Employer Insight session: Exploring careers at the intersection of academia and industry

KM: Um, welcome to the session, which is hosted by Prosper, a career development model for research staff and students. Um, I’m Kerry McElroy and I am the stakeholder development manager for Prosper. Today’s session forms part of our employer insight series where we bring in professionals from different sectors beyond academia to talk about their experience. And today we’re gonna be exploring, um, careers and, and success, I guess, or finding success at that, um, tricky position, uh, which is the intersection of, of private sector and academia. Um, and we’re delighted to be joined today by Ely Sandler. So, um, Ely, I’m gonna be leading the interview with you today. So I’m gonna start, um, by letting you introduce yourself, by talking us through your career. So over to you.

ES: Thanks a lot, Kerry. Um, can I ask everyone a favour? If it is at all possible for you, I would love for you to turn on your videos. It’s just a lot easier to talk to people when you see their faces. You don’t have to, I know you’re all probably traveling, but if anyone does wanna turn on the video, it would make things nicer for me. Um, so very nice to meet everyone. My name is Ely Sandler. Um, I met Kerry about 12 or 13 years ago when I started as an analyst at Morgan Stanley. So I’ve been studying, um, politics, philosophy, and economics, uh, in UK. And I joined Morgan Stanley as an analyst. I was there ultimately for about nine years. I started really like in the banking business, so doing financial transactions, we can get into it really, um, intense financial, uh, like the bread and butter of investment banking. After about five years, I, um, actually hated it. Um, which I don’t know if Kerry could tell, but, um, i, I was, it was never for you Ely. Um, I, I was actually, I was terrible at banking. Um, and I ended up, I sort of tried to quit and I ended up moving from my investment banking role to working for, uh, eventually for our CEO doing, um, first kind of policy work. So thinking about Morgan Stanley’s relationships with governments and, um, kind of political trends and then helping set up our infrastructure and sustainable finance business.

Um, in, I then moved to Tel Aviv. My family are from, I’m actually American with a British accent. My family are from Israel, and I moved to Tel Aviv and set up a business with a partner of mine. She, um, was living in Gaza. She’s from Gaza. And we tried to build infrastructure basically throughout the Middle East. Um, this is what people sometimes call track two diplomacy. So you use kind of cooperation on finance or environmental issues to try and build links. And so first we built, um, some infrastructure in Palestine and then Somalia, Mali, Jordans, Sudan, um, kind of the places where, um, you can have like a huge impact if you end up managing to get things done. We built a lot of solar infrastructure, but that, uh, Morgan Stanley would never have, um, been interested in working ’cause of the risk.

Um, ran that business for a couple years and then came to the Harvard Kennedy School. Um, I did a master’s here, uh, in public policy. That was. and then, uh, after my master’s, and maybe we’ll get into it, a couple things happened. Um, uh, like academia is like a really unique career in that your job is to think of ideas and then maybe people will listen and then maybe things will change in the world and that is just like a crazy privilege. And that’s, um, kind of what really excited about working in academia. And I wrote a paper, uh, proposing kind of a new way of financing infrastructure. And based on that, I was asked to stay on at the Harvard Kennedy School and, and first do more research, um, kind of explore this, this area I’ve been writing about.

And I also started another business, um, funding infrastructure using this financial mechanism. And so now a couple years later, um, I’m still based in Harvard, so I’m in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I still, I have a research team here working on, um, really broadly speaking on, on energy and finance, um, for, for clean energy and, uh, teaching. I teach a class at the Harvard Kennedy School. Actually the, the school’s largest and most oversubscribed class because I think people are super interested in this topic. It’s called financing the energy transition. And then I also, um, run this business, uh, building clean energy infrastructure, mostly in Africa. Uh, we’ve got about, uh, $ million worth of infrastructure that we’re building. Um, Burundi, Ghana, Kenya, and then, um, doing some kind of policy advisory as well. Um, that is in, yeah, in like three minutes, like a really brief overview of, of meeting Kerry when I was, um, and working at Morgan Stanley to, to today.

KM: Thank you so much, Ely. That is, um, definitely a, a brilliant career. Um, and I feel very proud of you as I suitably should. But, um, in terms of, there’s lots of decision points that have obviously happened throughout your career and, you know, you’ve mentioned your first one, sort of that decision to, to move outta banking. How would you, could you kind of describe some of the key transition points within your career or milestones and how you navigated those?

ES: Yeah, totally. Um, well I think the first thing is is before I decided to leave banking, I decided to join banking. Um, which in retrospect seemed like a funny decision. ’cause it was , which was like categorically the worst time to go into finance. Um, and I had never really met anyone that worked in finance, didn’t know any bankers. And at university, um, Morgan Stanley came and they did this kind of pitch event. Kerry was, was probably there and, um, enticing the youth to, to go work in Morgan Stanley. And they said basically if you come work for us, you will do really interesting things and you’ll work on really good topics and, um, you’ll learn about the world. And that seemed very compelling to me. Um, and I went and did an internship and I had a great time. And over the two years I did, or three years I did improper investment banking.

Um, I think I learned more than, you know, the next years of my career combined. Like my, my course, I could not teach it if I hadn’t done two years. In investment banking, you really learn like the, the really the basics of, um, of finance. And so I have a, a lot of students, there’s a hundred students in my class and a lot of them are interested in doing something kind of at the intersection of finance and policy and, and trying to, um, well finance the anti-transition, which is the name of the course. And, um, what I normally say is like, you need to learn the basics of whatever industry you want to be in before you can change it.

Um, there was recently, so I’m, yeah, I’m in Cambridge near Boston in Massachusetts. There was a, an exhibition, um, here of Dali the Painter, um, who I’ve always, you know, thought of as Dolly does these like weird things like melting clocks. I dunno if you’ve ever seen a dolly painting. And, um, but at the very beginning of the exhibition it sort of track tracks his, his work over time. Um, there’s a quote from him that says, learn to paint like the old masters and they’ll let you do anything. And so in, in the beginning of his work, actually his, his work was really boring. It was like these renaissance paintings that look kind of like Leonardo da Vinci and he gets really, really good at it. And then he manages to use that to change how painting works. Um, and I’m not Salvador Dali, but I do think it is like an interesting insight that if you, if you want to change an industry, let’s say you want to work in clean energy, um, go work for an oil major is my, or, or like a, a bank, because that, that’s actually the the thing you wanna change anyway.

So that’s how I thought about starting my career. Um, after a few years, I, I was basically just not having a good time. Um, I think I like banking is very, very intense and, um, working that hard, you really wanna be motivated by the kind of like macro calls you’re working on. And, and that wasn’t super what I felt at Morgan Stanley. And, um, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was maybe like,  and um, I basically thought about the transition into, into the next thing I would do, which ended up being moving to Israel and starting this infrastructure business as being about like, um, making sure as many random good things could happen to me in the next year as, as, as was possible. Um, which which meant kind of radically changing everything I was doing, changing my location, changing the pace I was working in, just meeting as many people as possible.

Um, because from then, and actually even getting to that point, I think the way you end up finding interesting things to do is almost entirely by, by meeting people. Um, like I think when you are, I dunno if people still do this, do you, is is the sims still a game that people can play? When I was, when I was a kid, this was like a computer game you could play called the Sims and you like lived out someone’s life and and controlled them and your sim would want to be like a business person. And so every day he would go to work and he would work really hard and then he would get promoted or he wanted to be a doctor and every day he would go to work and he would get promoted.

And that’s actually just like, not how careers work. It, it’s not that you work hard and you get offered a promotion every two years. You need to find people that will take you to the next, um, next level. And so in each time I’ve kind of changed institution, it’s almost always been because like someone has chatted to me and, and thought it’ll be interesting for us to work together. So when I was at Morgan Stanley, I went to work for the CEO, it’s ’cause um, I’d, I’d randomly had lunch with, with, uh, the person that became my boss. And we’d had like a minute interesting conversation about, um, a photographer. And then they thought, well, it’ll be interesting to see what this person wants to do instead of quitting, they can come work for me or here.

At, at Harvard, when I was writing this paper, um, that, that ended up being the basis of my research and teaching, um, I had the idea for this paper. And so I emailed like every faculty member at Harvard that was tangentially involved in, I was a master student in the topic and asked them for like a minute conversation to talk about the, the idea I had. And eventually one thought it was a good idea and then we started working together and we wrote a paper. And then that’s kind of the root end.

So I think in terms of transition, it’s not a, a super linear answer, but I would say that, um, early on in your career, uh, try and do the thing that will, that will allow you to, to learn the most and meet most interesting people and then keep hold of those contacts. ’cause that’s, that’s how you’re gonna figure out what you wanna do next.

KM: That sort of leads us really nicely into one of the next questions, which is around networking. So not to generalize too much, but I think a lot of the time, you know, one of the biggest, um, things that the, um, research staff and students we work with have or, or feel a little bit about is that idea of networking. So what are the top tips you would give to get out your own head, I guess, and really start networking because you’ve just proven the benefits?

ES: Um, well it’s a horrible word and unfortunately I think we have to kind of take as it is. And so we’ll have to say the word networking. Um, I think the, like the small talk of getting to know someone for minutes, um, is both incredibly unenjoyable and awkward and normally not that useful. Um, so I think when we think about like what use of the network, um, simply having, having met someone is really not, um, not the point. So I I would say two things.

One is that, um, almost all conversations go better if you have an incredibly specific topic to talk about. So, um, let’s say you wanna, um, I I I don’t actually, you know, know what you all do for a living, but, um, like the, the, the times in which I found myself in big institutions were Morgan Stanley. I did some consulting for the World Bank, um, and now at Harvard. And the, the people I’ve met that I’ve ended up connecting with, it’s because we got in touch and I wanted to talk about this like, incredibly specific point that I needed their help with or that I wanted to tease out. People actually love giving advice. Um, people love talking through problems. And so if you are trying to get a job in, um, a bank and you, you meet someone that works there, just introducing yourself and having a chit chat is very unlikely to result in anything, um, lasting. But saying, Hey, I’m, I’m like really working on this, this thought I have about, I don’t know how volatility in American markets because of Donald Trump is gonna affect the European banking industry and come up with like a, a problem and then, and then talk about it. Um, or, uh, or something like this. Like I think like, um, the, the core to making connections with people is having a unique experience with them and then normally means having an interesting conversation. So that should be kind of like a subject.

Um, and then thing I would say is, it sounds, um, maybe like a little bit, uh, weird, um, but I would, uh, make a list of everyone you talk to profession, um, like an, like a sort of internal in business have something called the CRM, uh, client relationship manager. And so, um, over the last like five years, it was basically when I started working on this, this climate finance failure, I had, every time I had a conversation with someone, often online I would, I have a Google sheet and I write down their name, their email address, their institution where they work, and occasionally a note about what we talked about. Um, and this means like, let’s say you write a, um, an article like an op-ed in a newspaper or you publish something, um, you can then send it to everyone you’ve spoken to because you have the email addresses and it makes it really, really easy to keep up these points of contact.

So for example, like last week I published an article about, um, uh, tariffs in the United States and using them to, to stimulate clean energy. And I could then email that article to over a thousand people that I’ve talked to over the last, you know, um, five years. And then you get a lot of responses and you stay in touch and they know what you’re doing. And then when you need something from them or you wanna connect with them or when they’re thinking of something that’s, that’s how you, how you use your, your, your network. ’cause it’s very hard to actually just remember everyone you’ve ever talked to and what they’re, they’re interested in. Um, yeah, that will be my answer.

KM: Thank you. Thanks. And sorry I should have said this at the beginning, but I’m gonna ask Ely two more questions and then I’d like to take a couple of questions from the chat. So please do start popping them in, um, if you’ve got anything specific you would like to ask him. But, um, so moving on now to, I guess, you know, we’re here today to talk about, uh, the private sector and academia and differences and I guess sort of navigating those two worlds. Yeah. Because a lot of the, um, research staff and students here will be curious about potentially moving into the private sector or that sort of, um, you know, fluidity between the two and find and success there. Yeah. So can you tell us about your experience and, you know, how do you communicate differently? Do you communicate differently? Tell us a little bit about that.

ES: Um, so I can only speak for my own experience. So I will, and obviously these are like huge sectors, um, with, with a lot of diverse experiences. Um, when I was in, I, so I still do like most of my time is private sector work. I run a business doing infrastructure finance. I’m also a partner in a, a venture capital fund. Um, but I, yeah, I also, I teach at Harvard and I, I research and I’m doing a PhD at Oxford. Um, I’ve always felt like in academia I was like by far the most private sector person. And then the times I’ve been in, in, for example, when I was at Morgan Stanley, I felt kind of out of place and, and much more, um, like academic and I wanted to talk about issues that weren’t super relevant to our bottom line. So they are, they are very, very different.

Um, and I think, um, something I find strange about academia is that ultimately, like the papers you write are only really useful if they do something in the world. Um, and most of the time that is actually influencing the private sector. Occasionally it’ll be, um, something to do with, I mean, I guess fundamental research is different, but it’ll be something to do with policy. Um, but often, uh, academia can feel very, very disconnected from things that are actually happening in the world. And I think if you can bring in the perspective of, um, real firms and real companies, the thing, the discipline I know is economics. So maybe it’s a bit different in, in science. Um, uh, that is, it’s, it’s a little bit looked down on, in, in like pure academia, but actually makes your work much more impactful.

And even though, um, maybe the, like the, the majority of people you speak to will not value that insight that you’re, you’re trying to think about, um, what’s happening in the world, um, you don’t need the majority of people you interact with to, um, to think what you’re doing is worthwhile. You need like one or two to move to the next step in your career for someone to recognize that actually like what you’re doing is meaningful and you can then, um, kind of move forward. Um, in the private sector, um, people are often just like, you know, these are kind of cliches. People are very, very short term in how they think. Um, often not super interested in in deeper, um, underlying trends because you’re constantly trying to meet quicker milestones.

The, the timescale of your work is very different. Nothing in academia is ever really urgent. Everything in the private sector seems really urgent. Um, uh, yeah, without, without knowing kind of what fields everyone is in, it’s hard for me to say. Um, but happy to answer any more kind of specific questions when we get to to q and a.

KM: Okay, perfect. Then if you’ve got any more specific questions, then stick them in the chat. But yeah, um, yeah, I totally agree with that. You know, if you write a, an email in Morgan Stanley or Blackstone or I used to work that’s longer than three lines, it’s not getting read. So you have to try and get a respond within like minutes. They’d assume you’d being like, hit by a bus. So like yeah, it’s very, very different. Um, different world. Yeah. Even if the email was sent at : AM Um, okay. Perfect. Thank you. We do have a couple of questions, um, which were pre-submitted Ely as well, so I’m gonna answer those. We’ve shared, ask you those, we’ve kind of shared those with you already. But, um, we talk a lot about, you know, as we’re preparing research staff and students for the prospect of potentially, you know, moving into a, a role beyond academia. One of the things we talk about a lot are the transferable skills gained in research. Um, so, and, and how they can add value and I guess which are the most valuable, um, to various sectors. So looking through the lens of finance, what would you say are the, are the key skills that you see within academia which are transferable to, um, yeah, careers within finance?

ES: Um, so obviously there, there’s like one set of answers to this, which is about hard skills. Like, um, it is really helpful if you know how to do financial modelling clearly. Um, uh, it is, it is also very helpful if you have like amazing attention to detail. Um, those are kind of the, the two most important like real skills. But I would, I would kind of take the question a little bit more broadly, which is, um, what do people want from someone when they hire them?

Um, and when I first joined Morgan Stanley, um, the guy that was the head of UK investment banking, who I actually didn’t care for, but he, um, he, uh, gave us all a speech when we joined. And the first thing he said kind of really stuck with me, which was, um, you’re here for a, like a  week internship and the goal of that internship is to get offered a job. And like, the first thing you have to think about is that your job is to be a safe pair of hands. Um, like not to be brilliant, not to be the most interesting person in the world. Your job is to be a safe pair of hands. That’s like, um, and a necessary but not condition, uh, not sufficient condition.

Um, and I think if I had to maybe slightly critique people that try and move from academia, a lot of my students and me, um, to private sector, um, you don’t realize that your job is first to be a, a safe pair of hands for the person hiring you. Um, ’cause you’re, you’re not applying to be the CEO. Um, and so what you need to do is support them. And so basically like demonstrating that you understand the basics of the job and that you can make it easier for them to do work is like by far the most important thing.

So, um, like when I’ve hired people for our private sector work, um, normally we have kind of a first interview, we get to know each other and then the second round will be I’ve sent them some sort of question and they need to give like a five-minute presentation on answering it. And, um, the thing you want in that presentation is, is actually not brilliant. Um, because you’re, you’re not generally speaking, hiring someone to like radically transform the strategy or answer the questions you don’t know the answers to. You are hiring them to make your life easier, at least you know, relatively early on in your career. And so if someone can give a, like quite a simple answer just with really, really, really detailed work and showing they understand what like the core is of the business, um, that I think is the most I important thing and the thing that people often get wrong.

Um, and that’s sort of on a, like a, a, a tension a little bit with something I said earlier, which is you should always try and like make every conversation be a little bit interesting. And so I think then the, the advantage of academia is, um, that being a safe pair of hands is like a necessary but not sufficient condition. The way to then like make yourself stand out from all the other safe pairs of hands is that you have an advantage. ’cause you come from academia, so you need to show that you can do the thing that like, um, you know, is    basic requirement of the analyst or associate job, but actually because you have this special area of knowledge you can build on that base. So like, even if it’s as simple as saying like, you know, the the, the essential answer to this question is x, you go through it. However, like in my view, actually we can go a little bit further, that I think is the, like, the secret to adding in the, the academia rather than, than, than starting from trying to change the world. If that makes sense.

KM: Brilliant. It absolutely does. Um, we’ve got a couple of questions here in the chat, both excellent ones. So let’s start with, um, are there any examples of things you’ve taken from working in academia that have changed your approach to work within the private sector?

ES: Excellent question. Um, yeah, actually, so the, the thing I think about is, um, academia is, is naturally very sceptical. Um, like we are, uh, we like to think of ourselves as scientists, I think in economics, you know, at social science, but we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re broadly speaking scientists and that means we, we all take like car popper. Um, a theory has to be falsifiable for it to be useful. Um, random conjecture based on nothing is is not helpful to anyone. And so, um, that means that that scepticism and kind of like the scientific method, um, I think the, the, the negative side of it is it can often translate into like, um, pessimism or, or not wanting to do big things because science is about very, very, very, very incremental progress.

Um, the advantage of it is that it’s really useful to cut through like b******t and hype that often happens in the private sector because the private sector is the opposite. It’s about like selling a really, really big vision. And so, um, uh, in, in the era I work in, which is clean energy, there was a time when, um, everyone in the private sector, for example, was obsessed with the potential of hydrogen. Now, I, I don’t know what you will do, maybe you are like, um, material scientists working in hydrogen, but there was this like huge bubble where um, like every venture capitalist, every clean energy firm was really, really, really interested in investing in hydrogen. And you could go look at the academic literature and there were all these people doing like really basic techno economic studies that showed that like, this is just not gonna work.

And I remember talking to venture capital investors who were putting billions of dollars into hydrogen startups. And then I’d say like, you know, you, you can look at some pretty fundamental research that shows you that, like the learning curve you’re assuming and the reduction in cost doesn’t seem sensible to me. Um, and they just, um, they, that that’s not how the, the private sector operates. It doesn’t really operate on this like downside incremental expansion that operates on trends because if the other company is investing in hydrogen, you are not, and the market thinks hydrogen is useful, your share price is gonna go down or you are not gonna get your bonus. And so it’s much, much, much more susceptible to, to small term trends. Um, then everyone that ended up working in hydrogen lost their jobs because the hydrogen bubble popped.

And, um, you know, all these, all these uh, projects were at one very specific example. But I think kind of the meta point is, yeah, take the, the scepticism and the, like, the scientific method of rigorously evaluating claims from academia and applying it to some of the hype you can have in, um, and, and like boom and bus cycles in, in private sector, I think is a, yeah, like, like a, a really useful skillset to emerge.

KM: Perfect, thank you. Um, so the next one is, how did you find managing commitments outside of work whilst navigating your pivot points? How did they influence your decisions?

ES: Another great one. Uh, um, great question. Um, the, the thing this makes me think of is about where to live. Like I, I obviously don dunno everyone’s background here. Um, but so the reason I moved back to Israel was my, my father had a stroke and so I wanted to be be near him. Um, and I thought about like ways in which I could, um, stay in, in Morgan Stanley and then maybe work remotely, but I had this, um, kind of like external private, uh, personal reason that I wanted to, to move. Um, and, and it was actually similar with me coming to America. Like I, I lived here as a kid and I hadn’t lived here as an adult.

Um, and so we all have reasons that, um, to be places that can affect our, um, our work life. And actually that can in my mind turn into a like a, a huge advantage. Like there is not a single career that, um, it, it’s very rarely the case that your career actually, in order for it to go, well, you have to do X thing like that. There, there’s too many branching off options. And if what you think is like, for my, um, relationship or for my family, I want to be here, but for my career I need to stay in this city or I need to do whatever that is, it’s probably not true. Like there’s a, a, a billion things in the world you can do.

And actually I think up to a point, um, change is almost always good for your career. Like, it’s very, very rare to meet people that are debating leaving a job, um, who then do that and regret it. Because honestly, in, in most jobs if you leave, um, when you come back you’re gonna be more senior because you have experience outside. Um, so I would say like, um, this doesn’t apply to everything. Like, like, you know, there’s only 24  hours in a day and if you have to manage, um, you know, having a child and a relationship, then like there, there probably is more of a direct trade off with your time. Um, but like specifically the way I felt this a lot in my life is, um, like where I have to live or like now my partner’s based in Boston and I’m here and, and, um, that has affected, um, me as well. Um, you can almost always, always turn it into an advantage and I think for your career you will be happier and, um, you’ll, you’ll find ways to make it work. I dunno if that’s a satisfying answer.

KM: It is. And I, and I like what you’ve just said about leaving a role and going back and referencing the fact that you have got outside experience, which can then make you more senior. I think that’s a really personal point for a lot who are considering leaving academia and, you know, want to leave that door open to go back. So, um, thank you for touching on that. I’m gonna take one last question. Um, well two from Elizabeth. So, um, for an academic in a less bendable field, uh, with experience such as, uh, history and philosophy, what do you recommend for ways to appeal to public policy or industry sector folks? And the second one, do you recommend getting something they can in public policy, for example? For example?

ES: Um, so I am, my undergrad degree was PPE, which if you’ve ever met any PPS has like zero hard skills. Um, and so I think most jobs actually train you, um, in, in the way they want you to think. So when I joined Morgan Stanley, they taught us all finance.

Um, so it, it’s, if you study history and philosophy, if you want to move into an an industry, um, obviously you probably can’t become an engineer, but, um, like broadly speaking, it’s just about demonstrating that you’re gonna be able to like be a safe pair of hands. And that’s, that’s actually more about like a mentality and a willingness to learn then it is about the hard skills. Um, so it, like, it, it, it’s really not hard at all.

Um, I think that the way you’re gonna get in though is through knowing people. So, um, when we were at Morgan Stanley, I helped carry, for example, like screen CVs for applicants and she’ll know the numbers, but I think we were getting like  applicants a place. Um, and what, and what that meant is, um, we just couldn’t read all the CVs and so the, the screen would be like, people that are not in the industry, you, you just didn’t read their CVs. Um, and there’s not really a way to get around that apart from knowing people. So I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t worry about, um, if you can actually do the job. I would say it’s just about like building a personal connection and showing you’re interested.

Um, getting an MA in public policy. So I teach MAs in public policy, so I sort of feel slightly duty bound to say yes. Um, I think they’re very interesting ways of like coming up with what your thesis is on an issue because you have two years or a year to think. And like I said, like all conversations go better if they’re like structured around content. And so if you’re writing your thesis on, you know, um, America’s Critical Minerals and the public policy debate, everyone wants to talk about that. So any conversation you have about it will go better. And that’s then a really good hook to to, to get to know people.

Um, I don’t think it’s, it’s actually really, really necessary, but it’s sort of like, like jumping on the ladder in snakes and others, like you will be able to to, um, to go faster, but you can still go the normal way. Um, the accepted to that might be if you wanna work in like really hardcore finance, like if you wanted to do investment banking and you don’t want to go in at the very, very entry level, um, there’s probably reasons to do an MBA rather than, uh, a massive public policy.

KM: Brilliant. Well that brings us to the end of our, um, our slot. So I just wanna say a massive thank you. It’s been a pleasure to reconnect with you through all these years. Um, and yet thanks so much for your time and incredibly insightful session. Uh, this will be uploaded as well, um, for you all to, to watch again. Um, so we’ll send you the link to where that goes. But thank you so much. Okay, bye.