Program Officer at Hillman Family Foundations.
Part of Advice from the Board, a HAIL series where we ask advisory board members the three questions students care about most: what skills to build, how to stand out, and what to go try. Here’s what Meredith had to say.
Meredith’s advice centers on the skills that stay useful no matter where technology goes: interpersonal communication, critical thinking, and collaboration. The technical skills, she says, you can mostly teach yourself. The harder and more valuable thing is putting it all together.
“You’ve got to be able to connect dots after you have all these connections. You need to start to connect dots.”
How you stand out follows from that: curiosity, an eagerness to learn, asking questions, and a willingness to put yourself out there even when it feels uncomfortable.
That leads to her favorite suggestion, which is to go do something a little outside your comfort zone. Even an improv class counts. On AI specifically, she recommends starting with a concrete lens: “I think about what are my repetitive tasks. What do I do in my day today that’s repetitive, and can AI help me with any of those?” It’s a practical way to begin instead of waiting for some grand use case.
Meredith spent 12 years at Pitt, across housing, public health, and the Institute of Politics, before moving to Hillman, and her approach to networking is simple: she rarely says no to a conversation. Her current focus is making sure AI doesn’t leave anyone behind, which makes her a good person to hear from if you’re drawn to AI policy, equity, or public-sector work.
Want more? Explore the rest of the Advice from the Board series.