A year ago, unexpectedly looking for a job, Honors College alumna Meadow Clendenin found herself sitting in front of a Toyota interview panel explaining what set her apart from the thick
\nstack of other candidates. The answer? Her Honors College thesis, written 20 years before.
\n\u201cIt jumped off my resume because I didn\u2019t have experience working in the auto industry, but I
\nhad spent more than a year researching marketing in the U.S. and Japanese auto industries and
\nhad a minor in Japanese language and culture,\u201d Meadow says. \u201cWhen they asked, \u2018Why do you
\nwant to work for Toyota?\u2019 I was able to say, \u2018This is a full circle moment for me. I was
\ngraduating college 20 years ago presenting my research on marketing practices in the United
\nStates and Japanese auto industries, and now I\u2019m looking at working for a Japanese auto
\ncompany that is a real marketing powerhouse.\u2019\u201d
\nToyota hired her as managing counsel. Her argument had compelled, and the circle was
\ncomplete.<\/p>\n
Meadow graduated from Oregon State in 1999 with an HBA in international business and
\nJapanese. She went to business school and thought she would go into an industry career, before
\nrealizing she loved traveling for fun more than for business.<\/p>\n
She worked for Marsh, a professional services company, in Portland for five years, eventually
\nbecoming assistant vice president there. Her experience had piqued an interest in the law, and
\nshe decided to head to law school, earning her J.D. from the Emory University School of Law in
\n2007. She wanted to become a deal lawyer, so she moved to Dallas, where she worked for
\nMcGuireWoods, a large firm, and then a private equity fund \u2013 which began closing the business
\nshe supported in August, 2017 and led her to that full-circle moment.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
[aesop_image img=”http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/files\/2018\/10\/MeadowClendenin-Linkedin.jpg” panorama=”off” align=”center” lightbox=”off” caption=”A recent headshot of Meadow” captionposition=”center” revealfx=”off” overlay_revealfx=”off”]<\/p>\n
\u201cThings have a way of working themselves out,\u201d she says. \u201cI couldn\u2019t have predicted it.\u201d
\nFor her honors thesis, Meadow worked with Steve Kim, a professor of marketing at the time, on
\na cross-cultural study of marketing practices. \u201cHe needed help doing marketing research. It was
\neasier to focus on one industry, so the auto industry made a lot of sense.\u201d Plus, she says, \u201cI love
\ncars. The first thing I did when I graduated, I bought myself a Lexus, which is Toyota\u2019s luxury
\nbrand,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Meadow also had a background in Japanese, not only a minor in the language, but also
\nexperience living in Japan over summers. She would visit her mother, who was the director of an
\nEnglish program in Kobe, Japan. There, Meadow took college-level Japanese classes before
\nninth grade. She continued studying Japanese during her senior year at a high school in Portland
\nand then at Oregon State. \u201cSo when I was looking for a topic, a comparative study between the
\nU.S. and Japan made sense,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
The cultural knowledge that led her to her thesis with Dr. Kim served her well as she began
\nworking at a company heavily influenced by Japanese culture.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne example is Kaizen, or continuous improvement. I was already familiar with that concept
\nbecause of research I had done with my thesis. It was nice to walk into a company, even though the industry was brand new to me, where I had that knowledge. A lot of American companies
\nhave a different mentality \u2013 maybe various viewpoints may be considered, but the boss
\nultimately makes the decision. When working in a more consensus-driven culture, more
\ndeference and consideration is paid to what the actual group response is to an idea.\u201d
\nMeadow says Toyota is one of the most diverse places she has ever worked, and its inclusive
\nculture contributes to that diversity. \u201cThe legal industry as a whole has struggled with diversity,
\nespecially with how to retain women lawyers. Toyota has done a great job attracting diverse
\nworkers and supporting the fact that people should not just live to work but work to live,\u201d
\nMeadow says.<\/p>\n
Her interview with Toyota was not the first time her thesis has helped her: \u201cEven in law school,
\nit helped me write my way onto the Emory Law Journal.\u201d One could get in the journal either by
\nhaving outstanding grades or through great writing, and, while her grades were respectable, she
\nhad to complete a write-on project to earn her spot. \u201cI was going on vacation after the first year
\nof law school. Usually to write on, people had two or three weeks. I had 10 days, but I did the
\nwrite-on project and earned a spot on the law journal. I had already written a thesis; it helped
\nprepare me for this rigorous writing project.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another Honors College experience she has relied on over the years was a course with Carole
\nCrateau, a writing professor in the Honors College from 1995 to 2003. Meadow says that she
\nremembers one particular day in Carole\u2019s class, which was one of the first the college offered.
\n\u201cWe were sitting in class one day breaking down one sentence, analyzing it, making it more
\nconcise, to convey the same amount of information in fewer words. That resonates with me
\nevery single day as a lawyer. It\u2019s really hard to convey complicated ideas concisely. Carole
\nhelped me to be analytical, really self-analytical, to actually make sure that every sentence has a
\nmeaning and a purpose for being on paper. Especially as a lawyer, the meaning of each word is
\nreally important. It\u2019s such a simple exercise, but I had never sat down and analyzed sentence
\nstructure in that way. It\u2019s so helpful to have that skill.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meadow acknowledges that for many students, this kind of intensity and the honors thesis can
\nseem like an insurmountable obstacle and a potentially overwhelming time commitment. But,
\nshe says, \u201cFor me, as hard as it was to complete my thesis, it clearly has paid dividends.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A year ago, unexpectedly looking for a job, Honors College alumna Meadow Clendenin found herself sitting in front of a Toyota interview panel explaining what set her apart from the thick stack of other candidates. The answer? Her Honors College thesis, written 20 years before. \u201cIt jumped off my resume because I didn\u2019t have experience […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8345,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1205,645351,82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stories","category-alumni-and-friends","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8345"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3166"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3267,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3166\/revisions\/3267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}