Nicole Woon W'14 , E'14

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niwoon/

What did you study at Penn and when did you graduate? 

I was in the M&T program studying Bioengineering and Entrepreneurial Management. I stayed for an extra semester and sub-matriculated for my Masters in Mechanical Engineering, graduating in 2014.

What were you involved with as an undergraduate?

On the business side, I was most involved with Wharton Women during my freshman and sophomore years, serving as Photography Chair and Freshmen Buddies Chair. One of the clubs that I spent the most time with on the engineering side was the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). The club offered these great elements of professional development, educational outreach, and membership activities where I got to meet other people – I ultimately served as President during my senior year and am still involved with SWE as a professional.

The other club that I was involved in was Penn Appetit, the food publication on campus. I was a blog editor for 3.5 years, and it gave me a creative outlet to write, photograph, and do activities that weren’t as technical as my majors were – it was a great source of joy. Aside from that, I participated in various mentoring programs, both in Wharton and Engineering.

What was your favorite part of Penn?

My favorite part of Penn was how global the community was and the fact that I got to meet people from the US and outside the US. You get a different mix of perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences. College was great for expanding my horizons, having moved from the West Coast - it’s an amazing period in your life because you have four years dedicated to learning and living in a new environment. Many people I met during classes and clubs at Penn are still my friends today!

What do you do now and where are you based?

I work as a Program Manager at Microsoft and I’m based in Seattle.

What has your career journey looked like?

All my summer internships were surprisingly in the finance industry, unrelated to my majors. It was my first exposure to business analyst and project management roles, and my internships helped me learn what it was like being in finance and getting to live in NYC. However, I knew that I wanted to go into an industry outside of finance, as the subject matter wasn’t as interesting for me. Internships are such a great opportunity to figure out what you like and what you don’t like.

I was able to connect with a recruiter at a Society of Women Engineers conference who worked at Microsoft. I interviewed at the conference, got my job through that, and started as a Support Engineer for SharePoint in 2015. SharePoint is a collaboration platform leveraging pages, files, and lists so that teams can broadcast information and streamline their work. As a Support Engineer, I worked with customers to help resolve their toughest technical issues. It was a reactive role and we were often juggling 15-20 different cases at a time, so I didn’t have as much control over my schedule as I would have liked. I also wanted to move back to the West Coast, so I started looking into Program Manager roles internally. 

I ended up landing a role as a Program Manager on the People application, which is essentially your contacts list across Windows devices. I got exposure to not only working on new features for an existing product, but also working on an incubation project where I got to do strategic thinking and research in a brand-new space. Having that combination of experiences was really helpful in shaping my career to figure out what types of projects that I want to focus on. It also helped me see that I like working on existing products where I can innovate and work on new features on top of that. 

I finally switched over to the team that I’m on now, which is the OneDrive and SharePoint team. It feels full circle from my first Support Engineer role now that I view things from a product perspective. I work as a Program Manager on SharePoint site-related features, such as site creation and site templates. You can think of my job as a hub-and-spoke model where I serve as the central person coordinating feature work end-to-end and ensuring that we ship a well-crafted, high-quality product on time. It’s very collaborative across disciplines, and I’m often working with our designers, engineers, product marketing managers, support team, content writers, and other roles. It's cool because we get to own every single step of the process and help influence the way that it goes, and it’s so empowering to have agency over my schedule and the features that I get to work on.

What has been the biggest challenge of your career?

One of my biggest challenges was building confidence that I could contribute in a field that I didn’t get a major in. Sometimes you get very focused on your major’s area of interest, and it can be stressful figuring out how your experiences might map to a potential job. For example, as a Bioengineering major, I didn’t know if I could go into something outside of that realm. However, role models at Penn and in other communities were immensely helpful in showing me that I wasn’t defined by my majors. Recruiters for my internships and full-time jobs also saw something in me, and after subsequent conversations, it was clear that people of all different backgrounds can contribute effectively. I’ve worked with Program Managers that had English majors or were pre-med; even though none of them studied Computer Science, they still add value and contribute in impactful ways for the product. Your major can teach you how to think, but it doesn’t block you from going wherever your passions or interests lie.

How has being a woman affected your career trajectory, if it has?

I am immensely thankful for the mentors and sponsors in my career, regardless of their gender. I gravitated towards joining women employee resource groups at Microsoft and continued my involvement in SWE to get the extra support, learn from situations that others have faced, and expand my network. My team at work has a healthy culture, regularly making space for diversity and inclusion discussions and encouraging us to be vulnerable and have a growth mindset. As a woman in tech, it can be pretty intimidating if you are the only woman in the room, but finding allies and advocates eases the burden. Knowing that you are the one that’s helping to pave the way for future generations to come into that space is something that is really empowering. 

How do you balance your personal life with your professional development?

I’m a huge advocate for work-life balance. One of the biggest surprises after graduating is that you have so much more free time where you don’t have to study for a test or work on a homework assignment. I disable notifications for Teams or Outlook on my phone, don’t check my work laptop during non-business hours, and make sure I can dedicate my evenings and weekends as my time. Making those clear boundaries and setting expectations upfront is something that I found crucial for my work relationships, especially when we’re working from home during the pandemic.

What advice do you have for our members as they begin exploring careers and internships?

Like I mentioned earlier, internships are valuable because they help you figure out what you like and what you don’t like. Use them as a time to explore your interests. Professional development events through clubs like Wharton Women and SWE were useful to see what was out there and the ways that different people contributed to different industries. I also would advise you to take advantage of the programs that Career Services has to offer, whether it’s a resume review or a mock interview. Those were super helpful for me when I was prepping for a lot of my internship and full-time interviews. It’s a free resource that you have access to as a Penn student, so you might as well use it – I don’t think enough people take advantage of it. 

What advice do you wish you had known when you were an undergraduate?

Don’t get peer pressured and feel like you have to do the status quo. Everybody moves at their own pace and has their own timeline and journey. Even though a ton of people might be going into finance and consulting, you don’t have to go into those fields if you’re not passionate about it. Interviewing is a two-way street; understand that while they’re trying to see if you’re a good fit for their team, you’re also trying to see if that organization is a good fit for you. Additionally, always prioritize your own mental health and physical wellbeing, and make sure that you are getting the support you need from others so that you can bring your best self to school and to the workplace.  

What’s your favorite thing to do for fun?

I like exploring new restaurants and keep spreadsheets of all the ones I’ve gone to in the cities I’ve lived in. I have sheets for LA, Philly, New York, Boston, and Seattle, and have been to over 680 restaurants in Seattle so far! If I had to pick a favorite cuisine, it would be Japanese cuisine. There’s such a strong focus on high-quality ingredients without often requiring a lot of seasoning or complicated prep work, which allows the dish’s core ingredients to shine! I remember taking a Japanese pop culture class at Penn for one of my global electives and did my entire final project on Japanese cuisine, which ultimately got published in Penn Asian Review’s spring 2013 edition. My favorite restaurants in Philly are Zahav, Hershel’s East Side Deli, and John’s Roast Pork.