Alums offer mentoring to students exploring career options

Melissa Lewin’s ‘00 archeology classes — especially the one where she learned Akkadian, a cuneiform language inscribed on stone tablets — have opened more than one door for her along her career journey. 

“I kept that on my resume for so many years because it’s a real conversation starter,” she said. “When you’re starting out, it’s important to have one thing that stands out. I had a whole script on how learning Akkadian lined up with the tax code, how they are both like solving a puzzle.”

Lewin and her husband Rob ’99, who met on campus, are active backers of Cornell through their support of Cornell’s Public History Initiative and the archaeology program. Both are members of the Arts & Sciences Career Connections Committee, while Melissa is also a member of the A&S Advisory Council, the Cornell University Council and the President’s Council of Cornell Women (PCCW). She is also a judge for Cornell Law School's Transactional Lawyering Competition.

After college, both decided on legal careers, but didn’t have a clear picture of what kind of law they wanted to practice.

“Neither Melissa nor I had parents in the spheres we exist in now,” Rob Lewin said. “I didn’t even have a clear understanding of the difference between corporate law and public interest lawyers.”

That’s one reason they support A&S career development — to increase opportunities for students to explore career options.

“I struggled with making my way into the finance and legal industries,” said Rob Lewin, who was a government major. “So, I love working with students who are beginning to think about the next step. I don’t think there’s a pre-ordained path to law school; most schools love to see students with all kinds of majors.”

Both Rob and Melissa Lewin said they relished the opportunity to study a diverse set of subjects as A&S students.

“I did research in the dendro lab [the Cornell Tree-Ring Laboratory] and I loved that work,“ said Melissa Lewin, who double majored in archeology and Near Eastern studies. “That exposure to research and being surrounding by academics was really impactful for me.”

“My most impactful classroom experiences were my upper-level government classes and some of the smaller classes, like Learning about the Cold War through Cinema,” Rob Lewin said.

After law school, Melissa Lewin found her way to a firm that allowed her to try out several fields within law and she found, surprisingly, that she loved tax law After almost 8 years working in large law firms, she moved on from tax practice and spent 13 years with Two Sigma on its legal team. She joined Paloma Partners as managing director and general counsel in 2023.

Rob Lewin spent time in law, then in banking and trading, and today works as a managing director at Tokio Marine HCC. He said his Cornell connections benefit him every day.

“The networks that we have, to a substantial degree, include tons of Cornellians, and the power of the connection to Cornell is palpable,” Rob Lewin said. “It means something and people care about the shared experiences.”

Both of them say that Cornell and Ithaca feel like home, quite literally.

They got married on campus and after they started raising a family, the Lewins traveled to Ithaca each summer to rent a house on Cayuga Lake. In the 2010s, they decided they’d like to have a permanent place near Ithaca, so they purchased land on the west side of the lake and built a house. That’s where they spent much of the pandemic.

“We’re there as often as we can,” Melissa Lewin said. “We learned to live in Ithaca, not just be a student there.”

And they are already singing the praises of Cornell to their kids.

“I opened up at Cornell; it allowed me to be who I really am,” Melissa Lewin said. “I am a liberal arts person through and through. I love learning and I have so many varied things I want to learn about.”