Day 14

Name: Martha Mangelsdorf

Profession: Author, Senior Editor of the MIT Sloan Management Review

Location: Charles River Bridge

Question: Why are you here?

Answer: I’m a career person.

Tonight began with a search for MIT’s weekly swing dancing event, where I had planned to conduct the day’s interview. However, after ending up at Harvard University, turning around, and walking through MIT’s campus with no results, I gave up hope and decided to trek back to my own school by foot. As Walking undecidedly over the frozen Charles River, I slowed my pace and took a chance on the woman walking behind me.

Martha Mangelsdorf, bundled up in a big brown coat and friendlier than most, immediately stopped, eager to answer any question I might have for her. I suggested we keep walking. She smiled and agreed.

“I work at the MIT Sloan School and I’m on my way home,” she said. “I’m a senior editor at the MIT Sloan Management Review.”

Aware that I was unfamiliar with the publication, she explained: “We’re a journal that bridges the academic research that business-school professors do and what real businesspeople out in the field—executives and managers—need to know. So we have articles that translate academic research for business executives,” she said. “I edit articles and I also manage a partnership we have with The Wall Street Journal, helping get the articles ready for them to run in The Wall Street Journal. And then I also blog for our website and do anything else that needs to be done.”

Mangelsdorf told me more about her career, which she described as being the perfect mixture of her passions for both business and journalism. A former editor for Inc. magazine, she was self-employed for almost seven years, and in that time was able to write a column for the Boston Globe and publish a book called Strategies for Successful Career Change: Finding Your Very Best Next Work Life. The latter publication was recently named as one of 5 Books That Will Help Your Career by CareerBuilder.com and one of The Best New Books for Job Hunting by MORE Magazine’s website.

Coming from a family of educators, it comes as no surprise that Mangelsdorf should have ended up at MIT. Both of her sisters work at schools (one is a high school art teacher and the other is a dean at Northwestern University). Her brother, following the business path as opposed to an academic one, is a banking executive.

“It was the family business in my family. My father’s a college professor, my grandfather taught at Harvard here. It certainly was something a lot of people in my family did. My father-in-law taught at Swarthmore,” she said. “I think it helps me understand academics.”

Mangelsdorf has her own family at home, which she was returning to as we spoke.

“I have a stepson,” she said. “Actually, it’s kind of a neat story. I was single for many years, and then I got back together with my high school boyfriend, who was a widower. And we got married in 2008, and now I am a stepmother to a fourteen-year old.”

As we reached the end of the bridge, I asked Mangelsdorf if she had any parting advice from her work in career transitions. Luckily, she had a very prepared answer for me.

“A couple of things that are important about changing careers is people sometimes get stuck with the idea that they need to know all the answers,” she said. “In other words, there’s this idea of, ‘Oh, well I have to know exactly what I should do next and it should come from inside,’ and usually—well, not usually, but often—it’s an intersection between what you want and what’s out there in the world. So instead of thinking, ‘I need to know exactly what I want to do about this,’ think about what hypotheses, in other words, what are other careers that interest you. And then think of some low-risk ways to explore them. Can you find a trade association for that industry and go to an event, or meet people? Can you research it? People in that kind of work, can you take a class? You know, figure out small steps to help you figure out, ‘Do I really want to do this and will it work for me?’”

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Blogger's note: Due to some errors pointed out by the subject, I have edited this piece for accuracy. Those mistakes/corrections can be found in Mangelsdorf's comment below.