And specifically potentiation of people's strengths, of their capacity to give highest expression to their life's purpose, their life's work, and ultimately leadership. And that just fascinated me. So I did a pivot after the first year of graduate school and started working in the field of career development, working as a career development adviser for undergraduates and graduate students and MBA programs at the City University of New York. And then that quickly led to a role in the career development group at JP Morgan Chase and then grew in that role and eventually wound up doing much more leader development and team development, which then took me through Bank of America, where I did a similar role, and eventually I wound up at eBay a little less than a decade ago as the head of learning.
And again, there the focus was on organization development, team development, leader development, building on strengths, helping people be their best and leaders lead most effectively. And then from there, I went over to Google to head up executive education, which was looking at directors, vice-presidents, seniors vice-presidents, that is the senior most layer of leaders at Google and getting them the programs, tools, content that they needed to be successful as people and as leaders.
Perhaps what I could say is that the common thread throughout this career arc that I just described is an interest in human development and sort of a strength-based approach to what it takes to help people be their best. Also important to say is that throughout my career but maybe even more importantly at a person level, mindfulness and all the things that we mean by it has been an interest of mine since I was a young adult. Really high school and college is where it began. And I've been a mindfulness practitioner of one sort or another most of my adult life.
And then at a certain point when I took the role at eBay and I was the head of learning, it became pretty clear to me that this set of personal practices that have been so valuable and foundational for me in effectively navigating my journey, my career, could also be a value to the employees. And as we also know, a substantive base of research started to come in in the last 10 or 15 years, also suggesting the tremendous benefits of various forms of mindfulness.
And again, there the focus was on organization development, team development, leader development, building on strengths, helping people be their best and leaders lead most effectively. And then from there, I went over to Google to head up executive education, which was looking at directors, vice-presidents, seniors vice-presidents, that is the senior most layer of leaders at Google and getting them the programs, tools, content that they needed to be successful as people and as leaders.
Perhaps what I could say is that the common thread throughout this career arc that I just described is an interest in human development and sort of a strength-based approach to what it takes to help people be their best. Also important to say is that throughout my career but maybe even more importantly at a person level, mindfulness and all the things that we mean by it has been an interest of mine since I was a young adult. Really high school and college is where it began. And I've been a mindfulness practitioner of one sort or another most of my adult life.
And then at a certain point when I took the role at eBay and I was the head of learning, it became pretty clear to me that this set of personal practices that have been so valuable and foundational for me in effectively navigating my journey, my career, could also be a value to the employees. And as we also know, a substantive base of research started to come in in the last 10 or 15 years, also suggesting the tremendous benefits of various forms of mindfulness.
