What if we imagined the whole population of the world as a village of just 100 people?
This question, from David J. Smith’s “If the World Were a Village,” would change twelve-year-old Julia Hobbs’ life—though as a Hillbrook 6th grader, she didn’t know it yet. “It shrank the world into a hundred people—what languages they spoke, their nationalities, what they ate for dinner. And the language page really got me.” With all of the world’s conversations reduced to 100 households, she learned, nine people would speak English, seven would speak Spanish—and twenty-one people would speak a dialect of Chinese, sixteen of which would be in Mandarin. Julia was taking Spanish at Hillbrook at the time, and the fictional village in the story left a significant impression on her keen and growing mind: one-fifth of the world’s population was speaking a language she didn’t know. “So I started taking Mandarin classes on the weekends—it seemed very reasonable to start taking Mandarin at age 12. And that curiosity of other cultures, other languages, and how other people operate really fueled me over the next eight years in high school and college.” Julia would spend her formative years studying abroad, learning Mandarin and Arabic, and traveling the world as much as she could. “I grew up in a wonderful community—that is, California, and Hillbrook—but I just didn’t have a sense of what things looked like anywhere else. And so I went to go find out.”
That unflagging curiosity and desire to discover the world have been recurring themes in Julia’s life—a love of adventure and a faith in gut feelings that buoyed her through moments of triumph and challenge. Her first introduction to the latter arrived with college admissions—faced with the unexpected prospect of not attending her first-choice, she took it as a bend in the road instead of a setback. Johns Hopkins University, she discovered, was where she was meant to be all along. “It was just the best thing in my life,” she says. “I was super intellectually stimulated, and the people were really interesting. It was probably a much better experience than I would have had at the [other] university I applied to!” A lifelong planner and organizer, the experience taught Julia that life never changes our path without bringing unexpected gifts. “I realized that I can’t be living in the now and only thinking about what might get me to four years from now. And so I started having these unexpected experiences—when you sort of let go of control a little bit and trust your gut a little bit more, great things can happen. Sometimes plans don’t work out, but in the most beautiful way.”
When you sort of let go of control a little bit and trust your gut a little bit more, great things can happen. Sometimes plans don’t work out, but in the most beautiful way.
Through her Mandarin professor at Johns Hopkins, she discovered an extraordinary job opening: helping to build a brand-new college in Hong Kong. “I could move to New York and work in banking, energy, and oil investments—or I could just spend a year helping create a college in a new country.” Julia found herself faced with the quintessential young person’s dilemma: head over heart, a safe decision against an unknown outcome. “I thought, if not now, when? Going to New York and working in investment banking would have been perfectly fine—I probably would have had a lovely time gallivanting around that city. But my gut was telling me to go have an adventure.”
That adventure, originally meant to last twelve months, would become a seven-year residency as she discovered new opportunities and fell in love with Hong Kong’s singular culture, people, and city life. “It can be exhausting living abroad, don’t get me wrong,” she says. “Hong Kong as a city is a sensory overload. But it’s just an incredible place.” Learning how to live in a new country, she found, is a dance between learning new ways of being while subconsciously searching for familiar ones. “I was relatively worldly, or so I thought—I’d studied abroad, and I’d traveled quite a bit. But nothing made me feel more American than living in Hong Kong.” She recalls going to a local meat market in search of pork to make carnitas. “I took a printout of a pig to show what piece of pork I wanted, and sort of pointed at the parts of the picture. And it didn’t translate—I have no idea what kind of pork I got! And so you kind of just learn to roll with things like that.”
As the months unfolded, Julia discovered that cultural connection extends far beyond language or curiosity—it finds deeper roots with giving and personal time. “I thought I would only be in Hong Kong for a year. I had never seen it as home,” she says. But as a new job opportunity added another year to her timeline, something shifted internally. “I was at the airport in Boston, and I suddenly thought, I really need to start interacting with this city more. I want to give back to this community that gave me a lot last year.” Over the next six years, she joined a flag football team, eventually becoming president of Hong Kong’s American Football League; she cofounded a nonprofit for college-aged kids, and discovered new friends (including one of her former teachers from Hillbrook, Jodi Kittle). Bit by bit, the city and people opened to her in new, meaningful ways. “It was a magical shift.”
A career with a focus on DEI was not born out of a specific desire or goal, but by Julia’s commitment to listening to her gut when it counted—a decision that has continued to evolve with her over the years. (“I don’t mean to say that my career path hasn’t been deliberate,” she says. “But I’ve really started to believe that if I see an opportunity that I think is really interesting, that I think is going to challenge me, keep me engaged, and introduce me to great people, that’s going to get me where I want to be in ten years anyway.”) For many young people forging a career path in a changing world, finding mission-aligned companies has become a key focus. A week after her return to the United States, Julia’s own DEI journey entered a challenging, eye-opening chapter in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. “I spent my last summer before my MBA program joining groups for social justice, reading a lot of books, and watching a lot of videos. The more I learned, the more horrified I became—one, that I didn’t know about all of this beforehand, and two, that I’d never spent my time fighting against the system and supporting my friends. I grew up with the idea of being colorblind— an idea that’s actually way more harmful.”
As both her education and job search evolved in response to the changing times, she found herself casting a critical eye at companies whose commitment to DEI seemed to begin and end with a public statement. Campus recruiting events provided a micro-study of company values in action: “I looked for companies that looked like they celebrated the people as they were. You have to look at who a company is putting in front of you. Is it a diverse group? Are they saying interesting things? Does it sound like they had talking points, or did they sound like they’re speaking authentically about their own experiences?” An MBA leadership class “Beyond Diversity: the Fundamentals of Inclusive Leadership” at Kellogg provided further inspiration, tackling DEI at a managerial level. Julia learned that a key mistake companies make is an over-focus on recruiting, without a plan to support the sudden influx of new experiences, histories, and culture. “My professor always said, diversity is about counting heads, and inclusivity is about making heads count. Bringing in under-represented groups is great, but not if the business isn’t remotely prepared to mentor or support them—gender-wise, race-wise, socioeconomically. Diversity can’t just be about hiring.”
I looked for companies that looked like they celebrated the people as they were. You have to look at WHO a company is putting in front of you.
Eventually, Julia’s search led her to Bain & Company, a “Big Three” consulting firm connected to her MBA program at Kellogg. “The more I talked with people about Bain’s consulting work in DEI, the more I realized how cool it was—you get to go into the largest companies in the world and change them, faster than you would ever be able to change them from the inside. People at Bain have the ears of Fortune 100 CEOs, and they’re helping them arrive at what they need to be thinking about. And I love that. And then on top of that, you’re surrounded by people who are incredibly smart, incredibly driven, and super curious. At every moment my gut was telling me that this was going to be a lot of work, but it was going to be a lot of fun.”
While her first week was a challenging one, it was a well-timed case study of great company values in action: finding herself on a team that wasn’t a good fit, Julia asked a mentor for help; instead of dismissing her concerns, the company did something radical: they thanked her sincerely for being honest—and moved her to a team that suited her strengths and her real, authentic self. “I hadn’t said, hey, put me on a new team. I had just let them know that I was struggling,” she says. “But Bain appreciates that kind of honesty, because they know that happy people do better work.” It was a new version of the world-as-a-village—a person-sized example of the life-changing, career-shaping power of inclusivity.
At Bain, Julia’s team helps companies discover ways to create and maintain a healthy workplace culture—a challenge within a challenge, as it requires company leaders to engage in new or unfamiliar ways. “The trajectory we’re on is going to be a long one, and it’s going to require shocks to the system that some people may never be comfortable with. Companies come to us and say, we need help with our diversity programs, which of course is great. But usually the problem is far more pervasive than they realize. It’s not just looking out and seeing a lot of white faces—there’s usually something entrenched in the way that you work that’s not diverse or equitable. And only companies that are really open to hearing that are the ones that are going to succeed.” Additionally, the employers who lean into DEI initiatives are in a better position to attract the incoming workforce: Gen-Z. “They are not to be trifled with,” Julia says firmly. “They won’t stand for less, and companies should be prepared for that. We’re handing them a world that is not okay, and finally people are starting to acknowledge it.”
Through the years and miles and adventures, Julia’s Hillbrook roots remain a source of joy. “That campus is magical. Hillbrook really stays with you,” she says. On a visit to campus with Head of School Mark Silver in early 2021, she recalled moments and lessons from her eight years as a Hillbrook student—especially her creative projects, including a claymation film (“it was awful!” she says with a laugh), screen printing, woodshop projects, and a pottery wheel class, a practice she still loves as an adult. “When I go back to California, I call up two or three people that were in my Hillbrook class, and we sit outside in the glorious California sunshine, and just talk for hours. I mean, everything about Hillbrook was just really wonderful. We had a really great class, and the teachers were just so much fun. They were so interesting and kind, and they just rolled with us on whatever we wanted to learn.” She recalled getting to act out the Revolutionary War in her fifth grade history class with Ms. Donsker: “I share a birthday with George Washington, and as the somewhat bossy little lady I was, I demanded to be George.” Other classmates were recruited to play King George III and Paul Revere, and “we all dressed up one day and acted out history, with no script or anything. It was so much fun.”
After years of learning to trust her gut and its uncanny reaches of knowledge, Julia emphasized how much young people really can have faith in themselves—usually more than they realize at the time. “It’s about trusting the village that raised you, the literal village, the Hillbrook village, your family. There are just so many fewer limitations for kids today—and I didn’t even know I was limited! I didn’t feel limited. Hillbrook didn’t limit me by any means. But it makes me so excited seeing that learning can look really different than when I grew up.
“We have the ability to change other people’s lives also for the better. Be kind to other people and remember that if you can’t change the world, you can change someone’s world, and it counts just as much.”