Key takeaways

Asked

You started your career on the clinical side of healthcare and later moved into leadership, operations and program development. What experiences helped you realize your clinical background could open doors beyond direct patient care — and what would you tell students who are drawn to healthcare but are not sure which path to choose?

What they said

• Healthcare is a world of its own: real estate and finding the right facility to build, insurance, building codes, engineering, and healthcare engineering as its own specialty.

• Working as a clinician in the emergency department she kept asking why the system was so hard to navigate — not only for a person trying to get help at the most vulnerable point of their life, but for the people working inside it — and kept not getting answers.

• So she went back for an MBA to study how the operations of healthcare work, and married the two sides: not only treating patients but building the programs and helping design facilities that work for the clinicians, the patients and their families.

• She had wanted to take over her father’s construction company instead, and said she was torn about it. Her point to students: you do not have to pick one field, but you do need a vision of the direction, because having things planned out never works that way anyway.

Asked

Becoming a cardiothoracic surgeon takes years of study, residency and real personal sacrifice. Looking back, what were the moments you doubted yourself, and what kept you from stopping?

What they said

• He was plain about the cost: a very long process, heavy physical demand, missed family events and birthdays. What carried him through was proving to himself, year after year, that this was exactly the work he wanted.

• The qualities that make an excellent surgeon are the wrong ones for leading people. He compared it to the military: you work hard, you demand perfection, and when someone falls short you want to know why. In an administrative role that is close to the worst approach, and he called himself a beginner at the separate skill of gently drawing the best out of people.

• His instruction to the students was to use the room. None of this access existed when he was in their position, and the panel came to offer networking and advice, not only to tell their stories.

Asked

Your educational path was not what many students consider traditional — you went to college later and eventually earned a doctorate from Columbia. What has that taught you about perseverance and about defining success on your own schedule, especially for students who feel they are already behind?

What they said

• He arrived in the US at 20 or 21 and put the plan of becoming a doctor aside to do what first-generation immigrants do: adapt, work, raise a family.

• He started his freshman year at 29, a father of three, and told nobody but his wife. Four months later, with two As and two Bs out of four classes, he was convinced — and he did not stop until he had a doctorate in public health from Columbia. Not the physician he first meant to be, but a doctor of prevention, which he tells his students is the nicer one.

• The image he gave the room: we are taught the easiest way from point A to point B is a straight line, but sometimes the line is not straight, it winds, and it still arrives at the same point.

Asked

Much of your work sits at the intersection of neuroscience, education and human behavior. Based on what you have learned about how the brain processes information and develops, what do you wish more college students understood about how they learn?

What they said

• She answered with a case rather than a theory. A mother in Albania came to her worried about autism, in a place short on information, and she took an appointment and observed the child for a full week — the teacher, the therapy sessions, every program he was going through — before giving an assessment.

• Her warning to the room was about the mechanism behind assessments: because insurance recognizes one diagnosis, children get entered under it, and the spectrum is wide enough that this matters a great deal.

• What she asked students to carry into health, medicine, surgery, epidemiology or insurance is the order of operations — understand how and why something happened before you reach a conclusion, because what you are dealing with is an individual. She would not claim 100%, but as a researcher she said there is almost always some kind of answer.

Asked

You have worked in patient access and operations in healthcare, overseeing teams, and you are now in the revenue cycle at Memorial Sloan Kettering. Looking back, what taught you the most — and what would you tell students about recognizing room to grow when a first job does not look like the end goal?

What they said

• Eleven years ago she started in the emergency room registering patients, a job she assumed was straightforward: register the patient, move them on. It taught her to manage emotion and crisis and to tell what is important from what is not at a critical moment, and that carried directly into later leadership roles.

• She is a numbers person who likes working with numbers and finance, and that is what took her into revenue cycle work as a financial analyst — making sure the organization is paid correctly, which means knowing not just that you get paid but how.

• Her framing of the field: for Dr. Zaku, sitting beside her, to do his job he needs five of them behind him. Clinical care is one lane and operations, IT, legal, compliance and health policy are the others, so whether a student is drawn to finance or law there is a job for them in healthcare.

Asked

You have spent over 20 years building technologies in cloud, mobile, data and now artificial intelligence, often before they became mainstream. How do you recognize when a new technology is more than a trend, and how can students learn to spot where the next real opportunities are?

What they said

• In 2005 he set out to build a cloud-based operating system with a full suite of cross-platform cloud applications. He assembled a team, built the entire platform, and took it to 48 organizations expecting at least one to see what they were doing. All of this preceded Google Docs, Office 365 and cloud services being ordinary things.

• What he took from it was two things held at once: stay very well informed, and trust your own instincts, because you have to stay aligned with what you believe in order to succeed. He put it as understanding what is happening rather than riding a trend.

• His second example was a 2017 meeting with what he called perhaps the largest venture capital firm in the world, where the question was where AI was going. Large language models and mimicking human intelligence were clearly the direction; his own view was that understanding the physical world we navigate and make decisions in mattered equally, and that is the vision he stayed focused on.

Asked

So many students have ideas, especially now that AI makes it easier to run experiments, but few turn an idea into something meaningful. From your experience as a founder and inventor, what separates someone who simply has a good idea from someone who can build, execute and create something that lasts?

What they said

• Vision first, and a specific kind: clear and compelling enough that people will follow it, believe in it, and build a culture around it.

• Then a real problem. His own example was the data problem in AI, and the intellectual-property framework they built for sovereign data, newly generated and empirically observed — a problem the industry is living with.

• Then fundraising you understand, because the terms determine your runway and how much of the company you give up. And a team you get involved: he said their interns from Yale, Georgetown and other universities are in the deeply technical and large deployment projects from day one, on the front lines, and he encouraged students to reach out to his company and others for internships.

• His closing point was to be multidisciplinary and agile. His father was a doctor and his mother a teacher, and he said plainly that this is not that time — you have to combine disciplines and adapt as the world does.

Asked

You recognized very early that the internet would transform global communications, and built a business around technologies like VoIP before they became mainstream. What did that teach you about recognizing an opportunity before everyone else sees it?

What they said

• He came into it in 2001 already knowing the telecommunications world well, and described the shift as a complete repurposing of what had already been built rather than throwing it out. The world did not stop, it changed — and he put the current AI wave in the same frame.

• His advice to the students was to go past using a chatbot for a club or a group: AI has several layers, he works in one of them, and he told them to focus on all seven.

Asked

Taking an idea and turning it into a company is one thing, but scaling it internationally is another. What have you learned from building a business across different countries and markets, and what should a young entrepreneur understand about execution that school will not teach them?

What they said

• He summarized it in one line, which he credited to an earlier speaker rather than claiming for himself: consistency beats talent, every day, every hour, everywhere. If you do not think you have excellent talent, become the consistent one — get up in the morning and do it every day.

• On building across markets he said the fun part was going around the world, and that he had effectively earned a doctorate in getting punched in the face everywhere. It is a challenging world, and building the networks took exactly that consistency and persuasion. His point to the room was that if he could do it, anyone in it could.

Asked

You grew up and received your primary education in Albania and Greece before making the move to Stanford and eventually building a career in the US. Looking back, what gave you the confidence to pursue opportunities that initially seemed out of reach — and what would you say to students who limit themselves because of where they started?

What they said

• She was born right before communism fell, into a country she described as a hot mess with little to think about in terms of where to go, so getting out to study somewhere else was the best option she could see.

• She first learned English at 22 and did not see a computer until the first day of college — where she started studying computer engineering.

• Her instruction to students was not to decide in advance that being Albanian, or being at a high school or college that is not as good, rules out the Ivy League or the company everyone wants to get into. As long as you study and are dedicated, there is no way where you are from stops you getting where you want to go.

Asked

You have taken products from research and development through regulatory approval and into the market. What has that taught you about the difference between having a great technical solution and building something that succeeds in the real world?

What they said

• A working prototype is only the entry ticket. It still has to clear regulatory approval, be built the same way every single time, be something the surgeon wants to use, and something the hospital will pay for — so building it is a small part of the overall picture.

• On the products he worked on, the question was never whether it could be built. It was whether people would find value in it, and value is the key word: a product that works is not necessarily a product people want.

• His line to the room: nobody cares about your technical solution, they care about their own problems. Do not fall in love with the solution — fall in love with the problem you are solving and the people who face it.

Asked

The recording of this panel begins partway through this answer, so the question before it was not captured.

What they said

• She put her career down to a family where education came first — her mother taught English in Tirana — and said she had never imagined she would end up at NYU.

• Much of what followed was nothing she had pictured: publicity work, including for the NHL without ever having watched a game, and then politics, canvassing and get-out-the-vote, sitting in rooms with political consultants at a point when she could not have named the mayor. The tools she credits are dictionaries, encyclopedias and friends.

• One of the first projects she worked on was Albanian American Success Stories, and she said she keeps meeting the professionals in it who gave back.

• On working in government, the thing she singled out was Albanians being recorded as Albanian American for the first time. That is the only platform that counts the community, and counting is what produces the funding and the voice.

• Her line to the students: your skills are your currency.

Asked

Yours is a profession where credibility, confidence and the ability to advocate effectively all matter. What has your experience of that been, and what do you need more of?

What they said

• She traced her voice back to being Albanian, and to starting young: a politically active family gave her a strong sense of self, and that is where she locates both her confidence and her litigation skills. She said she was a litigator early on, before she ever went to law school, without knowing it.

• She said she wished she had something like this summit as a student and was craving it, and that is the reason they started the women’s law organization — there is a need for community, and it gets found by going out, talking to people, meeting your own and letting people inspire you.

• The quality she named as the best one to have: curiosity. Always stay curious.

Asked

How will this change your approach to work, and what should law students consider when they are choosing an environment that suits them?

What they said

• Working as in-house counsel means advising people. The matter may involve a corporation, but you are dealing with a person who has their own pain points — pressure from a CEO to make the bottom line work, the political pressure everyone feels in any environment — and she said that can get lost on other attorneys.

• Before going in-house she spent a number of years at a pace she eventually decided she needed to change. She wanted to slow it down a bit, and that is what took her in-house, where people tend to be respectful of your ability to have a life of your own.

• On what students should weigh: priorities shift when you marry and have children and a family, so the real question is the personal one — what do you want?

Asked

Can you tell us about your experience of working at a large law firm?

What they said

• He has always bet on himself, and was careful about why: not because he thinks he is the smartest person in the world, but because he does not think there is another person out there who can outwork him.

• He was candid that working for yourself means an uneven pay rhythm against bills that arrive on a fixed one. He said he would not change it for anything in the world, because nothing is more important than seeing his staff and his attorneys win a case or settle one.

• The big corporate firm lasted a year, and it is the only job he has ever quit in his life.

Asked

You came to the United States after beginning your professional life in Albania, and had to start over in order to eventually move forward.

What they said

• She was born and raised in Albania, up in the mountains, in an area she described as having close to zero opportunity when she was born. At about 14 her parents trusted her to go to boarding school, and she said that is where she learned trust and discipline very early.

• Starting over meant working as a waitress, as a coach, cleaning, whatever it took. In that same stretch she perfected her English, learned the culture and learned how things are run here, and the connections that came out of it are what eventually got her into an MBA.

• Her read on the step backwards is that it was not lost time. She also told the room that being resilient and disciplined runs in Albanian blood, and that coming back up on your feet over and over and reinventing yourself is part of the culture.

Asked

A large part of your success in private banking and investor relations has depended on earning the trust of clients and investors. What have you learned about building genuine professional relationships, and what mistakes do you see young people make when they think networking means meeting as many people as possible?

What they said

• She said she sees a lot of people treat networking as a transaction, or treat everything as a transaction. You are better off leaving with two meaningful relationships.

• What works is approaching someone in a genuine way: pay attention to what they are saying, follow up, and care about what they said. Most of her own success came from creating relationships that meant a lot to the other person.

• And clients can tell: her line was that they see right through you, so be genuine, do what is best for them first, do the right thing and everything will follow.

Asked

You spent over 20 years helping turn this from an idea into a company serving thousands of business locations. What has that taught you about the difference between starting a company and building one that can survive, grow and stay relevant for decades?

What they said

• He reframed it for a room full of students heading into exams: in business the test is whether the thing makes money, and it is a real one.

• The turn for him came from a consultant they hired, who kept asking the same question a different way until it became: how can the business run without you being there? Building for decades is a question about what you have taught other people to do.

• On students specifically, he said he works with young people and sees the same thing year after year — more than half are nervous and short on confidence straight out of college, regardless of what they are paid or given. His answer was to make sure the people hiring you understand what you bring.

Asked

In applied economics and a career in model risk, you have to analyze complex information and challenge assumptions. What has that taught you about building strong analytical and critical thinking, and how can students strengthen it whatever their field?

What they said

• She started with the emotion in the room rather than the method: one thing she learned over time is that showing emotion means you care, and she singled out women in particular.

• The discipline is to take a step back and understand the problem — that there is a lot of uncertainty, and that there is an assumption behind every decision you have made. Models are good, but they are based on certain assumptions, assumptions change, and the world changes with them.

• She used her own path as the worked example: she wanted to be a physicist, then wanted to be an engineer for six years and said she did not have the nerves to study it, and ended up going into finance with a master’s and then a PhD. Those were the right assumptions at the time and are not the right ones now, which is why the skill she told students to build is being able to pivot as life goes by.

Asked

After decades of this work, what have you learned about good judgment — knowing when to move forward, when to back off, and when the numbers alone do not tell the whole story?

What they said

• When you are in the middle of a transaction there is the analysis and all of that, and then there is the human layer, which he called a spider sense. When everything else checks out and something still tells you it is wrong, you have to trust that.

• He was open that his own career checked none of the boxes: it was an accident, it met no pedigree requirement, there was no legacy, and his only connection to Wall Street was his father. What he offered in that first interview was that nobody out there would outwork him, a line he credited to Nick Gjelaj on the previous panel.

• He took the long view on technology panic. In his early days there was no such thing as a spreadsheet, just square boxes you wrote in by hand; fax machines appeared in the early 90s, then this thing called email, and suddenly mail arrived on your device. Every generation has had scary things, and the current pace is a difference of degree.

• His closing point was not about work at all. Your job is not the thing — start by knowing yourself, and value family and community, which he defined as somebody falling down and getting a wound and you being there. He called the road map people talk about for life nonsense, and said he could not have done any of what he has done on his own.

Asked

You have spent over 25 years working across both the United Kingdom and the United States, helping organizations with international careers. What should students start doing now if they want to work abroad?

What they said

• Two things, and the first is that it is amazing to have a big network. She credits her success to people in a hundred countries around the world whom she calls on day to day, relationships built up over time so that when she needs something they are successful as a team.

• The second is appreciation, and how you can bring culture to life. Her own work is looking after employees in corporations who move countries, and she pointed out that many in the room did not grow up in the US and experience different cultures day to day.

• Her read on that: there is something to be said for an appreciation of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, which somebody who grew up in one country their entire life gets less practice at. At a minimum you brought your whole culture with you, and you can use it.