Conrad Whelan of Uber as well as Adam Checchi ’95, Sam Pfister ’95 and Danny Seo ’96 of Checchi Capital Advisors, a Beverly Hills based investment advisor, offered students career and life advice during lunch Friday.
HW Venture set up the event as part of its first installment of its Lunch and Lecture Series.
HW Venture held its first meeting last May and focused on innovation and idea sharing throughout the school community.
“The preparations went very well,” club leader Miles Agus ’18 said. “In the future, we hope to branch out to many more areas besides just lectures. And getting more publicity will be our next goal.”
Agus said that HW Venture is considering partnering with The Nantucket Project. According to The Nantucket Project’s website, its goal is to “exchange challenging ideas, build strong relationships and share ground-breaking insights that build a better tomorrow and unlock the power of human potential.”
After speaking in The Business of Life classes during third and fourth periods, the guests joined seniors on the quad for lunch.
Speakers shared their experiences at school and in their respective careers.
They urged students to avoid basing their success on money, instead on experience and quality of life.
“Students right now worry, ‘Am I doing the right things? Am I smart enough? Am I going to get into the right colleges? Am I going to make all of the right choices?’” Interdisciplinary Studies and Independent Research teacher Robert Levin said. “What the speakers come in and say is ‘Don’t worry, you are good enough. If you can handle this, you have learned to work hard. You have learned to cope with things, and you are going to be fine.’”
The event ran smoothly and the speakers were knowledgeable, Agus said.
Seo connected Whelan, a computer systems engineer and one of Uber’s first employees, to HW Venture.
He discussed his experiences at the company and encouraged students to pursue career paths that will help them to grow as people and to not limit their own potential.
“The toughest decisions you will have to make are about opportunities,” Whelan said. “It is a wonderful opportunity to be able to work in a job that you like but every job is going to have things that you don’t like about it. Everything is going to have drawbacks and one of the toughest things is when do I make change [jobs]. There are no perfect answers.”
