About Me
Harvard career adviser. Wall Street Journal bestselling author. First-gen college grad.
Gorick Ng is the Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author of The Unspoken Rules: Secrets to Starting Your Career Off Right, a book published by Harvard Business Review Press. It is a guide to help early career professionals, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, navigate the school-to-work transition and ascend to positions of leadership, based on 500+ interviews with professionals across geographies, industries, and job types.
The Unspoken Rules is now used for employee and manager training and diversity and inclusion at companies such as Aon, GE, IBM, Kirkland & Ellis, Charles River Associates, Abiomed, Invesco, and others. It is also used by programs such as Questbridge, Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America, Rewriting the Code, ACE Women’s Collective, SEO, Africa.com, and others. Harvard Business School has also given Gorick’s book to every MBA student to give them an edge in the labor market.
Gorick is a career adviser at Harvard College, specializing in coaching first-generation, low-income students. He has worked in management consulting at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), investment banking at Credit Suisse, and research with the Managing the Future of Work project at Harvard Business School.
He has been featured in Forbes, The Today Show, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed, New York Post, Fast Company, and CNBC. He was named one of TIME Magazine’s top 25 future leaders from around the world in 2009. He was also named one of the top 30 thinkers to watch in 2022 by Thinkers50. Gorick, a first-generation college student, is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Toronto Foundation for Student Success.
"I'm the son of a working-class single mother turned first-gen college student turned Harvard grad turned investment banker turned management consultant turned Harvard MBA turned author."
Childhood
I learned to write my first resume when I was 14–for my mother when she was laid off. I spent recesses learning to write resumes and afternoons at the public library looking for jobs. It was then that I realized that the rules to getting ahead could not be found on Google or in the library.
College
I became the first in my family to attend college–at Harvard. I thought the struggle was behind me. Little did I know that there was an unlevel playing field between the insiders who get ahead and the outsiders who stumble through the trial and error–and that I was one of the outsiders.
Professional Work
I worked in investment banking and management consulting, where I quickly learned that the working world was hardly a meritocracy. I set out on a journey–to demystify the unspoken rules. After 500+ interviews, I wrote a book on what I didn’t know I didn’t know–but wish I had known.
Present Time
After releasing my book in April 2021, I have been working with some of the world’s largest companies reimagine their employee and manager training and meet their diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging goals. I have also been working with colleges, universities, and workforce development non-profits to help the next generation get more career-ready.
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