From museums and cultural institutions, to galleries, performing arts, and careers as practicing artists.
Focus Series
Helping students gain an understanding, not only of job descriptions and application processes, but how to cultivate a career at the intersection of success and lifelong well-being; and to get to the heart of industries that have attracted so many graduates in the past decade.
The Focus Series
Helping you navigate the differences between investment banking, wealth management, buy side, sell side, and everything in between.
What counts as a "tech" career today? Meet with firms and organizations large and small, and connect with alums who can help you understand the industry.
An industry with a reputation for providing broad-based training on the knowledge and skills necessary to understand business problems across industries.
Helping you navigate a legal career from your internships at coursework at Barnard, through the LSAT, to Law School and beyond.
Coming in 2023-24, nonprofit focus will help you build an awareness of the many different kinds of nonprofits, the roles available in organizations, and the career pathways that can help you pursue work in this space.
Thinking Beyond the Job Application
The Focus Series began as a means of helping to demystify the kinds of roles that comprise complex (and often confusing) industries. Today, it has become a multi-industry event and workshop series that provides semester-long insights into a range of fields that are popular with Barnard students, welcoming employers and alums to help provide expert on-the-ground guidance and perspective (while connecting students to specific opportunities). Crucially, the Focus Series allows for deep dives into the status of industries — and into questions that probe the intersections of well-being with lifelong career success.
Students are often generally aware of law school, but don't have visibility on the many different ways to practice as an attorney — let alone the issues and decisions that individuals face when considering a career. The same goes for popular fields and destinations including the arts, finance, nonprofits, tech, and consulting. Concurrently, employers are enthusiastic to provide more than the typical/traditional information session. They're excited to bring to Barnard practitioners in their field to help students build skills and knowledge to make them better candidates.
The Focus Series represents some of Beyond Barnard's best collaborations with Corporate and Philanthropic Partners. It allows employers to connect with students they know are committed to their industry. And it expands and deepens recruiting conversations, helping students think about their motivation to pursue a particular field. Questions about the Focus Series? Ask beyondbarnard@barnard.edu.
2025 FOCUS Series Keynote Discussion, Hosted Jointly by Beyond Barnard and The Francine A. LeFrak Foundation Center for Well-Being
Wednesday, January 29, 6:00PM - 7:15PM | LeFrak Theatre, Francine A. LeFrak Foundation Center for Well-Being
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Students are invited to join us to celebrate the kickoff of the Spring 2025 Focus Series with a conversation with Lareina Yee '95. Lareina is a McKinsey Global Institute director leading the technology agenda and the global head of Tech Alliances. Based in San Francisco, she is a senior partner whose client works focuses on technology and AI. She served as McKinsey's first Chief Diversity Officer and, in 2015, co-founded Women in the Workplace, an annual research study that has worked with more than 1,000 companies and surveyed nearly half a million employees to understand the barriers to women's advancement in corporate America.
Lareina Yee has been a member of the Barnard Lifelong Success Advisory Council since its inception. She is co-author of the forthcoming book The Broken Rung. Co-written with two fellow women Partners at McKinsey and Company, Kweilin Ellingrud María del Mar Martínez, the book examines why women — with higher graduation rates and GPA's than men — immediately lose their advantage when entering the workforce. The conversation will explore themes of lifelong financial and career well-being, Lareina's post-Barnard journey, and ideas about what it takes for women to flourish across career fields throughout their lives.
2025 FOCUS Distinguished Guest Speaker Series: A Collaboration between Beyond Barnard + The Francine A. LeFrak Foundation Center for Well-Being
In addition to the Focus Series Kickoff, each industry-specific series features a distinguished guest speaker. Hosted in direct collaboration with the Francine A. LeFrak Foundation Center for Well-Being, and held in the LeFrak Theatre, these events put students into conversation with leaders from the community of Barnard alums, parents, families, and friends of the College. Conversations center themes of career development, pressing contemporary issues, and — critically — what it takes to center mental, physical, and financial well-being in pursuit of a successful lifelong career. All events will take place at Beyond Barnard, and students can register for events in Handshake.
- Focus Series: Lareina Yee '95, Managing Director and Senior Partner, McKinsey & Company
- Finance Focus: Global Head of Equities at Bank of America, Chairman & CEO of Bank of America Securities, Inc.
- Nonprofit Focus: Marcia Sells '81, P'23, Co-President, Russell Philanthropies
- Tech Focus: Kara Hurst '93: Chief Sustainability Officer, Amazon
- Arts Focus: Lisa Kim '96: Gallery Director, Ford Foundation
- Consulting Focus: To Be Announced
Questions about the Focus Series can be sent to beyondbarnard@barnard.edu