Karen K. Ngo, BComm'20

A coffee chat is a simple idea.

Two people. A conversation. A chance to learn someone’s career story.

For Karen Ngo, BComm'20, those conversations have shaped nearly every stage of her career. They changed the way she approached university, helped her build a network at Microsoft and eventually inspired the resources she now shares with thousands of early careers and senior  professionals around the world.

Looking back, it's remarkable how many opportunities in Ngo's career began with someone willing to say yes to a cup of coffee, even when virtual.

When Ngo arrived at the University of Calgary's Haskayne School of Business in 2014, she believed success followed a fairly straightforward formula: work hard, earn good grades and graduate as soon as possible. Then someone challenged that thinking.

In her first year, Robert Liu, BComm'15, then president of the Haskayne International Business Students Association (IBSA), encouraged her to think about university differently. Academics were important, but relationships, practical experiences and a growth mindset compounded in ways she couldn’t fathom.

"It completely changed my perspective," Ngo says.

That conversation reshaped the rest of her university experience. She invested hundreds of hours into extracurriculars, eventually becoming the President of IBSA and Organizing Committee President for AIESEC Canada where she managed a $200,000 conference budget. These experiences helped her develop a strong resume for the UCalgary co-operative education program, where she began an internship with Husky Energy. 

While many students focus on learning the job, Ngo became just as interested in learning from the people around her. She invited every leader in her department for coffee, and asked about their careers, the decisions they had made and the lessons they wished they had learned earlier.

Those conversations helped her understand the organization, but they also changed the way she thought about her own future. When the internship was scheduled to end the following year, Ngo wasn't ready to leave. Rather than accepting it had simply run its course, she proposed staying on as a part-time contractor while completing her degree. Her mentor ended up becoming her sponsor, making it possible for her to be the first intern in the department to transition directly into that type of role.

Looking back, it was an early example of a habit that would define much of her career. If an opportunity didn't exist, Ngo wasn't afraid to ask whether it could. By the time she graduated from Haskayne, she had developed another habit as well: If she wanted to understand something, she found someone who did and asked a lot of questions.

Just two weeks after completing her final semester in Singapore, Ngo moved across Canada to start her career at Microsoft as a new graduate. Faced with the COVID-19 pandemic and the desire to thrive atop of the world's largest organizations, she did what had already become second nature. She started setting up coffee chats.

By her own estimate, she had 100 coffee chats during her first year at Microsoft. Some conversations focused on career advice, while others helped her better understand different parts of the business. Those conversations gave her a broader understanding of the company while introducing her to leaders whose careers she admired.

"I was always curious," Ngo says. "I wanted to understand how everything fit together."

Many of the leaders she admired had a remarkable ability to tell the story of their careers. They didn't simply list job titles or accomplishments. They explained the experiences that shaped them, the skills they had developed and the impact they hoped to make next.

Building on the career blog she launched in 2017, Ngo developed what she calls her Career Walking Deck System. The career storytelling approach became a way to organize her experiences, communicate her strengths and explain the value she could bring to any  opportunity.

When she expressed interest in working at Microsoft’s U.S. headquarters, many told her to be patient and gain more experience first. She decided to follow her energy and applied for a more senior,  corporate communications role focused on storytelling. She brought her Career Walking Deck to the interview, and the hiring manager later mentioned she was the only candidate who had prepared something like it. Despite not having any communications background or experience, he took a bet on her for the role.

In the six years since graduating from UCalgary, Ngo has earned five promotions, relocated from Canada to Microsoft's headquarters in the United States and now works in the Office of the Chairman and CEO. From the outside, it can appear to have been a remarkably smooth rise, but Ngo is the first to admit it hasn't always felt that way.

She speaks openly about anxiety, self-doubt and the tendency to compare herself to others. For years, success meant collecting achievements: good grades, promotions and new opportunities. Eventually, she realized those milestones weren't enough on their own.

"In school I've always just strived to get the highest grades, accomplish the most," she says. "But then as you start adulting, you realize there are so many other aspects of life that matter."

That realization changed more than the way she viewed success. It changed why she wanted to succeed.

Throughout her career, Ngo found herself asking mentors the same question after they had invested time in her: How can I thank you for your time or pay it forward?

The answer was almost always the same: help someone else.

Long before she considered herself an expert, Ngo began sharing what she was learning with students and early-careers like herself. She wrote about networking, interviewing and career development, offering practical advice, templates and lessons she learned from mentors. What began as a personal career blog has since grown into an online community of 40,000+ followers and career resources  that have been viewed 70M+ times.

One of her best-known resources remains the Career Walking Deck which she has presented on to 11,000+ people including retired NFL players, military veterans, and Harvard students. Originally inspired by her early conversations at Microsoft, it has since helped thousands of others prepare for interviews, coffee chats, and promotions.

For Ngo, however, impact isn't measured by blog traffic or course registrations. It's felt by the messages she receives from people whose lives have changed because they decided to tell their career stories. A student lands their first internship. An introvert finally reaches out for the coffee chat they’d been putting off. A military veteran or transitioning professional accepts a job they never thought they were qualified for.

Those are the moments she remembers.

"What actually makes my life and career meaningful," Ngo says, "is knowing that what I have learned in my career can actually help someone else with theirs."

Looking back, connecting with others was the common thread. A fourth-year student challenged a first-year to think differently about university. Leaders and colleagues welcomed a young professional’s curiosity. And wise mentors shared their advice and experiences without expecting anything in return.

Today, Ngo sees herself as part of that same cycle. Every conversation that helped shape her career is another opportunity to help shape someone else's.

As our interview came to a close, it surfaced one final time. Instead of wrapping up the conversation, Ngo began asking questions of her own to myself. She said she wanted to know about other alumni, the stories they shared and the qualities they seemed to have in common.

It was a fitting end to a conversation about mentorship and curiosity. Even after spending an hour reflecting on her own journey, Ngo's instinct wasn't to focus on herself. She wanted to keep learning.

"I have a place in this world, and it's to support other people."

Early Achievement Award 

The UCalgary Alumni Arch Award for Early Career Achievement recognizes professional accomplishment or creative leadership in any field by graduates aged 30 or younger before the end of the presentation year. The award honours recent graduates whose career success has brought distinction to themselves, credit to the university and real benefit to their communities.