I began my adventure into anthropology as an undergraduate at the University of Notre Dame (Go Irish!) as a Management-Entrepreneurship major in the Mendoza College of Business. As a social science requirement, I took Introduction to Anthropology (ANTH 109) with Professor James McKenna. I fell in love--not only with Dr. McKenna, who is probably the nicest man alive--but with the field of anthropology and the department at Notre Dame. A minor steam-rolled into a second major which morphed into a second degree and, by spring of 2009, I was graduating with both my BA and BBA and graduate school-bound.
It was a last minute decision whether to go the business (job) route or to pursue a PhD. in Anthropology. I realized in my final undergraduate summer, that the only thing about my internship at a tech-firm in Indianapolis that I actually enjoyed was the participant-observation and analysis involved in my HR project. Under the encouragement and guidance of my advisors Vania Smith-Oka and Rahul Oka, I picked programs to apply to and was ultimately admitted to the University of Pennsylvania.
I arrived at graduate school knowing I wanted to blend both of my distinct undergraduate backgrounds and interests. At first I dabbled in the formation and codification of organizational culture in small start-up firms. I then moved on to professional networking organizations in Philadelphia geared towards young professionals, which is where I was introduced to the concept of coworking--and more specifically, Independents Hall. Follow my live field notes at maddiecoworks.tumblr.com