Women that Rock: Jenny Lee

Name: Jenny Lee

Harvard College Year of Graduation: '98-'99. I was social class of 1998 and I walked in 1999

Current job: New York Times reporter and the author of a book called "The Fortune Cookie Chronicles," which is about how Chinese food is all-American.

Concentration at Harvard: Applied Math and Economics

House at Harvard: Quincy, then transferred to Pforzheimer for junior and senior year.

Extracurricular activities at Harvard: Asian American Association, Harvard Crimson, Diversity and Distinction magazine, Chinese Students Association.

Describe your job now: I work for the City Room blog, which is the main news blog of the Times Metro Section. I actually work with another Harvard alum, Sewell Chan. Know Sewell from the Crimson, and also president of Triple A. We went to Harvard together, and we were in junior High and High school together.

I’m also the author of a book called "The Fortune Cookie Chronicles," which is about how Chinese food is all-American.

Describe the process of writing a book

When you write a book, it has to be the book that you would write, not anyone else but you. They're always trying to find a really good author and topic, so that when the author does promotion of the book, they have a personal story to tell. So for me, Chinese food in America was sort of analogy to Chinese people in America. People of my generation, and below who are Asian American, we are really American, we're raised and schooled in the States with the same kind of pop culture. The point was supposed to represent my own journey as an American. I had done a story in 2003 about a family who had gone down to Georgia to run a Chinese restaurant and from that experience, I expanded to what is Chinese food really all about?

Coming out with a book is a really long, long process. First you're spending several months doing research on your idea, and then you write your proposal, and the proposal gets sent out to all the publishing houses, and then they come back with a contract, and that tells you what your deadline is. And then you have generally between a year and 18 months. In the time that I started writing the book till now, I had a friend who was dating a guy, broke up with that guy, started dating another guy, got engaged, got married, and had a baby.

How you got there: I interned at a bunch of newspapers during college, like the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post. The last summer I interned at the New York Times. I was part of an expansion project they had, to hire more people who had been trained in technology.

Advice for women who are looking to go into your field: I think it's really important to develop a broad range of skills beyond the basic news story. In terms of knowing how to blog, to blog well, you know, multi-media. Be comfortable with a lot of the tools, html, how to download things, how to save things, learning how to cover your trail, etc.

Something you know now that you wish you had known in college: I would have spent a lot more time getting to know my peers because the thing that you carry with you, when you leave Harvard, is the network of people who have been through the same experience as you. I would have focused on relationships, and less on studying.

Favorite college memory: The sense of camaraderie. The Crimson was really great. The Crimson is interesting because it's almost like a meritocratic fraternity or sorority, or like a finals—anyone can join if they work hard. And that sense of kinship with other people who've been through The Crimson and are there now, you feel a connection with someone who has been an Exec on The Crimson. We had a retreat when our guard took over The Crimson and we played mafia, and there were 50 people. Playing mafia with 50 people was hysterical.

It's not really a favorite, but doing Math 25 problem sets in large groups in Canaday in the basement, and ordering pizza. Totally miserable at the time, but looking back, it was this rite of passage. Now, talking to anyone else who has been through Math 25, they totally get it, even if they're younger or older than me. Like my boyfriend was in Math 25, he's 6 years older than me, class of '94.

Thing you miss most about college: The fact that your friends are literally next-door. Here you have to travel really far to see your friends and they work all the time. In college, one of the coolest things is you're there to better yourself. It's very rare after you enter the real world that ever reverts to being the case.