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career paths - uw geography alumni and friends

CSX Transportation Senior Account Manager, Paper & Forest Products - Julie L. Anderson

1. Please describe your current work. I've only been in my current job for a few months, so I'm still learning about the railroad & my customers' business. I enjoy learning new things. Even though my position is sales, I get involved in service issues, information technology, service design, & anything else the customer brings up.

2. What drew you into geography? I found it extremely interesting why businesses/people located in a particular place & factors that determined whether they were successful, or stayed in that place.

3. Please describe your educational path. I really enjoyed the geography classes I took as a freshman (originally to fulfill social science credits), but I hadn't intended to major in it when I started. I didn't focus on a particular area of geography, but it prepared me as well as any other major to get a job that required a degree but not any specific area of study. (I now have a masters degree in business administration.)

4. Are you currently in a job where your training in geography is useful? Not currently, but in my first job it was. Geography of transportation & ocean transportation were initially useful (understood arguments for/against conferences, concepts of load centers, etc.). It sounds mundane, but it's been very useful to know how to read maps.

5. How did you find out about your current position? Originally, I went to work for Sea-Land Service, a container shipping line. In my senior year, I wrote a paper on shipping between Alaska and Japan, and interviewed a manager at Sea-Land for the paper. Sea-Land offered me a job after I graduated based on the knowledge they had of me from that interview.

6. What kind of an organization are you working in now? A railroad - located in the East.

7. Are you working with other geographers or are you alone in your organization? It's a large corporation & I'm sure there are other people with a geography background, but it is not something the company looks for when they hire.

8. If there is potential for professional growth for you or other geographers with your current employer, what kind of a career path is it? Experience, not education, is the main driver for a career with my company after the initial hire.

9. What advice would you give to undergrads considering geography as a potential major? Don't do what I did. I majored in geography just because I was interested in it & enjoyed it. Today, I would be more realistic & have a goal of what I wanted to accomplish with a geography degree - an area of work I would like to pursue.

10. What advice would you give to college geography majors about what courses to take or which skills to get before they graduate? Computer skills. Communication skills - both verbal & written.

11. What advice would you give to college seniors about their prospects with a geography degree? Many people don't really know what a geography degree is about (even if they haven't confused it with geology). So, unless you are applying for a job specifying a geographer, it's good to have a BRIEF explanation of what you studied.

12. What has your career path been, up to this point? I have spent the last 18 years in transportation. I started in ocean shipping, then intermodal transportation, then, starting recently, working for a railroad. I started out in operations, doing everything from supervising longshore on the night shift in a marine yard to running a rail terminal. In a large corporation, it is easy to get "pigeonholed" and it took me a long time to transition from operations to the commercial side. I made the change by first managing a customer service center and now sales. I have always worked several lateral positions before getting promoted. I would not be honest if I didn't admit that freight transportation is still very much a male-dominated field.

13. What do you anticipate that your career path will be in the next 10 years or more? It will depend on my willingness to relocate again (moved 5 times so far), and how much I enjoy my current work.