Once a chemistry major and now senior director of operations finance at Yahoo!, Glen Hastings ’93 says “your major is not [necessarily] your destiny.”

As a graduate of HMC, Hastings has proven that, regardless of your area of study in college, the learning instruments acquired during those four years are lifelong and applicable to a vast array of careers.

“HMC provided me with the ability to learn how to learn,” says Hastings. “I learned a lot of problem-solving approaches that I use on a day-to-day basis; you are pushed to go beyond your limits and comfort.”

No two days at Yahoo! are alike for Hastings.

He can be found tracking U.S. revenues, trying to hypothesize what advertising is not performing, working with his team members located in Burbank and New York, or working with a $300 million operating budget to plan products and engineering.

Working for the largest global online network of integrated services in the world, Hastings finds that his greatest challenges come from Yahoo!’s competitors.

“The Internet and media on the Internet are like the wild, wild west,” he says. “You never know how it’s going to shake out; it’s very dynamic.”

Hastings is proud of having the background to handle unexpected challenges.

But, more importantly, he is pleased with the teams he has built and the people he has mentored and had an impact on.

In the office, he is seen as the go-to guy—someone who can be trusted and who gives good advice and is helpful.

“Being smart is not enough,” Hastings says.

The ability to communicate with others and then combine that with one’s analysis of a problem, taking it apart and putting it back together differently, is a skill that has taken Hastings quite far.

“If you’ve done something but no one knows about it, there’s no point,” he often shares with Mudders.

He tells them that extreme intelligence—“intelligent arrogance,” as he calls it—does not necessarily guarantee success.

It’s not uncommon for HMC graduates to land jobs where they are faster and more intelligent than the people they work with.

But Mudders must remember that being “smarter does not equal better,” says Hastings.