Heather Comero
After life at Olaf, I was originally set to travel to Japan for two years and work for an international company; as things should turn out I am now working for Carlson Companies (a local company to Minnesota!) and am travelling all over the world. This October 2004 I will be in Shanghai and Beijing for the month working with a small group of representatives from GE. With my job as a Travel Director, I have been around the world and have worked with many great companies. Our staff are always on the move and some 30 Carlson staff are working at the Olympics right now cheering on the USA, and in 2008 I will be doing the same in Beijing.
Class of 2002
Heather Comero '02 and Mike Spolum '04 in Thailand with his host family from his Term in Asia last year.
Sean Michael Reilly
After leaving St. Olaf, I began working for PricewaterhouseCoopers as a Transfer Pricing Associate. Transfer Pricing is an area of International Tax in which economists determine the appropriate allocation of income among multinational corporations and their international affiliates. After working at PwC for two years, I left and came to Ernst&Young, another big four accounting firm. After three years of working with E&Y, I asked to be transfered to our Tokyo office for six months and the firm was kind enough to grant my wish. As of May 2004, I have been working in our Tokyo office a block from the Imperial Palace for two months. Everybody in my office speaks English and all of my work is in English which has made the transition to life here in Asia an easy one. On the downside, the fact that everybody speaks English has slowed the progress I have been able to make with my Japanese language abilities.
Class of 1999
Gretchen Solting
After graduating from St. Olaf in 2000, I moved to Chicago and worked at a publishing company. In March of 2001, I went on a vacation to Maui and decided that I missed the slower pace of life. By June I had moved to Honolulu and was looking for a job! Eventually I found a job with Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (PREL). PREL is a non-profit that strives for better education and quality of life for people living in the U.S.-affiliated Pacific, as well as all over the world. I started as the Ethnomathematics Digitial Library Assistant (www.ethnomath.org) and after a year, I started working at PREL as an assistant editor and now I'm the editing coordinator for all of our products (most of which are free at www.prel.org). I'm applying to graduate school at Hawaii Pacific University for a master's degree in Communication. Life is going well here in sunny Hawaii!
Class of 2000
Tell us what you are doing!
Krittidech Yoosiri "A"
A few months after graduating from St. Olaf College, I got a job offer from Japan Airlines to work in its Passenger Service Section at Bangkok International Airport. I am currently in charge of all arriving JAL flights from Japan and I am in a process of learning JAL Reservation System in order to expand my responsibility to other types of duty in my section. I really enjoy working here as I have the opportunity to communicate in Japanese to both customers and co-workers. Having worked with the company for two months, I feel that the Japanese have a very high expectation when it comes to customer service. I realize that the learning experience in Asian Studies at St. Olaf College has been advantageous to my career not only because I could use the language skills I learned (and struggled!) to make Japanese passengers feel at ease but also from taking many cultural associated courses there, I could be aware of their nature and thus would be able to fulfill their needs.
Although Japan Airlines offers wonderful fringe benefits such as annual job training, excellent health insurance and free airline tickets, I still hope that in five to seven years after working in a Japanese environment, I will be able to improve my language skills to the level of proficiency that I can pursue my masters degree at one of Japan's prestigious Graduate Schools.
Class of 2003
