Kelly
Chen
Software Engineer at Bloomberg
"When Doing Everything Right Stops Working: Building Career Leverage Before You Have a Title"
"When Doing Everything Right Stops Working: Building Career Leverage Before You Have a Title"
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Session: When Doing Everything Right Stops Working: Building Career Leverage Before You Have a Title
Are you doing everything “right” but still struggling to stand out in your career?In today’s competitive tech and fintech landscape, traditional career signals—grades, internships, networking—are increasingly inflated, making it harder to differentiate yourself.
In this session, Kelly Chen reframes the early-career journey by focusing on leverage over visibility. You’ll learn why networking alone isn’t enough, and how quiet, compounding actions, like removing friction, owning ambiguity, and translating across teams, create real career leverage.
Using practical mental models and frameworks, this talk will help attendees:
- Understand why the old career playbook is failing
- Identify high-leverage opportunities that multiply impact
- Reframe early-career challenges as opportunities to scale influence before you have a title
This session is ideal for students, new graduates, and early-career professionals who want to see the bigger picture, think strategically, and act in ways that create compounding career impact. Walk away with new ways to evaluate your work, your growth, and the signals that actually matter.
Key Takeaways
- Attendees will understand why traditional career signals like grades, internships, and networking are no longer enough to stand out in today’s competitive tech and fintech job market.
- Walk away with a set of reflective questions and frameworks that help identify high-leverage opportunities, prioritize work that matters, and stand out before holding a formal title.
- Gain practical strategies for navigating early-career transitions, including moving from internships to full-time roles, and making work visible without relying solely on self-promotion.
Bio
Kelly Chen is a software engineer at Bloomberg with internship experience at Visa and JPMorganChase. She has been involved in women-in-tech initiatives since high school, founding her college Girls Who Code chapter and collaborating with organizations like Rewriting the Code. Through attending networking events, leading initiatives, and navigating early-career transitions herself, Kelly has developed a keen understanding of how early-career professionals can create impact, build leverage, and stand out before holding formal titles.