How to Make Big Choices: Philosophy, Careers, and Meaning
Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan, Diego de Velázquez (1630)
In partnership with LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman's Blitzscaling project and the Keller Center, on January 21 and 22, PRÉCIS is hosting a two-day Wintersession workshop on “How to Make Big Choices: Philosophy, Careers, and Meaning.” During four meetings over two days, participants will read brief classic philosophical texts and timely recent ones relating to practical wisdom and career choice. Students will reflect on how to choose and develop a thriving, fulfilling career.
Sessions will be led by 3PR faculty, postdocs, and experienced entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley. All reading will be done during the sessions.
Students who participate in all of the sessions will have the option of scheduling a one-on-one or group career coaching session with a successful business executive to discuss what they learned during the sessions. Participating students will also have the option of co-authoring an essay with one of the executives, in which they identify a vocational “north star” and reflect on it in light of the readings. Executives who have committed to participate include David Kenny (CEO of Nielsen), Aria Finger (Reid Hoffman's Chief of Staff), and Blake Scholl (CEO of the startup Boom Supersonic).
-
Facilitators:
Andrew Chignell is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor at Princeton University, with appointments in Religion, Philosophy, and the University Center for Human Values. He is co-director of 3PR. Prof. Chignell's work to date focuses on Immanuel Kant and other modern European philosophers, philosophy of religion, the moral psychology of hope and despair, aesthetics, and the ethics of belief. He also has an interest in food ethics, and recently co-produced (with Will Starr at Cornell) a Massive Open Online Course on “The Ethics of Eating” for EdX.org.
Hüseyin Güngör is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Philosophy at Princeton. His research brings together philosophy in the Islamic world and contemporary philosophy. His work draws both from history of philosophy in the 8-13th century Islamic world and from contemporary philosophy of language, epistemology and metaphysics. It develops ideas in the great Islamic era with contemporary philosophical rigor. He also works on the nature of modality, attitudes and misleading communication from a contemporary perspective. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University as well as an M.A. in Philosophy and B.A. in Translation and Interpreting Studies at Boğaziçi University in İstanbul, Turkey. He is originally from Havza, Samsun, a little town in northern Turkey.
Shahram Hejazi is a venture capital investor & entrepreneur with general management experience in both early-stage ventures and large global companies. As Managing Director and CEO of BioAdvance (an early stage venture capital firm with over 100 investments), he is responsible for its leadership and strategic direction and serves on the Board of seven of its portfolio companies. He is also the founder/CEO of Optimeos Life Sciences, Inc., a gene-delivery spin-off of Princeton University. Shahram joined Princeton University in 2014 as the James Wei Visiting Professor and has been a Faculty since then teaching two courses on the topics of entrepreneurship and venture capital and currently is the Head of Entrepreneurship Program.
Lara Buchak is a Professor in the Philosophy Department at Princeton University. Her research interests include decision theory, social choice theory, epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. Her current project in philosophy of religion is on the nature and rationality of faith. She argues that faith requires stopping one's search for evidence and making a commitment-and maintaining one's commitment in the face of counterevidence. She details when such faith is rational, and how it is beneficial to human life. Related projects discuss the proper response to disagreement about religious matters, the nature of conversion, and the nature of authority in religious communities.
Julien Newman is an entrepreneur and an experienced facilitator. Julien works on the content team for Reid Hoffman. In the past, he has been CEO of two VC-backed startups and was COO of the major left wing political party in Canada.
Na'ama Moran is an entrepreneur, a musician, and an experienced facilitator. Na'ama has founded several VC-backed startups. Most recently, she was CEO of Cheetah which raised +$100mm of venture funding.
Blake Scholl is an entrepreneur and an experienced facilitator. Blake is CEO of Boom Supersonic which is a +$1B startup and the leading supersonic jet company in the world. Blake has founded multiple successful startups and advocates for starting mission-driven businesses.
