The Inside Scoop on HNC/SAIS Career Treks

HNC Career Services Manager Michael Hoffman, HNC '15, shares the inside scoop on a valuable networking and professional development tool at the HNC/SAIS known as the Career Trek.

Could you first tell us a bit about your history with the Hopkins-Nanjing Center and your current role as Career Services Manager?
I attended the HNC Certificate program from 2014-2015 after serving on a Fulbright Fellowship in Taiwan. The HNC program had always been something I knew I wanted to do and even today I am struck by the reputation and influence it holds in the China field. When I got the chance to come back in 2019 and manage Career Services for the HNC, I was really excited. While a good portion of my time since starting has been remote, it nevertheless has been a great experience and I really enjoy the opportunity to work with so many exceptional students and alumni who share a similar professional interest and skill set. I also rely a lot on my experience as an HNC student to inform how we run Career Services programming and to make sure we are best serving the needs of a very unique group of students and young professionals. 

What are Career Treks? Does the Career Services team take a different approach to career treks for our Hopkins-Nanjing Center students?
Career treks at the HNC and SAIS are essentially the same. They tend to differ only by geographic region. The HNC takes the lead on all Asia treks while my colleagues in DC lead our North American Treks and SAIS Europe hosts our European treks. In general though, I think career treks are some of the most valuable programming we do in Career Services. They are great learning opportunities that allow students to not only travel to different cities and countries but to also meet with alumni and professionals working in so many interesting roles. They are really helpful to learn about the different options out there, and how to leverage your HNC/SAIS education in the workplace and network with alumni and potential future employers. I strongly encourage all students to participate in as many career treks at the HNC and SAIS as they can during their time with us. 

How have career treks evolved over the last year to account for the pandemic?
Like almost everything, we have had to hold career treks virtually since the start of the pandemic. While this has changed the experience in some ways, and we do intend to go back to in-person career treks for the most part as soon as the situation allows, there have been some upsides to going virtual. The biggest plus of virtual career treks has been accessibility for students. In the past, it was difficult to attend career treks held by other SAIS campuses due to the need for extensive travel, but this past year all career treks have been open to all SAIS/HNC students regardless of campus. For the HNC, it also has allowed us to do career treks that might have been more difficult in-person, such as our Singapore and South East Asia career treks. 

What would you say is the greatest benefit of participating in a career trek? Do you have one or two career trek student success stories that you could share?
The two main reasons to attend career treks are to learn about different career options and to network. I can't stress enough how helpful this is for professional development. I often hear from students who have gone on career treks with me how, as a result, they are now interested in a whole new career path that they previously did not even know was an option. I think that is the biggest success of our career treks. In more concrete terms though, many students use what they learn about companies and industries on the trek to give them a competitive edge when applying for jobs and to leverage the connections they make on treks in a really positive way. We often have students who, after meeting alumni on a career trek, go ahead and apply for roles at that organization. It goes a long way in expressing interest in an organization if you can tell them you visited and enjoyed learning about the organization. 

How do students sign up for a career trek and what is the best way for them to prepare?
Career trek sign-ups are run through the Handshake platform for all SAIS campuses, including the HNC. You should look for them in events postings as well as in the jobs section of Handshake. The best way though to make sure you are staying on top of what career treks are happening is to read all email and WeChat correspondence from HNC Career Services and SAIS Global Careers. The best way to prepare for career treks is to do your homework. Research each company on the trek, make a list of alumni working there, and jot down a list of well-thought-out questions that you can ask the hosts.

Alumnus applies HNC education to a career in blockchain and sustainability

Recent alumus Nick Manthey, MAIS ‘19, shares how he applies his Hopkins-Nanjing Center (HNC) education to his work as Head of Business Development at Qianyuhui Investment (QYH) & Synergy Blockchain.

For Nick Manthey, MAIS ‘19, the work done in HNC classrooms has closely connected with the environmental work he does in China. As a MAIS student who studied Energy Resources and the Environment (ERE) primarily in Mandarin Chinese, his research focused on startups that worked in voluntary carbon trading utilizing emerging technology. “One of the companies I interviewed with, is the current company that I’m with now,” he said, “I did an interview with the CEO.”

Manthey had visited his current company, QYH Investment, with HNC Professor Roger Raufer in April of his last semester at the HNC because, “we were really interested in how you could use things like blockchain to improve carbon trading and power markets.” Searching for next steps after graduation, he landed a job at QYH Investment.

Looking back on his time at the HNC, Manthey sees aspects of his education applied to his current job. “Something that I didn’t expect to be so relevant to the work I do now was the Politics of Rural Development class with [HNC Co-Director] Adam Webb,” he said, “as part of the field research we did for that course, I focused on how water resources were being governed.” Although he did not realize it at the time, environmentally focused trips to rural areas would become a key component of his work, stating, “part of my job now is to go visit these rural areas to tour carbon offset projects and meet with local stakeholders.” 

Manthey also remembers reading the book The Retreat of the Elephants in his Environmental History class. The book relies on ancient texts and descriptions to investigate China’s environmental state more than a thousand years ago. “Maybe there aren’t records or environmental data, but you can tell from the poems and writings from 2,000 years ago, what the climate was like and what kind of animals and trees were there…there’s all this evidence that there were a lot more trees and animals, like elephants, in central China than other records would indicate,” he said.

Manthey recalls what he learned in that class as he travels around China. He is currently working on an afforestation project in Henan, a region that has hosted several ancient capitals and has been an essential part of Chinese history. “If you want to pinpoint where Han culture started, it’s in that area, more or less,” he said. In his work Manthey considers the long environmental history of Henan, which has gone through sizeable changes over the millennia. He reflects on his work’s role in restoring the natural environment of this storied region, “there’s this massive connection through time, thinking about how there were forests there during the Zhou and Han dynasties, and now almost 3,000 years after they were cut down, we’re doing reforestation projects there... Just this connection through history and time is pretty powerful,” he said, “when I go down to Henan, I’m thinking about what I learned in the Environmental History class.” 

Settled into his work, Manthey has found value in the things he learned and the connections he made at the Center. “My time at the HNC allowed me acquire skills and meet like-minded students and alums who helped me think about what to do next with my career,” he said. He points to the professors and classes he took and his internship experience as instrumental in providing him with guidance and skills needed for his career. The HNC gave Manthey a solid academic and China-focused grounding in the environment to pursue his career objectives. “Doing this work in China specifically,” he said, “I don’t think I could have gotten the jobs I got, working in the carbon markets now, without going to the HNC."

Written by Nick Kaufman, Certificate '21 + SAIS MAIR '22.