Students learned about career options in medicine and healthcare at the second HW Works Industry Roundtable on March 13. The event was hosted by the Harvard-Westlake Student Alumni Association and featured clinical social worker Rebecca Neubauer ’07 and obstetrician-gynecologist Layne Kumetz ’94, who discussed their experiences and answered questions.

Neubauer has worked at Didi Hirsch Community Mental Health Services and as a psychiatric social worker for the Los Angeles Unified School District. In addition to her current psychotherapy private practice, Neubauer provides prevention and crisis intervention services at the UCLA Rape Treatment Center.

“I wish people understood how vast social work is,” Neubauer said. “You can do so many different things with a social work degree.”

When working at an LAUSD middle school, Neubauer said she was responsible for 1,800 students. Over 300 were high risk, she said.

“I would have to tell one kid with suicidal thoughts that I’m too busy to see them because I’d be hospitalizing another,” Neubauer said.

Kumetz completed her residency and currently works at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. She’s been interviewed for National Public Radio, Cosmopolitan Magazine and appeared in medical-based TV shows.

“Getting into medical school requires a really deep commitment to what you’re doing,” Kumetz said. “I really encourage people to think of it like a calling. You’re in school a really really really long time and in training a really long time after that before you’re out in the real world. It really has to be something that you have to be drawn to.”

Attendee Elaine Liu ’20 said the roundtable deepened her knowledge on medicine.

“I think one thing I really got was that there’s a lot of interdisciplinary work,” Liu said. “Maybe other roundtable sessions will help me find a specific degree I want to work towards.”

HWSAA will hold the next roundtable session April 16, which will feature alumni in the financial sector.