“Expect the unexpected” and other career advice from a former economist and publisher

Interviewer: You talked about how you got your PhD in the US and furthered your career here. Could you explain which career path you went down? And how did you first get into that?

Jean Paul: I went through a zig zag career. I graduated from a business school in France, and then I went to do a PhD in Economics in Colorado, but I really had no particular plans for a career. However, I had those degrees which opened up possibilities. 

So I started my career with an American firm in Paris, which was very well known. It was a CPA public accounting firm. 

When I came to Boston, I had to continue with them, but after a while, I got bored. So I decided to switch to economics. And for a number of years, I was working for an economic research firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Then I got tired of that, and my wife was also getting a sabbatical. We had to move back to France. So I had to abandon that. 

Afterwards, I didn't know exactly what I was going to do. But my wife was teaching French and I saw the books that she was reading. I thought that they were not that interesting, or at least they were not interesting for the students. So I decided to change careers completely and to provide textbooks for the French teachers in highschools and universities.

So we spent 30 years doing that. It was difficult because the company which I was working with was a small publisher. I had no idea what they were doing. They were changing their ideas all the time. 

But finally we created a really good product, and it was adopted all across the United States. So, that made our lives easier. 

Then, our publisher was bought by a bigger company. And the purpose of this was to get rid of the smaller company. I had a very good relationship with my first publisher. We had a fantastic team with editors, illustrators, sales managers and others. So, we decided to leave. 

From there, we became interested in the southwest [of France]. We spent a lot of time there and published a lot of books there. That was 2-3 years ago until we came here. 

That was my career.

Interviewer: Were you stressed when switching between different career paths?

Jean Paul: Well, in a way, yes, but in a different way, no. Because, again, it was a different time in America. The cost of education was not like how it is now, so when I was switching I thought we would be able to manage our income. 

There was much more fluidity. A much more equal society than how it is now. You could live a comfortable life with much less money.

I don’t like to work for other companies, but at the publishing firm, I was producing revenue. So, the company respected that and gave me whatever I wanted. 

Interviewer: Do you have a favorite book that you published?

Jean Paul: My last book. It’s 500 pages on the Navajo ceremonial weavings. For the Navajo, their primary art form has become weaving. They have become expert weavers. Their traditional weavings involve complex geometric forms. 

Their first weavings were simple stripes on a blanket, but over time, they evolved. After a certain period of time, they started adding ceremonial symbols. Ceremonial life is completely different from ours.

I also published a language textbook. Everything I have written, I did with my wife. 

Interviewer: As someone who has switched between many careers, do you have any advice for younger people who are trying to figure out what they want to do?

Jean Paul: Expect the unexpected. You have opportunities in life that aren’t always so clear to your eyes. The lucky ones are the ones who recognize those opportunities. Most of the time, those opportunities are seen as chores by other people. It’s something that they don’t want to do. 

But suddenly you must decide “maybe I should just try that.” Maybe there is something special about that. 

For example, my wife's career. You know, it is very difficult to get published because you will get rejected by almost every publisher. So, you first just write books that won’t bring in any money. When my wife first started her career, she was teaching literature at a school. One day, the chairman of the department said, “I need someone who will create language tests.”

Everyone else wanted to do literature because making tests was a meaningless job. But my wife decided to try it. She was trained by a top professional in testing and learned a lot. She eventually wrote a book on language testing which started her writing career. 

It opened doors to many other opportunities.