David G. Bradley

"Now 71, I look back on the longest career launching research companies (CEB and the Advisory Board Company) and owning media properties (the best known of them, The Atlantic). Across almost 50 years, I've worked with over 5,000 young colleagues – recent college graduates – navigating their 20s. This is an easy decade to love. Even when fearful, 20-somethings enjoy that once-in-lifetime prospect of becoming whatever they want to become. Life narrows soon enough. But, in your 20s, the aperture is wide.

 

Like others who have worked beside young professionals, I've done some untold amount of graduate school counseling, career counseling, and on occasion, existential-larger-purpose-in-life counseling. I take these conversations seriously, doing the best I can. But, surely, there is better and deeper wisdom than I bring to bear. 

 

In the fall of 2021, I recruited a dozen Princeton undergraduates to launch an ongoing research project on the largest issues facing young people in their 20s. Though the composition of the group evolves as some students graduate, the project continues. And, the research findings are substantial. I've led research companies since my own mid-twenties. The work being done by these students is serious and fruitful."