A-J Aronstein

A-J Aronstein (he/him) serves as Assistant Vice President of Lifelong Success and Senior Advisor to the Provost at Barnard College. In this capacity, he provides oversight of Beyond Barnard (the College's integrated hub for Career Support), Summer @ Barnard, and Barnard|Next (the College's lifelong learning initiative). Prior to joining Barnard, A-J was Director of Communication at the New School for Social Research. He was the inaugural leader of graduate and professional career support at the University of Chicago, where he also received a master’s degree in the humanities and served as a Lecturer in the Humanities Division and a Writing Instructor in the College. His written work has appeared in the New York Times, Paris Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. A-J was a Jefferson Scholar at the University of Virginia. A native New Yorker, he lives in Hastings-on-Hudson with his family.

What was your first job?

A few weeks before graduating from the University of Virginia, my parents gave me an ultimatum: get a job or move back  home. So I visited the career center for the first time and started frantically applying for jobs. I wound up as a marketing associate on the sales team at National Journal, a company I had never heard of, in a role for which I had no experience. I learned so much in that first job about how to identify and fill gaps at an organization, how to connect with leaders, and how to navigate the intricacies of life on a professional team.  I still keep in touch with several of the close friends I made in those first two years of my career.

If you could speak to your college self, what advice would you give him?

My first job experience relates to the advice that I offer to many students now: be more thoughtful and intentional than I was in terms of searching for a role. I learned a lot of lessons about resilience and ambition the hard way, but I would never trade that experience. I learned how to identify opportunities for professional development and growth in a space where I didn’t think I could. Many of the skills I acquired on that first job continue to serve me today.