The Meaning of Success

How to thank the people who got YOu here

I met Chloe in the Literature of Success class at Penn that was the inspiration for this blog.  Chloe and I have grown closer over the 7 years since that class and I had the opportunity to learn more about her perspective on personal success.

Chloe grew up in Hong Kong and felt that the city’s hustle and bustle environment has helped her develop a very broad and global perspective with an itch to keep moving and achieving. She studied business at Penn and worked on strategy at Morgan Stanley before a brief stint in analytics at Razorfish, which sparked her continued interest in AI and machine learning. Chloe is now a second year at Harvard Business School with plans to work in her dream career in AI in San Francisco following graduation.

For Chloe, she emphasized surrounding herself with good people and wanting to ensure the people who helped get her to where she is today understand that she values their relationship. She believes strongly in expressing gratitude to her parents and all the people who have supported her.

Chloe boils success down to three things:

1. being a good person and letting the people you love know you love them

2. having enduring impact, which in her case is thought leadership and shaping policies in AI

3. loving yourself and gaining personal happiness, something she tries to continuously practice

To achieve these three things, she surrounds herself with good people who she admire and can learn from while ensuring she has the agency to decide how she spends her time—on developing her many interests, including in AI.