Alumni Spotlight: Simmons Siblings
The Simmons family from Williamsville, New York – Ian and Andrew ’05 and Emily ’08 – contributed in countless ways to Northwood during their years at Northwood. Smart, athletic, and witty, they led on the fields and ski slopes, in the classrooms, through a host of positions in student government and the judiciary board. They raised the level of everything from living room conversations (often arguments about politics or sports or the worth of a class) to the level of respectfulness on their dorm corridors and the tightness of the teams they played for. I had all of them in my AP Lit class, and their curiosity and insightful, forcefully expressed opinions made me a better teacher, for sure. After Northwood they gravitated to some of the best New England colleges (Ian – Williams; Andrew – Boston College; Emily – Brown). Their success at those schools led them to careers in law and business. Their answers to our questions reveal their impressive energy and positive perspectives.
Emily Simmons ‘08
What exactly is the nature of your work in your current career?
Currently, I am based in San Francisco, working as Head of Brand, Merchandising, and Customer Experience for a furniture startup. I joined the team as employee #12, helped launch our second and third cities, raise Series A fundraising, and grow the team to 40 individuals. Like many roles in startups, my role is full of variety and "wearing many hats". I work with international factories to plan and select our furniture merchandise, partner with our internal design team to craft messaging and advertisements, run creative direction for 3D renderings and brand assets, oversee our marketing budget and e-commerce site metrics, and manage our in-house customer support and loyalty team.
What led you to choose the field you have entered?
I've always found myself drawn to activities where I could be creative and hands-on. At Northwood, this meant planning school events, creating Halloween costumes, or decorating my dorm room walls. In college and graduate school, I again found myself gravitating towards jobs where I could work on tangible products -- art gallery curation, magazine publishing, hotel management, interior design. Building a furniture brand combines this love of creative work with the innovation and fast pace of the startup world.
What is the most interesting aspect of your work/study?
I think the most interesting part of my work is living at the intersection of business and aesthetics. In the earlier years of my career, I worked in management consulting and analytics. Now, I've transitioned to running the creative and qualitative sides of the business. This background has given me a unique perspective in connecting creative work to business results. Thinking about the ROI of design, what creative concepts drive performance, or questioning what qualitative factors impact a brand's success -- this is the fun stuff!
How well did your college serve you in preparation for your career?
My coursework -- first focused on Mechanical Engineering, then switched to English Lit -- gave me a language and framework to approach getting any type of project done. College was a chance to develop a personal approach to getting work done. For instance, my work habits, discussion style, and appetite for research, group assignments, or technical reports. Additionally, it was a chance to build confidence in my particular interests. Coming in as an athlete especially, I found college to be revealing just how broad and diverse others' interests could be. Some classmates obsessed over woodworking and silk-screen printing; other classmates were deep into computer programming or international politics. By seeing so much diversity of thought, I came away more aware and embracing of my unique interests.
What advice do you have for Northwood students relative to choosing a college and career?
When choosing a college, follow your gut in picking a school where you believe you'll be able to be your full self and explore widely. There is no other time where you will have unbridled options to let your curiosity run risk-free. After college, don't assume that your first job will define your career outright. Choosing a career is a multi-year journey. It is smart to start your career by getting hard skills to give you a foundation, but constantly be working to assess where your "zone of genius" lies. While your first job won't be where you end up long-term, it is a very important stepping stone to help you get into the right lane when your future opportunity arises -- you need to do the hard thinking on what opportunity you're looking for though. Finally, and more generally, think of every experience you have as a chance to learn something about yourself. I'm continually surprised how many casual activities and distant memories come to mind when I reflect on formative experiences. Write everything down!
Ian Simmons ‘05
What exactly is the nature of your work in your current career?
Like Andrew, I also work at KPMG (twins!). I am a Manager in the Mergers and Acquisitions Tax practice at KPMG in Boston, Massachusetts. I help people understand the tax impact of business decisions they make.
What led you to choose the field you have entered?
My path to my current career was a bit circuitous. While I was in law school, I took a Federal Income Tax class and I really enjoyed the field. I ended up taking every tax class that the school offered. However, I did not immediately start my career working in tax law. During law school, I spent time working for a law practice that was primarily focused on criminal and family law. It was a very interesting experience, and I loved creating persuasive arguments and helping people. After law school, I began working for a start-up company as their general legal counsel. I learned a lot from this; how to be independent and do the work required to grow professionally. After a few years, I had an opportunity to join KPMG and pursue my passion from law school.
What is the most interesting aspect of your work/study?
I have really enjoyed every step in my career. At each stage, I feel that the one thing that has remained constant is that creative problem solving has always played a role. The reason I really enjoy my current career in tax law is that the work is very much like a puzzle or riddle. You have to understand the rules and the facts at issue, and it often requires you to reimagine what you think you know to come to the answer. I also really enjoy the people I work with. They are extremely supportive both personally and professionally.
How well did your college serve you in preparation for your career?
While law school was a very important part of where I am today, I have to say that college was the key. My collegiate experiences taught me to think critically and to consider different perspectives. The skills I developed in college serve me extremely well to this day. I don't think I would be where I am without my college experience.
What advice do you have for Northwood students relative to choosing a college and career?
My advice to current Northwood students would be to try new things. You may go to college thinking that you know exactly what you want to do. I went to college confident that I wanted to be a doctor. I quickly realized that I did not enjoy Biology and Chemistry nearly as much as I did Economics, Math, and Art History. Whatever motivates you, you owe it to yourself to give it your all.
Andrew Simmons ‘05
What exactly is the nature of your work in your current career?
I am a tax lawyer and a Managing Director at KPMG LLP, one of the “Big 4” accounting firms (along with Ernst & Young, PwC, and Deloitte). I advise clients and other KPMG tax professionals on complex tax issues arising primarily in connection with corporate mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures.
I am part of the Washington National Tax practice at KPMG, which is generally a collection of subject-matter experts in various areas of tax law. My particular area of expertise is cross-border mergers & acquisitions. Many of my colleagues joined the practice from large law firms, the Treasury Department, and the Internal Revenue Service. In addition to advising clients and other KPMG tax professionals, I do a lot of work around “practice development,” which includes delivering firm-wide training, writing articles for tax publications, and working with the New York State Bar Association and American Bar Association in drafting comment letters to the Treasury Department.
What led you to choose the field you have entered?
They say the only things certain in life are death and taxes, and I didn’t have the stomach to become a mortician for the sake of job security.
Now that my sarcastic answer is out of the way…
When I started college, I enrolled in the pre-med program but quickly discovered that I didn’t love science as much as I thought I did. I remember feeling a bit rudderless at the time, as all through high school I wanted to be a physician. I met with my advisor for guidance on what major to pursue when he asked me “what section of the bookstore do you go to first?” Based on this advice, I switched my major to history at the end of my freshman year. My studies as a history major involved a lot of argumentative writing, to which law school seemed like a semi-natural extension (not as natural as a historian, obviously).
Once at law school, I wasn’t completely sure what field of law I wanted to pursue. A friend had been encouraging me to give tax law a chance, believing that it is too quickly dismissed by most law students. Even though it is a field that is characterized (somewhat unfairly) as dull, I found it extremely interesting. It didn’t hurt that I took to it pretty well either. After finishing law school, I did a Master of Laws in Taxation, and from there I joined KPMG.
What is the most interesting aspect of your work/study?
Of all the areas of law in the United States and around the world, no area changes as often or as dramatically as tax law. In the last 100 years, there have been four major overhauls of the tax laws in the United States (1939, 1954, 1986, and 2017); no other area of law has had that frequency of change. Even in years where there are no wholesale changes, almost every budget reconciliation act of Congress includes some tweak to the tax law.
With all of this change, “knowing the tax law” is only temporary, requiring practitioners to understand the new rules and how those rules interact with other rules. It is a constant process of learning. It also provides a lot of opportunities to take part in developing tax policy through writing articles and submitting comment letters to the government.
Also, being in my particular practice, we tend to see some of the more complex or novel tax issues. It is certainly exciting (in a tax law sense) to come across these issues, as it requires a lot of critical and creative thinking (it is not as simple as pointing to the applicable rule).
How well did your college serve you in preparation for your career?
What I found most beneficial about Boston College was the willingness of professors to assist me in my development as a writer. One of the keys to being a good lawyer is an aptitude for reading and writing (I credit my reading skills to Reno). If you sought out their guidance, the professors were more than willing to help. There were a number of professors in particular who genuinely took an interest in my development. All I had to do was go to their office hours and seek their guidance.
I also think that Boston College had an excellent variety of courses. While some colleges focus solely on liberal arts (which, as a history major, I appreciate), Boston College also had a school of management. While I was not enrolled in the school of management, I was free to take courses such as business law, employment law, and environmental law to gain exposure to what law practice might be like. I think the combination of being a history major while still having access to some “career-driven” types of courses really helped in giving me a sense of direction.
Maybe most importantly, Boston College was just a good fit for me. It was just what I was looking for in terms of size of the school, class size, environment, location, athletics, and overall student life. It put me in a position to succeed, setting me up well for law school and my career.
What advice do you have for Northwood students relative to choosing a college and career?
For college choice, find the best fit. It should be a place where you can succeed while still being challenged intellectually. It should also be a place where you can see yourself living for the next four years. Don’t get too wrapped up in things like rankings or the prestige of your college choices. After a couple of years into your career, nobody will care where you went to college. What matters a lot more is what you did with your time there. While it is always good to want to go to the best school possible, it has to be the best school for you.
For career choice, if you had told me while I was at Northwood that I would be a lawyer (let alone a tax lawyer), I would have been gobsmacked. At that time, I couldn’t conceive of an alternative for my career other than becoming a physician. It was an incredibly difficult decision to decide that my future was not in medicine, but I don’t regret it at all. You will experience a tremendous amount of personal growth through college and even beyond, so keep an open mind about what you are looking for in a career.