I’m incredibly lucky to be doing what I do, but like most people’s paths, it wasn’t an obvious or easy road. I studied economics in college with the aim that I would use my degree to go into business (which is very broad), but it took me awhile to figure out what my ideal job would look like.

Like a lot of grads, I knew of many different job titles, but had no idea what they might actually be like—let alone what type of role I wanted to dedicate 40+ hours a week to. I used college internships to explore the real-world application of my business interests, and spent a good deal of time in finance. Because of that experience, the logical choice for my first job was investment banking. 

When I got an offer to join J.P. Morgan out of college, it wasn’t a hard decision to say “yes.” I worked a lot while I was there and learned a ton of valuable analytical skills, but ultimately realized I wanted to do something more creative and tactical.

After meeting with friends and colleagues in various fields, I decided venture capital would be an interesting and challenging next step. I could leverage my finance experience, and also jump into new creative challenges—like meeting startup founders and analyzing their business for possible investment. That’s when I made the jump to Menlo Ventures.

Having the opportunity to interact with startups at Menlo Ventures led to my “ah-ha” moment, when I realized I wanted to work even closer with startups. Instead of meeting with companies to only talk funding, I wanted to help bring what they’d created to the world. This led me to take my first mergers and acquisition role at Facebook, where I could connect companies to unprecedented new assets, resources and talent.

Looking back, all of the dots seem to connect, but they certainly didn’t seem to at the time. My advice to those looking for career direction is to chat with people doing the job you think you want. They’ll tell you what they like, what they don’t like and what they actually spend most of their time doing. That’s what really helped me refine my search and identify my dream job.

My finance and accounting classes really created a great foundation for me. They helped me in the obvious ways (with my current role), and more importantly gave me a foundational understanding of how companies’ business models work. I’d recommend that no matter what your major, find and take a business class as it will typically have a host of professional applications.

Even though I grew up in Silicon Valley, I didn’t fully appreciate the tech sector until well after college because I didn’t have a personal connection to it. During my time at Menlo Ventures, I talked with a lot of founders and entrepreneurs about their vision for the future of tech. Their passion ignited a deeper interest in helping motivated people with great ideas to excel. 

Once I realized that interest, I talked to friends with experience in technology and decided to pursue a new role in corporate development. It was through these meetings that I made the contacts to land a first job interview at Facebook.

I was incredibly lucky to be hired onto their corporate development team as the second team member. It gave me the opportunity to learn from a company that was experiencing hyper-growth, and to truly be at the heart of the action at a key time for the company. It was a phenomenal experience and laid the foundation for my current role.

The thing I love most is the mentality of the company—one that’s set by our co-founders, Drew and Arash. We have a very lively, transparent and thoughtful culture that comes directly from our founders, and this makes my job of bringing new companies on board that much easier.

When I started here, Dropbox was just 250 people. Now we’re over 800. It would be easy for things like ingenuity, efficiency and even fun to get lost in that growth, but Drew and Arash have prioritized and protected the company’s core values while keeping processes flexible as the company evolves. At the end of the day, I feel incredibly lucky to work here. 

Not surprisingly I use Mailbox, our email product, to keep on top of everything. I have a massive amount of email and it helps me stay organized. I also love Quip and make sure everything is captured in there. It’s been a great way to stay on top of all my work. Streak also is another fantastic tool. I use it to manage projects across different teams and manage different conversations and tasks. 

I’ve made it a habit to dedicate the first 15 minutes of my day to getting organized. This means prioritizing what needs to happen over what I want to happen. It’s so easy to get sucked into email and remain in reaction mode all day, so setting initial daily goals is crucial. 

I then usually meet with leadership from engineering and product to discuss acquisition opportunities, followed by meetings with founders in some stage of acquisition discussions. This ranges from discussing what’s next in the process to actually negotiating an offer. At some point, I’ll meet with my team to get on the same page regarding all the moving pieces. We do our best to keep each other updated, so having some face-to-face time is a necessity. My day usually ends with dinner at the office. 

I think the biggest difference between the two companies has been the size—Dropbox was much smaller than Facebook when I joined, which was part of the draw. I’ve always been driven by impact, so the ability to help grow a company was and still is exciting.

Dropbox already has over 300 million users, and we’re playing in a high-growth market. We’re here to build a home for everyone's most important information and bring it to life—helping individuals and businesses access and collaborate on their documents, photos and more.

Our goal is to take away the pain from technology—we’re solving tough problems, and there’s still a lot of work to be done! 

“Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.” - William S. Burroughs

M&A is exciting but also challenging and, at times, stressful. It’s important to always keep a level head and trust your instinct. The above advice, for me, is a reminder to give your mind time to listen to your gut—and to then trust them both.

Face-to-face communication. Of course it’s important to stay in touch over email, but nothing replaces the efficiency of an in-person conversation. If I’m not traveling, I make it a priority to touch base with my team. 

The second big one for me is mentorship. My time at Facebook provided me with mentors when I was starting out, and it’s important to me that my team feels supported as they grow. On the inverse, it’s important for me to have access to strong leadership that can help to strengthen my skill set. Lucky for me, Dropbox has an amazing exec bench for me to learn from.

“Follow your passion” is common and solid advice, and perhaps a bit too simple. Instead, I’d say play to your strengths, keep in touch with your friends and network (don’t take meetings only when you’re looking for a job) and keep an open mind. My background in finance played to my academic strengths. I’ve also stayed in touch with my friends and colleagues who moved into tech, and kept my career options open as much as possible—all of which helped me when I wanted to make a transition.

What I look forward to and what is next for my career are one in the same. Dropbox is at a very exciting inflection point, and I look forward to playing a part in continuing our growth. I have an exciting opportunity to connect driven entrepreneurs with our team to help launch Dropbox into our second chapter.