Bryan Gomez-Wong

2011 Major: Political Science; Minor, Economics; Certificate, Markets & Management

Current Employer: Lime — NYC, New York
Former Employer: Google — San Francisco, California

How has being a Political Science graduate from Duke helped shape your professional success?

The practice of Political Science is integrating data and frameworks into a cohesive narrative that explains political phenomena in our world. My current role at Google, Business Operations and Strategy, is all about creating outputs in a similar manner.

The content of my professional work is different (focusing on technology products and business strategy rather than political events and history) and the way I acquire data is more technical (querying large data systems rather than looking at static tables in books), but my output echoes my work at Duke. I write papers and presentations that cover a broad range of topics and walk others through the logical flow of my thinking in order to reach decisions.

What advice would you give students in Political Science?

Political Science prepares you to cover a breadth of topics, utilize thinking tools to sharpen your thinking, and to present your ideas logically to persuade others. Use that to your advantage.

There are plenty of careers available to those who don't choose to specialize in any one field (engineering, biology, law, etc) right away but instead work with specialists in each of these fields to get work done. That's not to say you shouldn't specialize at some point in your career, but people operating at the highest levels have to be able to do integrate work from areas where you aren't familiar to make decisions.