you behind the scenes as we build a brand of our own. So subscribe to Insight Unpacked, or check your feed at the Insightful Leader. Episodes drop on Mondays starting August 15.

Cassie Petoskey:
Welcome to the Weinberg in the World podcast, where we bring you stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. This episode is brought to you by the Waldron Student Alumni Connections program, a resource in Weinberg College where we help current students explore career options through making connections with alumni.

Cassie Petoskey:
Today I have the pleasure of speaking with David Ngene. David graduated from Weinberg College in 2007, where he majored in art theory and practice. David is now working at Nike as the innovation design director of the NXT Space Kitchen. David, thanks so much for being here with us today.

David Ngene:
Oh, thanks for having me on.

Cassie Petoskey:
Yeah, and we're excited to hear more about this Space Kitchen. Sounds fascinating. But we want to go back a little ways to when you were a college student at Northwestern, and hear a little bit more about your experience on campus. So, could you share with us just some of those impactful classes, internships, extracurriculars, things you did on campus that were impactful for you, in figuring out what you might want to do after graduation?

David Ngene:
Oh, where do you get started when you think about that? There are so many things that I think that were impactful for me during my journey in Northwestern, coming in as a student, but also as an athlete as well. That had an impact on how I viewed things, and moved about my time at Northwestern.
I would say the thing that had the biggest impact on me was just taking a risk, and taking a class in the art department, and just figuring out this is something that I was truly interested in exploring more. That first class being basic design with Dan [inaudible 00:03:13] at the time, and it was just something that opened my eyes to this world that I was always curious about, but I just had no clue that couldn't move about it in a meaningful way.
So I would say just peeking in, having the courage to peek into the building to see if this is something I was interested in. [inaudible 00:03:33] The campus is huge, and it is grown tremendously since I've left. That's the craziest part. And the opportunity to just connect with a bunch of different students, majoring in a myriad of things, allowed me to get a bird's eye view as to what was happening here, what was happening there. Taking a few classes here, a few classes there.
But I say the thing that had the biggest impact on me was also being around my teammates, on the team, and just kind of hearing about the things that they were studying, and people were coming in from pre-med to language, all sorts of things that we were doing, engineering, and that opened my eyes to a bunch of opportunities that were available on campus that I had no clue that even existed.

Cassie Petoskey:
I love that. That's great. And David, when you came in, I know you said this art design, basic design class sparked your interest. When you came in as a freshman, what were you thinking you were going to study and do with that?

David Ngene:
Yeah, I was thinking I was going to come in and study mechanical engineering. That was the thing, growing up, I didn't have access to a lot of resources and people telling me like, "oh, this is how you become a person. That creates things." That thing being, it could be an experience, it can be a multitude of things. I just thought engineers were the ones that kind of created the world around us. And so I was like, "oh, I guess that's what I'm going to do." Mechanical engineering. I wasn't too sure even what that was. And so it was great to take that risk to explore beyond what I thought I knew at least.
And so that definitely set me on a different path, and I think a path that was actually better for me, at the end of the day, and worked out much, I think, the net result of that worked out much better for me in the long run. Now that I go back and look at it, it's always easy to see stuff in hindsight, but at the time you're just like, "man, I don't know if this is going to be the right decision, but it feels right." And so I just really wanted to explore that. But definitely mechanical engineering was where my heart was.
Architecture was probably close number two, but Northwestern didn't have an architecture program, and playing football was one of the deals where I was just like, "ah, I don't know if I have enough time to explore opportunities and architecture," and different things. So I was like, "mechanical engineering, that's what I'm going to do." And that changed.

Cassie Petoskey:
So then you found this art design class, the basic design. How did that influence the pivot for you? And can you speak to both your experience on campus doing the pivot, and then also what did your family say? What did your parents say? I am sure some mentors in your life were asking some questions, going from engineering to art theory.

David Ngene:
Yeah, so let's say, I guess I'll start by talking about the class first, and then I'll kind of go back and highlight that last part.
Taking the class, one of my advisors recommended it to me. She was like "maybe," I was always telling her about things I was interested in studying, but I wasn't just quite getting it through the program I was currently in. I was just taking all these chem and all these other things and I was like, "God, this is cool, but this is not what I was thinking it was going to be." I always thought it was just more thinking about the consumer and researching that a bit more and this and that. And she was like, "well, there's this class in the art program that you might want to try out." And we were looking at my schedule. We had to line things up with football practice and different things, and that class was available, and I was like, "all right, let's start on there, let's give it a shot."
And first day in there, really just, even walking into CAS, you know that Weinberg building, it was just like, "whoa, this is different." Because we're from Weinberg, there are different schools within the same university sphere, but the settings were different. I walked down there and sat down in class and we were on these long, I can't really describe it, they're look like wooden horses that you can prop things up on. And the professor walked in, and he had these funky glasses. I remember his glasses probably the most out of anything, his funky glasses. And I was like, okay, this is different. And he began describing what the class was about and he was showing us some of his work and the different things, speaking about color theory, and just form, and what you're trying to communicate. And I was like, this right here is exactly what I was looking for.
Like I said, I don't know why it is, but there's something really interesting about this. And it was a general design we were looking at, from all the way from graphic to product to experience, we were kind of covering the full spectrum of what design was, and what it meant to individuals and consumers, and also the people that experienced it as well, not just consumers, but the individuals that you were targeting to take part in that experience. And that really just opened my eyes to a whole new world that I was just wanted to just immerse myself in.
And then, moving to the next part, it's like, "okay, now I'm really interested in doing this. How the heck do I even go about switching over and is this going to be worthwhile for me? What do my mom think about this?" Because she was played a big part in that and I didn't really, it is funny, I didn't really ask permission for anything. I just kind of did it. I was just like, "I'm going to switch." Talked to my advisor, and they're like, "honestly, I think that might be a good move for you, just for who you are, just knowing who you are, and the things that you're interested in, that seems to be right up your alley."
And I was even talking to some of my professors at the time and I was like, "God, this is a big change for me." They're like, "I can see that a hundred percent, and I support you in your decision to switch over, and that makes sense for what you want to do." And then I told my mother, and that was the thing I was kind of nervous about. I was like, "I'm switching over." And she was like, "Hey, whatever works for you." She said, "I didn't send you out here to go and be held back by what I thought," and stuff, like "you go figure out and do the thing that allows you to become whoever it is you want to become."
I was the first one in my family to go to college, and all these different things, everybody's like, "oh, you're going to be this engineer, you're going to do this, you're going to need do that, or you're going to be a doctor," that's good, all you need, two choices. And I was like, "nah, I think there's this other lane that I want to explore." And my mom gave me the freedom and flexibility to go out and do that.
So there's a lot of support to make that switch over, even though it's nerve wracking because you don't see that as something as defined, it's clear cut, especially in your first opportunity in college, it's like you hear a doctor, lawyer, engineer, that was about the three paths you go, and then everything else branches off from there. But just like, "oh, there's this art path. It's really interesting to me," that was something that I guess was the most, I guess, jarring thing, at least myself personally. "There's this new path I can explore, but I'm not sure about the options and possibilities, but I'm just going to keep exploring and see where it leads me." So just having been being confident enough to do that, it takes a lot of courage, I guess.

Cassie Petoskey:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'm sure students who are listening to this podcast are experiencing some similar things right now, considering a pivot, and going through that exact mental gymnastics of figuring out is this right? How do I know? Like you said, in hindsight, it makes sense, but at the time it's really stressful, and it's so amazing you had such great support from people at Northwestern, and family members. That's great.
And I know you mentioned this pivot into the art world. I want to hear a little bit more about art theory and practice, because I know it's a unique major, and really impactful for you, in how you see the world. So can you share a little bit more about how you came into your own in this major?

David Ngene:
Yeah. I want to put an emphasis on the name of the major, because I can't necessarily equate it to a traditional art path, when people go to school to study sculpture, painting, other things that are in classical arts. The name art theory and practice, I think is, it changes that focus a bit where, like I said, we're looking at art, and the process behind creating. And I think that process is what helped cement who I was, and really defined me as a designer, and how I work, how I think through problems, how I solve these problems, and how I connect those problems with the people we're solving these problems for.
It truly helped me think. I would say in my time in studying other things, and I was looking at a bunch of different things when I was at school, the art theory and practice program opened my mind to this way of analyzing people and the goal of this experience that you want to give them and this journey that you want to take them on, and the process of taking along that journey.
It just really just, I mean, I don't even think, I was like, "how did I get through life up to this point? I wasn't even awake." I didn't even realize, didn't feel like I was even awake, after having a huge unlock, and just art theory and practices, really, you think about the theory, and you try to understand as to why we're creating these things.
I go back to a few of my professors that were kind of key in that, like I said, Dan [inaudible 00:13:42] had kind of opened my eyes to what the world of what just design was in relation to art. Marlena Novak, where she was thinking about future tools of creation, that was another area that I was really interested in uncovering, because art just wasn't about the things that we're used to these, the classical tools of creation that we're used to, it's UX, it's digital, it's robotics. She was doing amazing stuff with robots, and I was like, "wait, this is art. She's making robots." Just like, what?
And so it wasn't so classical in a sense that really opened it up. And then Michael Rackowitz with his style, he really kind of cemented that thought process to me with a lot of his work where he was thinking about the parasites. I still love that project. I think about it even up until this day where he's creating shelters for homeless people to utilize, to build from their environment. And I was like, "this is art?" It just blew my mind, but it's more like it was so engineering, and scientific, and there was so many things that I just wasn't expecting. And then you put all that into practice out in this real world, and you connect it to these people and create these experiences where he's doing his parasite thing.
And then he had this whole enemy kitchen thing, where he's bringing people into room and there's a table and he's serving food from his culture. And I'm like, "there's no way that this is art. This is not art." And I said, "he's not painting anything, he's not sculpting anything." He's creating an experience. He's sculpting an experience for you, and really bringing you into his world. And I just thought that was just genius, and it just really opened my eyes to just that thought process, and I still utilize that thought process in my day-to-day work today.
Yeah, long answer for this, but man, I get so excited when I think about it.

Cassie Petoskey:
I love it. I think it's great and it is really fun to hear you describe a little bit more, because for people who are outside of the major, you would think it's classical art, just by the name, but it's so much more than that, and I appreciate you diving into that for students who may be considering it themselves, or may be wanting to create things that are different than the classical art, and could find a home in that major too.

David Ngene:
Yeah. Also the history in there as well, because you can't go and create jazz if you don't know the basics of the... You don't have a foundation in music, so the history part of that is huge as well, and understanding what's been there and what's been done before and how are you adding to this history of art, and through different ways, and it really pairs well with the science and all the technologies that are coming around there as well. Yeah.

Cassie Petoskey:
Totally. Absolutely. And so now I'm curious, David, how this all, your experience in our theory and practice totally pivoted from what you thought you were going to be doing in engineering. Can you share more about where you started after graduation? What was your first job? How did that impact your path from there?

David Ngene:
Yeah, that was the thing. I graduated in that '07-'08 time period where everything, the whole world was collapsing at the time, financial districts and all that stuff. It was an interesting time to be out there looking for work, which is, I would say, I sympathize for the students coming up even nowadays, but it's just different now, with all the Zoom and the things that they've been going through and stuff, and the world's a bit different, but it was a similar sense of like, "oh, what the heck do I do?" And "how do I find my path with all this craziness going on?"
It was really interesting. It reached out to a few people in my network that knew, I guess had people in the network that they're connected to. I would say my first job was through an alumni that was able to connect me with an opportunity.
I dabbled in a few contract things in Illinois where I was doing some graphic design, some stuff at the time, just to just make some income. But it was just more my first full-time opportunity came down in Atlanta, really, where I was really able to go and work in architecture and really round out my interest in the things that I wanted to explore. I wasn't doing architecture. I was in a firm working on a myriad of things from, we were doing helping with lead certifications, like Green Guard certifications, doing visual design for the company, and also for particular projects, in terms of, maybe we might graphically communicate something or what we're trying to do. So I wore a lot of hats in that role, in my first job out of school, and I worked there for about five years down in Atlanta, and it was a great opportunity for me to apply what I knew, and to be in a space of creatives that just allowed me to continue to feed off of their design energy, and their interest in art and all these different things.
I got lucky, in that sense, where I was able to find a position and kind of put myself in a place where I got to really roll myself as a designer, and even in my interest in design, and how that budded from my early explorations in art theory and practice. And so I found myself just being immersed in that world on a daily basis. And around great people as well. That was the main thing, being around great people.
But I was down in Atlanta and I found that luckily found a job, didn't get paid a lot. It was one of those deals where you're out there busting your butt, but I was more looking for the experience and opportunity to find what's that next step for me, and understand I still had a lot to learn what school is just the beginning, and then you go out in the world and you truly learn what it's all about.

Cassie Petoskey:
Yeah, absolutely. There's so much you learn in that first job that, as much as you try and prepare for it, you really just have to be in it to figure those things out. Absolutely.
And so from there, you are at Nike now, but I know there was grad school in between. How did you approach going back to school? How did you figure out what you might want to go to school for? Who were the people you talked to that helped you through that decision making?

David Ngene:
Yeah, so before I even graduated Northwestern, I was introduced to the idea of industrial design, and it was something that we don't have that major at Northwestern, which is I feel like there's an opportunity there, we got engineering, we got art, we got that same thinking, we can work something up.
But I was talking to my professor, it was Marlena Novak at the time, and she introduced me to the idea of industrial design. I was taking one of her courses, it was a digital media style course, and we were talking about translating digital experiences to the real world, and she just talking about environmental design, and industrial design, and I was like, "what is that? I want to know more about what that is." And she was like, "oh, this is where we're thinking about the live space in the world that we interact with, and those designers focus on experiences and products and different things that work within those realms." And I was like, "this is something I'm really interested in."
I just started doing my own research and getting books on it and figuring out what the heck it was. And so I was like, "that's what I want to do, and so what do I need to do to get there?" And I knew that there's some other things I had to learn, and things I had to do to gain that experience so I can then pursue that, go down that road.
But I knew grad school was going to be part of that journey. And so while I was at the architecture firm down Atlanta, I sat there and I mean, I get off from work, and I would sit there and just read, and study, and learn, and sketch, and just immerse myself in that world, and what that was, with the goal of creating a portfolio to get into grad school.
So I spent a lot of time just building up my skillset there, and just reading as much as I could mean, it's just stacks of books, just all about design and design history and product design and different things, and that was part of my journey.
Then, it was great because the principal architect at our firm, she's an amazing, amazing woman, she allowed me to then try to take what I knew, and what I learned about industrial design, and applied it even at the firm. She's like, "well, we have some signage that we want designed and built and it's going to be at the zoo for this," and it's like they're almost sculpture-esque. And so I got to play, and I got to do some of that work, and she was starting to bring me on to some of the projects to contribute in that way, which was really interesting.
And she kind of helped set me up, and she wrote my letter of recommendation, and I had a couple professors from Northwestern write my letters of recommendation. So staying in touch with them throughout those five years, I mean, it was a long time when I was away from Northwestern, but I was still in touch with those professors, and they kind of helped provide some inspiration and guidance along that way.
Then so when I was ready, I put in my applications and got into all my top schools. So it was definitely part of the plan, but it just took some time to get there.

Cassie Petoskey:
That's great. That's great. And I want to hear a little bit more about what you're up to today at Nike. Like I said, the Space Kitchen sounds fascinating. I don't even know what this might mean. So can you share a little bit more about the work you're doing today, and how you see your arts and sciences background being an asset to that work?

David Ngene:
Oh, definitely. So I work in Space Kitchen at Nike, so it's, Space Kitchen is kind of the classical innovation kitchen, that's what they used to call it a long time ago, but not Space Kitchen because I think they just want to be weird and keep changing the name for people, confusing everybody.
But basically what I do is I lead a multi-disciplinary team, and we're of designers, three designers, four designers, whatnot, along with myself, and I'm a big contributor to work as also a senior innovator as well, where we create product and experiences. We're solving problems for athletes. Athletes with an asterisk, because anybody with a body can be an athlete, and that's kind of our scene at Nike.
And so, my job is primarily footwear. That's kind of where I cut my teeth in. I've been to Nike for going on 10 years now, man, time flies. But I started out footwear designer and came in, worked my way up and then moved into innovation, where we're really thinking about the future of product design, even product creation, and experiences for the consumer. Anybody that's interested in taking part in healthy lifestyle or whatnot, we're creating all the products and services that you interact with. Literally the shoes that you see people wearing on basketball courts or running on tracks or walking around malls, it's always weird to see somebody wearing something you designed. But that's what I do. I design product primarily footwear, but I design a little bit of everything.

Cassie Petoskey:
Yeah, that's so interesting. Nike, I mean, just seems to be like, maybe it's from my perspective, but the leader in footwear. I read something, I saw LinkedIn post about how Nike hoped that the Michael Jordan shoe line would make 3 million over five years and now it makes 3 million every five minutes, or something like that.

David Ngene:
That's about right.

Cassie Petoskey:
Yeah. Oh my gosh. Just wild. So you've probably designed some of the shoes we're all wearing.

David Ngene:
Oh, probably. Yeah. Probably touched a bunch of different things.

Cassie Petoskey:
Yeah, well, students are walking across campus in their Nike shoes. That's so interesting.
So with the arts and sciences aspect to your work, right, you're doing design a lot of that, I'm sure are kind of the hard skills you learned on the job, and also through your masters. What aspects about the broad background do you see playing out, maybe in your leadership, now that you're leading a team, and some of those concepts?

David Ngene:
It's funny when you look at design, and what it is, you think about it, I almost consider CAS to be an informal design school because that is the crux of design, it's this fusion between art and sciences, and it's just like this perfect match between those two, because you have to be able to see things. The whole same form follows function is true in all those different things where you look, especially when you're looking at the biology of the human body, and how you're applying a product that then affects that form that nature has designed for us. The world is kind of intermixed at such a deep level. So definitely, the relationship between those two are pretty dramatic.
And then how that influences what I do on a daily basis, like I said, just that level of thoughtfulness and thinking about, I don't know, it's just the people that we're creating these experiences for. I learned all of that in a lot of those classes that I took there. Like I said, just the way to think in, I don't know, it's really hard to describe. That's a hard one to describe because I took so much from that and it is influenced everything outside of that. And so, my life has kind of been created among this foundation that I formed in that program.
Like I said, I would think I would've been a different person had I continued on my path for mechanical engineering, or whatever it might've been. I would've been a totally different thinker, I think. But I really think this set me back and opened my eyes to a myriad of opportunities to create and work around people. I think that's what CAS does really well, is that human aspect of what you're working towards, whether it be the life sciences... It's really interesting because even I think about my grad school experience, I went to roll out of school design for grad school, and they have this big huge museum for talking where it's all about life sciences. We have human bodies, they have all sorts of animal skeletons, and it's steeped in the sciences, and it's there for people to gain inspiration from. And so there's this perfect harmony, especially in CAS. You can see how, like I was saying before, how you can have that perfect harmony between those arts and sciences to create, set you off for something, creating something unique. I don't know. It's really interesting.

Cassie Petoskey:
I love that, the human aspect and the mindset, and sometimes it is the intangibles that you can't put your finger on, but it impacts how you see the world. I love that. I'm curious how your athletic background is also, it seems like you found the perfect fit between your academic interests and the fact that you played football at Northwestern, and now you're designing athletic footwear, and athletic experiences. How does your background as an athlete influence your work?

David Ngene:
I would say that's another big factor. When I was down in Atlanta, I always felt like that was the piece that I was missing a little bit. Because sports has been part of my life as long as I can remember. It is hard to, I don't know, it's hard to separate myself from that. So when I left Northwestern University, I felt like there was a piece of me that I left behind there, because that was my last time stepping on the football field, and all those different things, and you leave that life behind, but then you're going out into this new part of your journey. But you still carry a piece of it, and you carry the memory of all things in your head, and I wanted to be closer to that.
And so it is funny, because Nike was never really an intentional goal of mine, like "I'm going to graduate, I'm going to go here, and I'm going to get a job at Nike." That was never something that was on even on my mind because I didn't know footwear design was a thing. It was still, it was like, "what? You can design shoes?" I didn't know you could do that, and work with athletes. It just happened by chance, and it just seemed like those experiences that I had on the field helped influence what I was even interested in studying and designing and those different things.
I remember when I got my interview, I showed the recruiter just some sketches I had done with, just things that are augmenting the human body, I wasn't thinking about it from a footwear standpoint. It was just like I was augmenting the human body to perform in a new way, and I was just drawing those things out. Like I said, I was drawn upon, you think about the life sciences and all those different things, thinking about the human body, the form and function of that, and then using those skills that I've developed from our artistic sensibility to kind of communicate that on a piece of paper.
And it was just sketches, and the guy was like, "this is amazing. I don't know what it is, but we need to get you in for an interview." And I was like, "okay, well, let's do it." I had no intention to this, but it definitely, that interest in sports was always still there. And now it helps me tremendously, because not only am I going by what the athlete says, I can envision it. And so when they're telling me like, well, I was doing this or we went to U of O, we're talking to some of the athletes, and they're talking about how they're driving up and ripping around and they're on a turf and they're moving around and I'm like, I can see it because I've done it. I'm like, "oh man, I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, let's work on this." And so it's really interesting to kind of pair those two worlds. Yeah.

Cassie Petoskey:
This must be why I love Nike shoes is because [inaudible 00:32:37] those movements are implementing that into the design. Because you put on a pair of shoes from a certain brand or something, you're just like, "have you ever played the sport that I'm trying to play? How did you design this shoe for this sport?" And to hear all of what goes into the design of it is so fascinating.
And I'm curious, so students who are listening to you, you obviously have had a really cool path from art theory and practice, you got a master's, what would you recommend to students who listen to this podcast and they're like, "oh my gosh, I want to do what David does?"

David Ngene:
Oh, let's see.
Connect. Reach out and learn more. Learn as much as you can. Don't be afraid to reach out and ask questions. That was the thing that helped me the most, is I was connecting with people I've never seen or met or talked to, just to try to learn about these opportunities, and things that I didn't even know existed. They introduced me to new things. Just reaching out and connecting with somebody that's doing something that's interesting to you. Just reach out to them and if they don't respond, keep pestering. Pester them a little bit. Don't go crazy with, but just pester them a little bit. And set up some time and just chat with them. If everybody has half an hour every now and then, just chat and just talk and stuff. Don't be afraid to do that.
And also just be curious. That's the thing that's always helped me at least, is just curiosity and just kind of figure things out and learning. I think that's helped, what led me to Northwestern, was just that curiosity and just really, I got to feed that up when I was in school there. Through all the trials and tribulations as well. I got injuries when I played sports and all these different things as well. But to still be curious about even stuff that's bringing you down, and we're trying to figure out how to get back and all these different things, but just stay curious as to... And if there's something, and don't be afraid to try something that's not so defined.
Like I said, it's easy to go like, "oh, I'm just going to go here, major in this, get mine, take the test and get a med-school," and blah, blah. It's very defining. You kind of know there's nothing wrong with that, but there's so many unique ways to do things and interact with this world, and don't be afraid to explore those other options as well. That's another thing. There's so much out there that you would never even know exists. Just take time to explore that.

Cassie Petoskey:
Absolutely, David, I love that. Such a great insight to end on because there is so much out there for Weinberg college grads. From any of our majors, you can kind of make your own path, and as intimidating as it might seem, it's also an exciting opportunity to figure it out for yourself, and what works for you. And I mean, that advice is just so helpful for our current students. So David, this has been so great, chatting with you over the last few minutes. Thank you so much for being here with us today, and thank you for your time.

David Ngene:
I appreciate it. Thank you. No, this is great. And again, good luck to everybody out there in their journey.

Cassie Petoskey:
Thanks for listening. If you want to hear more of these conversations, links to the full videos and podcasts are below. For more information about Weinberg College and this podcast, visit Weinberg.northwestern.edu, and search for Waldron. As always, we would love to hear your feedback. Please email us with your thoughts on the program. Have a great day, and go Cats.