Hunter Goldenberg, a VP software engineer at JPMorgan Chase, exemplifies the transformative power of an education that emphasizes exposure to multiple disciplines and out-of-the-box thinking. A proud 2018 graduate of the University of South Florida Judy Genshaft Honors College, Goldenberg's journey has been marked by resilience, intellectual curiosity, and a passion for helping others. Honors News recently caught up with Goldenberg to discuss the moments that shaped his path and to share insights for the next generation of Honors students.
Q: Reflecting on your time in the Judy Genshaft Honors College, what experiences have had the most profound impact on your personal or professional development?
I was fortunate in that I had the opportunity to experience many varied, yet complementary, sides of the Honors College – as a student through many classes and an employee with several hats. Each role unlocked a new perspective in me and fundamentally shaped my USF experience, but the person I grew into throughout my personal and professional life started on day one. Acquisition of Knowledge (AoK), the very first class all Honors students take, still influences my decisions and outlook.
For context, my senior year of high school was one of the worst years of my life. I was working part time for a fast-food chain when a coworker, who I had never even met, in an improperly channeled moment of anger with our management, struck my head from behind. One bad hit knocked me unconscious, concussed me, and left me with a condition called “post-concussion syndrome.” For months I was unable to sit up without intense pain, nausea, and vertigo – missing many of the classic high school traditions (prom, senior trip, etc.), but also effectively narrowing my future opportunities. Due to the limited network of neurologists included in the worker’s comp insurance, the dreams I had of moving to New York for college were no longer feasible. I ultimately decided on USF for its location and the scholarship I received, but I was bitter and jaded. The typical excitement and joy of moving out and starting university eluded me, and I genuinely, foolishly, thought my life was largely over.
Acquisition of Knowledge was the very first class I attended at USF. 9 a.m. Monday morning – my feet dragged my weary head across campus and into a very old, very dejected ALN building. My professor had arranged the seating in a typical round, Socrative style, and I parked myself in the back corner. Seventy-five minutes came and passed, and I walked away with little more than required reading and an essay assignment. Little did I know, the assigned book, Marcus Aurelius’s “Meditations,” would become the foundation for the rest of my collegiate and professional experience.
Until I took AoK, my outlook on life centered around the things which happened to me. My reactions were mere responses elicited from the good, or frankly more often bad, things life handed me. I existed in a perpetual state of semi-automatic reaction. The bleakness of my perspective fruited from the seeds of misfortune I saw myself as being subjected to – essentially a mindset of “I must be pessimistic because bad things will inevitably happen to me.” "Meditations," along with works from several other Stoics and their inheritors, opened my eyes to a viewpoint of controlling how I choose to respond to life circumstances. The Honors College, miraculously in my very first semester, started to change my worldview.
While I wouldn’t always take Honors College classes with the express purpose of growing as a person, AoK put me on a path of persistently finding the lessons in things. From an Honors science fiction film class, I learned how to network with candor and present my real self to people instead of a persona. From an Honors African history class, I learned that there is no equivalent to being in someone’s shoes, but by travelling and seeing their lives firsthand, I can start to understand in a way classrooms are unable to demonstrate. From a software engineering class in India, which I was only able to take thanks to a scholarship from the Honors College, I learned that I did not know how to truly listen, but that I could learn if I simply stop speaking. In my role as a technologist for the Honors College, I learned that I could market my technology skillset, and that I could consider it more than a hobby. Most significantly, from an Honors acting class, I learned to respect people who challenged me rather than see them as rivals – and ultimately met the most important person in the world to me, my soon-to-be wife.
Q: What aspects of your work do you find most fulfilling, and how have your diverse roles contributed to your overall growth and understanding of your career journey?
The eight or so years I’ve been working in technology have varied dramatically in their context, intensity, and intrigue. I feel very fortunate to have worked in the public and private sectors, from startup to large corporation, in such a short period of time. Ultimately, I’ve found that for me, none of that matters nearly as much as the people in those spaces. Technology has been a part of my life since I was born – my father was with Circuit City all the way to the end – and that meant I had access to computers from a very early age. In high school, before my concussion, I often helped my grandfather and his friends with simple tech issues; hooking up printers, fixing Wi-Fi issues, getting them set up on Facebook. I didn’t see a career in tech, but I loved helping people. I especially loved the feeling of knowing I had a hand in enabling access to something so foreign to its users that they had deemed it impossible. There’s a certain magic to bringing something into another person’s grasp, even something small like a printer, which they would have otherwise given-up on. That type of problem solving fuels me.
My best professional mentor, a colleague I met through the Honors College, taught me to always look for a problem statement in any work that I do. In the roles I’ve departed, the problem statement was not defined with a human perspective. I think it’s a simple paradigm, something we in tech call user-centric design, the idea that problems originate from the humans who are using the technology and its inability to meet their needs. It then becomes the duty of the engineer to create a solution to that problem in a way which measurably improves the existing status. I have seen many projects fail throughout my career, and almost always it is because the project did not deliver measurable business results. More than anything, I believe the juxtaposition of my desire to help people and improve their lives, regardless how significantly, against the reality of a results driven workplace, has been the key to my success thus far. Hopefully it will resonate into the future of my career.
Q: As you look ahead, what are your career aspirations, and how do you envision your field evolving over the next decade? What emerging trends excite you the most?
I doubt this will come as any surprise; machine learning (business abbreviated as ‘AIML’) is already proving to be the next disruptive wave in the ocean of tech innovation. I have been working professionally in the AIML space for five years and have been an enthusiast for ten. It has evolved at such a rapid rate that the models I wrote myself just two years ago are not only irrelevant now, but existing machine learning models can literally compose better ones in a fraction of the development time. Folks are divided within the space on whether this will ultimately be a net positive or negative, but we all agree its adoption is an inevitability. I highly doubt I will still be writing machine learning models a decade from now, but I do have confidence in the space continuing to grow in a way which requires human input. Quantum computing, a concept too dense to get into here, is almost certain to accelerate all our existing technology, machine learning included, at a breakneck pace. It is extremely promising, but not quite ready for everyday use yet.
Regarding my place in all of this, I don’t fully know yet. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time and the level of impact I have had at JPMorgan Chase & Co. thus far and would be happy to continue growing with the firm. I can tell you that wherever I am, whatever I’m doing, it will be with the goal in mind of helping people and making seemingly impossible things a reality.
Q: This fall, you hosted a career panel for Honors students centered on the JP Morgan Software Engineering program. Why is it important to share experiential learning opportunities with current students?
The panel event was our first foray into directly recruiting from the Judy Genshaft Honors College. I am extremely grateful to Dr. Krysta Banke as well as all the student employees who made it possible. I am presently the “Senior Sponsor” for JPMC’s USF recruiting and have been trying for years to get permission to source candidates from places other than directly from the College of Engineering. I like to think I am a good example of the caliber of engineers we can source from the Honors College who may not be majoring in Computer Science. It still makes me smile that we made that event happen, and there will definitely be more collaborations with the JGHC in the future.
To answer the question, it’s important to give students exposure to not only the realities of working in tech, but also the many thinking styles and people they will meet. I was originally on a pre-law track in undergrad, and I thought I had a serious passion for it. I loved the law-centric classes I took and was intrigued by the attorney lifestyle, so I decided to visit one of my professors at his practice. It took two visits for me to realize it wasn’t for me; the coursework he was teaching us was academically valuable, but not applicable. The reality of working in law did not fit my taste, and I quickly pivoted away from that path. Of course, I’m not sharing this to scare anyone away from law, but I do think the exposure that students get in their classes is an incomplete microcosm of the experience of working in a space. I hope that by visiting campus and giving students a glimpse into what we do, they can be better informed for their own path in life, and if they’re intrigued, we can get connected with them early on.
Q: What advice do you have for current Honors students?
The advice I had to learn the hard way: listen. When you really lean in and listen to what others are saying, rather than waiting for them to finish speaking so you can say your piece, your entire life will change. Suddenly you notice far more about the people around you, the hardships they deal with, the stressors on their lives, and you can more precisely and compassionately interact with them. You notice far more of the idiosyncrasies of tone and inflection, body language, and when people sound different or are not themselves. All those things make social interactions smoother, and working with long-time close colleagues, as well as difficult people, becomes easier. Give it enough time, and you’ll start listening to yourself better too, noticing your own quirks and the energy you exude. Having an honest relationship with yourself starts with listening to others.
I also implore everyone I meet to show gratitude, and I would be remiss if I did not do so. While their impacts on me are innumerable, the least I can do is quickly say thanks to all the wonderful folks from the Honors College who influenced my life and career. There are so many people, and I’m sure I will unintentionally miss some of them, but an earnest thank you to Ali Elamin, Dr. Leslie Bessant, C. David Frankel (rest in peace), Dr. Kevin Mackay, Dr. Charles Adams, Dr. Lindy Davidson, Dr. Cayla Lanier, Dr. Reginald Lucien, Megan Braunstein, Carter Harbert, Kate Ashmore, Dr. Krysta Banke, Judy Kane, and an extra special thank you to Dr. Michael Cross.