Three Classmates (Hobby Alumni 2011) Killing It In New York - Namuun Bold, Zolboo Tsogbayar & Zorigoo Tugsbayar
Interview and Photos by Nomundari Baatar (Class of 2013)
We meet on a rainy Sunday afternoon – it’s a cold day, but the city is festive in preparation for spring. The small coffee shop we meet in is packed with people, so we are cozy and close together – friends, catching up with each other. The smell of coffee soothes us, and the relaxing jazz music serves as a pleasant background noise as we chat.
Everyone arrives at different times, but that’s how it usually goes as we all try to juggle our work, interests, and personal lives in New York City. The Mongolians in NYC have a small but tight-knit community of those who look out for each other – we’re a family, bounded by a shared background in a foreign land. We agree that Mongolians here are similar-minded and are willing to tolerate and be ground in the big city pressure because along the way, we know we are learning to excel wherever we go in the future. The motto “If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere” drives us.
What is particular about this small circle of Mongolians is that there are more Hobby school graduates who have made their lives here compared to graduates from other schools (or perhaps that’s my wishful thinking, and I simply don’t care to count the alumni from other schools). The Hobby alumni group is expansive and far-reaching, as seen from the Hobby School Alumni Association’s secret Facebook group, and just in the New York City area we have 8 proud graduates, with a few more leaving or arriving in the city each year. At any point when a new person joins or visits our core NYC Hobby circle, we scramble, trying to make sure that we get a picture of the “Hobby-giihon!”. Those who miss out on a photo opportunity lament it so much that we often have to regroup and retake the photos again.
The three Hobby alumni covered in today’s interview are all from the Hobby class of 2011 – what are the odds that out of an entire class of only 27 students, 3 of them would end up in New York city! All have gotten to NYC at various points of their lives and have lived here for different lengths of time, but they’re all proud to have made NYC their second home, and to be striving here, no less.
Zorigoo Tugsbayar has been here the longest, first getting a taste of New York as an AIG Corporate Development summer analyst in the summer of his junior year at Harvard University. He recalls some fond memories of earning “real money for the first time” that summer, living together with his best friend at an NYU dorm, and bonding with other Mongolians interning in NYC that summer as well. He resolved to come back to New York, and accepted a return position at AIG, starting as a more experienced and eager analyst in the summer of 2015. After 2 fruitful years there, he was recruited as a Senior Associate by his former boss to join Ascot Group’s Corporate Development team to help expand the company, a former subsidiary of AIG. Joining a New York office of only 8 employees, his team’s aggressive efforts in expanding Ascot Group’s US operations has led to a New York office with over 70 employees and operations across 4 US cities.
Namuun (“Nami”) Bold had a similar path to Zorigoo, moving to New York in 2016, seeking the best professional opportunities and a close-knit Mongolian community after graduating Cornell University. While at Cornell University, she was heavily involved with the Association of Mongolian Students in America (AMSA), AIESEC Cornell, and business fraternity Delta Sigma Pi among other extracurricular involvement, which helped her choose her professional career. She quickly stepped into the business world, first interning at Deutsche Bank as a summer analyst, and then taking a job at Ernst & Young as a Consultant in People Advisory Services in New York. She was recently promoted to Senior Consultant, taking on additional challenging client projects while simultaneously serving as a board member of the Mongolian Young Leaders Program (MYLP).
Zolboo Tsogbayar, on the other hand, took a very different route in getting to New York. She graduated from the College of St. Scholastica in Minnesota in 2015 and started working as an Auditor at Deloitte in New York soon after. Deloitte sponsored her to get her Business Analytics Master’s degree from the University of St. Thomas, so she took night-time and Saturday classes for a year and a half to compliment her full-time role with the company (on top of getting her CPA certifications!). She has since transferred to New York to work in the Financial Services sector, and has been promoted to an Audit Senior, juggling responsibilities such as managing the staff, running the audits, and meeting her managers’ and partners’ expectations.
This class of 2011ers agreed to come together today and discuss their shared history, individual journeys, and personal growths as they have seen each other through key transition phrases during adolescence, young adulthood, and as peers supporting each other in NY today.
[This interview has been edited and condensed]
“I didn’t choose New York as much as New York chose me. ”
1. My first question has to do with where we find ourselves today – New York City. Why did you choose to live in this city, and what has been the most standout experience here for you so far?
Zorigoo: I didn’t choose New York as much as New York chose me. Especially in my profession, in financial services, New York is one of the few places where I can advance in my career on a fast track. Most of my job interviews were in New York, most of my friends were coming here, and even before I moved here, there was a vibrant Mongolian community starting here, so it really felt like the perfect city.
Nami: New York really is the concentration of the best you can get - the leading firms, variety of professional industries, and an amazing arts and culture scene. It was a no-brainer that I chose to come to New York! Plus, New York has a Mongol-centric community that I didn’t get in college, so there was a sense of home here as well. For the first time, I was exposed to so many different lifestyles, and I’ve learned to progressively let go of my own assumptions about different cultures purely through exposure to new people, information, and knowledge.
Zolboo: New York was one of those cities I’ve always wanted to move to. Just the spirit the people carry in the city is inspiring – people are always striving to become better versions of themselves, always searching for the next thing that will improve them, and always pushing their limits. New York opens your eyes to different ways of life – there are so many people here from all over the world, and just by having conversations with them, you get to hear such different stories on how lives are lived in different parts of the world, in different communities.
“Going to a college like Harvard was a dream you didn’t even dare to dream. ”
2. Personally, I never thought I would end up living in New York. So, let’s go back to 2010, when you were all juniors in Hobby high school – where did you think you were going to go? What were your ambitions at the time, what was going through your minds?
Zorigoo: I didn’t think I would come to America to study or live because I spent 8 years in Germany, and I always thought I would go back there. But then our schoolmate from the grade above us, Bilguun Ulammandakh (Hobby Alumnus 2010), got into every Ivy League school imaginable, so I thought, why not me? I switched gears and I did it, more or less (chuckles).
3. What would 16-year-old Zorigoo think of you living in New York now?
Zorigoo: Probably proud, and surprised? Definitely questioning how I can afford the rent here.
Nami: Similarly, when I was a junior in high school, I was sure I wouldn’t come to the States because it was so far from home. However, it was inspiring to see my classmates studying for the SATs and working hard towards their goal of getting accepted into US schools in their senior year, and I thought, if they have the courage to go so far to the US, then I can too. So, after graduation I took a gap year with an intense focus of coming to one of the best colleges in the US – that was the only thing I wanted at that point.
Zolboo: Yes, at that point, my schoolmates’ journeys really exposed me to these amazing opportunities to study abroad and get a good education, so I decided that I needed to study in the US because it was now a real possibility. I crammed down on my AP Classes (World History, Calculus, and Literature), enrolled in the United States Student Achievers Program (USAP) over junior summer to prepare for my college applications, and before I knew it, I was on my way to the US.
4. It’s really interesting how none of you were really set on coming to the US until your last year of high school, and even then, it seems you changed your plans because you were influenced by your schoolmates. How did this sudden inspiration come over Hobby?
Nami: More so than anything else, it was Danny Doucette – he literally changed our lives. Not only did he help us with the college application process, but also taught classes, from Literature to AP Calculus, that were not taught before. But most importantly, he just genuinely cared about us. Over our junior summer he started teaching the SATs to inquisitive students and guided them throughout this entire process. Before him, going to a college like Harvard was a dream you didn’t even dare to dream, so when Bilguun Ulammandakh accomplished it with Danny’s help, we realized we could achieve our dreams, too.
Zorigoo: Yes, without his help, we wouldn’t be where we are right now
5. I would love to hear about your class. It would be very interesting to hear about how you were like in school!
Zorigoo: Hm! Dangerous territory. (Everyone breaks out laughing)
Nami: We initially had two separate classes which merged together in the 9th grade. For me, my Hobby experience is divided into 2 parts – the first one is from 1st to 8th grades, and from 9th grade until graduation. My first class was a little dursgui, a little loud, a little wild, and I have the fondest memories. However, after we merged classes, the dynamics changed – we were more focused on schoolwork, our college plans, and the future. Zorigoo had a huge hand in the unification process - he was elected as the class president, and he was making huge efforts in making sure the two classes got along.
Zorigoo: Yeah, it was a herculean task, to say the least. There were some differences in opinions in the two groups, so I worked on uniting the two classes, such as arranging new seating assignments, organizing class-wide events, and raising money for those events by implementing a tax system where everyone would pay 200 tugrugs daily.
Zolboo: To be honest, all I remember is Zorigoo’s tecktonik dance (all laugh). At Hobby, we had a lot of kids who were very ambitious, and we were involved in a lot of different clubs and programs, such as debating and public speaking. I think we all had the same goal of getting a good education after high school, so it was good to have like-minded hardworking peers in our class. And I’ve known Nami for so long, almost seventeen years!
Nami: Yeah, we’ve been friends since 1st grade, and even from that far back Zolboo was always very diligent and responsible – and she kept that throughout her life. I mean, she does audit, so you have to have that – I’d be concerned if she didn’t! (laughs). For all of us, even though we were apart for 4 years in college, it was really easy to reunite and rekindle that friendship again when we moved to New York.
“At Hobby, we had a lot of kids who were very ambitious, so it was good to have like-minded hardworking peers in our class”
6. It’s great to be surrounded by like-minded smart people, otherwise it’s hard to push yourselves outside of your comfort zone. You mentioned the programs you’ve participated in together, can you tell me more about those?
Nami: We were very heavily involved in debating, and we would participate in various debate competitions every year. Zorigoo went to the World Schools Debating Championship in Qatar, Zolboo and I went to the Asian Debate Institute in South Korea, so by the time we came into our senior year, we were confident enough to lead some of these initiatives on our own.
7. What about your fondest memories in high school?
Zolboo: For me, there was a place called “Goimondoo” (everyone bursts out laughing). So a big group of us would go after school, get a bowl of ramen, and just chat, which was really nice.
Zorigoo: Used to be a pretty expensive place, relatively! Could’ve gotten 3 pirojkis for the price of one ramen bowl. But for me, not to give the classic boy answer, it was playing PC after school. It wasn’t the most productive thing ever, but it was simpler times – pay 500 tugrugs, play for 2 hours, and not worry about doing anything afterwards and just go home.
Nami: Let’s see – I was not good at or even liked dancing, but I really cared about our talent show, so I contributed heavily to it. We would prepare for hours, head home way past dark, and give it our all. It was funny, because I wasn’t really good at it, but I was so into it!
8. I’d like to steer the conversation away from high school now – but before we do, is there anything else you would like to add?
Nami: Yes, for sure. Our Principal Oyuntsetseg Durvuljin was so loving and had such a big personality and presence, and I have admired her for as long as I can remember. When I told her I was going to Cornell, she was very happy and proud of me. I could tell she genuinely cared about her students – and that kind of personal care is rare. It was really beautiful to have that relationship with her and the school.
9. Thank you for that. Okay, so now you’re in your freshman year of college, in a completely new place, and holy $hit – you’re no longer in Mongolia, and you’re probably the only Mongolians there, so what was going through your minds then? How did you get over your homesickness?
Zorigoo: Freshman fall, I would say, was a categorical disaster. Mainly because you don’t know what you’re doing, you don’t know the culture, you don’t know the American food portions. I caught pneumonia in my freshman fall, and I was carrying it around for a month until I went to see a doctor. My lungs were full of liquid, I was in bed for a week, and had to take a lot of antibiotics – but after that initial bump, I got accustomed to the US pretty well. The biggest support I had in freshman year were my future roommates and college friends.
Zolboo: Similar sentiment – I think freshman year was the hardest because you’re adjusting to everything new. I was 16 at the time, so what helped me get adjusted was making new friends and getting involved in a lot of different activities on the campus. I also kept in touch with my high school friends and I have a strong bond with my family, so those things were very important when I was adjusting.
Nami: I got really homesick around my first November, and around that time, AMSA was organizing their first Annual General Meeting at Harvard in Boston. When I went there, it was the first time I was surrounded by all these Mongolians. Zorigoo was hosting us – thank you Zorigoo – and it was just really nice to have that community right when we were all missing home. We also had 4 other Hobby schoolmates there!
“I think in your formative years you really need to understand who you are and find your voice.”
10. That’s amazing that out of the 30 people there, so many of you were from Hobby! And really at that point, during your freshman fall, you started your own paths – unlike in high school, you’ve now found yourselves in very different environments, very different colleges. What were your college cities like compared to Ulaanbaatar?
Nami: Ithaca, New York is a very small town on top of a hill and the city population is almost as big as the university population itself. Coming from Ulaanbaatar, which is a very lively city with a lot of people – 1.5 million compared to several thousands – the transition was interesting. But because the city was small, I got a very cohesive college experience and was not as distracted as I would’ve been somewhere else.
Zolboo: Duluth, Minnesota is also pretty small, with around 80,000 people, and is located on Lake Superior, which is really beautiful. Minnesota is just a very outdoorsy state, so we did a lot of outdoors activities, such as kayaking and canoeing, that we don’t have in Mongolia. And because it was so small, it gave me space to find myself – I think in your formative years you really need to understand who you are and find your voice, and Duluth helped me achieve that.
Zorigoo: What I really liked about Cambridge, Massachusetts was the proximity to Boston – a lot of people would visit out of town, and it was always fun to catch up with them. I used to go back to Cambridge every quarter after graduation, and I’m planning on going back soon because I still have a lot of friends there – it’s always a great place to visit.
11. So how did your future paths diverge? Who did you get advice from in regards to choosing your majors and future careers now that you no longer had Hobby or your classmates to guide you?
Zorigoo: I was honestly very practical. The main reason why I chose my Statistics major and Economics minor was because of immigration reasons – a STEM degree allows an international student to stay in the US longer after graduation. As for recruiting in junior year, I would say it’s an interesting balance you have to strike between academics, extracurriculars, and recruiting. I was the Head of Multimedia for The Harvard Crimson and a Model UN Director, so I was a bit late to the recruiting game. I tried to do all 3 in junior year, and it was quite hard to balance – in hindsight, when I started interviewing, I should have dropped all extracurriculars.
At the time, banking and consulting were very popular, but I wanted to do something that combined the two – number crunching as well as business strategy. A big corporation usually has a corporate development unit that does in-house Merger & Acquisitions (M&A) strategy work for the company’s small to mid-size acquisitions, so that fit the bill. Over my junior winter break, I polished up my resume and cover letter, told my story to the Head of Corporate Development at AIG during an on-campus event, and got an internship at AIG, which eventually translated into a full time position.
I took full advantage of my time between graduation and my first day at work – I spent some quality time back in Mongolia and undertook a 3-week trip across Euroasia. Back at AIG, our team of 3 worked on reviewing and determining the future of AIG’s business units across 5 continents, deciding whether to keep it, invest it, or sell it. Interestingly, the boss whom I worked with on this project left AIG soon after to take on the position as the Head of Corporate Development at Ascot Group. He recruited me from AIG to Ascot, and was very supportive of my immigration status – he hired me at a time when Trump just came to the scene and was cracking down on immigration laws. The company got an immigration lawyer just for me so that the company could ensure the status of my work visa and let me stay in the US.
Zolboo: My reason is partially similar to Zorigoo’s – I chose to study Accounting and Finance because I came to a different country and needed to think of my career and where I could go. In college, I was always career-oriented so I took a lot of deliberate actions. In my junior year I did a tax and accounting internships with my college’s finance department and the YMSA. I also volunteered for Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) and helped file taxes on behalf of lower-income families who needed professional help – that was definitely one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had.
Since I was based in the Midwest, my focus was to join a big company with a global reach so that I could move around the company and do what I wanted. For me, when it comes to work, it’s really about communicating and expressing your intentions – the power of relationships is key. My manager at my accounting internship connected me to people he knew at Deloitte, so I knew I would work there full-time by the beginning of my senior year of college. Similarly, when I was completing my firm-sponsored master’s degree while working full-time at Deloitte, I communicated with my manager that I had another responsibility on top of work, which he recognized as essential to my professional growth.
A little more than a year back, when I was visiting New York, I reached out to a partner I had worked with to grab coffee with him and say hi. It was never my intention to move to New York City because I thought I was content where I was, but after talking to him I realized that I really wanted to move to here. My partner told me he could get me on his team and was fully supportive of my transition, so it’s funny how things work out sometimes.
Nami: For me, during my gap year, I was very intrigued by Ulaanbaatar’s development, so I chose to major in City and Regional Planning. But I would say my college extracurriculars, not necessarily my major, helped me choose and prepare for my career. One of the first roles I’ve held at Cornell was as the VP of Talent Management at AIESEC Cornell, which exposed me to human capital and thought leadership on how to maximize and utilize a person’s impact.
I also joined a business fraternity where I learned that consulting gives you an opportunity to work on a variety of challenging projects across diverse clients and industries. Through this exposure you learn how to adapt and adjust to new situations really quickly and gain a valuable skill set. By my senior year, I combined these two interests and started applying for human capital consulting positions. What prepared me in my job recruitment were my previous internships, and leadership experience in my involvements on campus and organizations such as AMSA, which helped me hone my skill set needed to go into consulting.
I’ve been working in People Advisory Services at EY for the past 2 years now, and it’s been great because EY invests in its people. When I joined, I did not expect to find such a strong community, culture, and shared camaraderie with my colleagues – working alongside such bright people has been a very rewarding experience.
“Things don’t always go as you expect, and when that happens, being able to adapt to changes is really crucial”
12. That’s really great to hear that your companies & coworkers are so supportive of you all, especially since New York City can be an overwhelming place to navigate. We all know that at times it can be a hard city to live in – what helps you hold on?
Zolboo: It helps to envision a big picture for where you want to go and where you want to end up. Once you define what that looks like for you, it’s easier to focus on that path, regardless of the inevitable challenges and obstacles you may encounter. New York has a very workaholic culture, so it helps for me to have a clear reason for what keeps me going in the city. My big picture isn’t defined by my position at work or the company I’m in, but more by exposure to various fields at work, my future career progress, and control over my future.
Additionally, without my friends, it would be really hard. Your social circle is one of the defining parts of how happy you are in life because the human mind needs companionship and conversations. I am always very grateful for my friends who celebrate with me the good times and support me through the hard ones.
Nami: It’s also very important to prioritize your health, because at the end of the day, no matter how successful you are and no matter what your goal is, if you aren’t healthy you won’t enjoy it. A big part of taking care of my mental health is having a strong community of people who care about me, which makes the cold feel a little warmer. Also, having an open mind and good attitude really help, because things don’t always go as you expect, and when that happens, being able to adapt to changes is really crucial.
Zorigoo: I agree that our social circles outside of work matter a lot, but what is equally as important to deal with the stress are social circles within work. If you hate the people you work with, it doesn’t matter how much money you make and what firm you work in – you need to make sure that you’re having fun as well. I lucked out because I have a boss who supports me, and coworkers who are always ready to go out and grab a drink with me, which makes the work environment less stressful. Additionally, compared to a lot of other American cities, surprisingly New York doesn’t have a lot of Mongolians, so it’s fortunate that the few Mongolians here get along.
13. Do you keep up with your classmates now? And how would you say you’ve changed since Hobby?
Zolboo: We were definitely very young before, and as Zorigoo said, it really was simpler times. Now, all of us are very independent, each of us took their own paths, and all those different paths have led us here to this moment. I’m proud of what we have become.
Nami: Our schoolmates are very hardworking, ambitious, and eager to learn more. And even though it’s been 7 years since graduation, and we’ve started our first jobs and live in different parts of the world, at the core of it all we have a goal in mind to contribute to Mongolia. After reuniting it’s nice to realize that, even with all the changes, that part has remained the same.
“Don’t listen to advice because ultimately, you should do what you think is right, and in your own way you will learn the lesson even better.”
14. We’re definitely still working toward our futures, but do you want to share any advice with future Hobby graduates?
Zorigoo: Don’t listen to advice because ultimately, you should do what you think is right, and in your own way you will learn the lesson even better.
Nami: Carry on the Hobby legacy. From 1st grade and on, you learn a lot about Mongolian identity and culture. When I came to the US, as one of the few Mongolians that foreigners get to meet and talk to, I was able to bring my lessons from Hobby and better educate those around me on Mongolia.
Zolboo: I would say, surround yourselves with people who inspire you and encourage you to become a better version of yourself!
15.Cheesy question – but who inspires you guys the most?
Zorigoo: My friends.
Nami: Wow, that’s the cheesiest Zorigoo has ever been!
Zorigoo (chuckles): It’s true, my friends in New York inspire me because of their close proximity, some in Mongolia because of shared history, and some in Europe because of shared connections.
Nami: I’m really inspired by my dad because as an artist, he chose a path where he’s been able to stay loyal to his passion and dream while making tremendous impact – and that is something I aspire to do with my life.
Zolboo: I think everything I have now and where I am in life is all due to my mom, her vision, and her hard work. She sent me to Hobby when as a child, I didn’t even know what was going on. A true visionary, she imagined this life for me, seeing years and years ahead in the future, and I think that’s a very powerful thing.
Thank you so much for contributing your time for this article – I think it’s great that we’re ending this article with high hopes for the future. I certainly hope your stories will inspire future Hobby high school graduates, and that you will continue to make an impact on those around you!