My First Job: A-P(Annie Pierre) Hurd, director of strategic development

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July 9, 2006

My First Job: A-P(Annie Pierre) Hurd, director of strategic development

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A-P(Annie Pierre) Hurd

Current position: Director of strategic development, McKinstry Co., a Seattle mechanical and electrical contractor.

First job: Worked at an ice-cream store and invented a new flavor of ice cream: banana peanut butter. I'm a mechanical engineer, but I also have a degree in English literature. In college, I was managing editor of the campus newspaper and I liked the rush of the deadline-driven environment — so when I finished school, I went to work on a trading floor [in Toronto] because trading has a similar "rush" to it, and it turns out thermodynamics math (from mechanical engineering) is the same math you use to price financial derivatives. Eventually I decided that trading was too specialized — so when an opportunity came up, I went into manufacturing and operations.

What I learned: From scooping ice cream, I learned how hard it is to stand on your feet all day. I now have tremendous respect for people who work on their feet. From working on the trading floor I learned that making piles of money doesn't always give people more options: the constraints of an expensive lifestyle can be just as binding as those of a moderate salary.

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