Jobin Speaks to Students

The first woman to conduct a mainstage production with the San Francisco Opera summarized her career path on Friday with a quote from Harvard Musician in Residence Isaiah A. Jackson III ’66: “You can’t plan the important things.”

Hosted by the Harvard College Women’s Center and co-sponsored by the Office for the Arts at Harvard, Sara E. Jobin ’91 spoke with a group of students over lunch as part of the Alum-inating! program, a speaker series that brings a prominent alumna to campus each semester.

Jobin—who is also this year’s Clifton Visiting Artist, a position given by the Office for the Arts and reserved for a young female artist—talked about her professional life and based discussion on students’ questions.

Jobin arrived at Harvard as a 16-year-old and became one of the first students to concentrate in women’s studies, with a minor in music.

Finding that women composers were not studied at all in the music department, Jobin wrote her senior thesis on the five most successful examples of her time and the challenges they faced.

“I very deliberately studied them in my senior thesis so that I would have an idea of what life might be if I decided to choose to be a conductor,” she said after the talk, referring to her predecessors.

Attendee Jessica J. Means ’09, who said that her two main passions were biology and music, praised Jobin’s decision to pursue a career that is not considered mainstream, especially in light of the overall shortage of women leaders in music.

“It was very refreshing to see Sara as a female and a conductor who is very successful,” Means said.

Although Jobin said she found gender has not affected her work or her music, she recognized its impacts on the more sociological factors of her job, acknowledging that her biggest opposition has been from an older generation of women.

But, she said, “I am able to be myself, and I think you will be able to be yourselves because it’s 20 years later.”

Chelsea S. Link ’12, who has played the harp for 13 years, said she was discouraged last year from becoming a conductor when she realized that she knew of no women in the profession. At the end of the session, Jobin encouraged Link to consider conducting in the future.

Jobin said that she was happy to see the role that the Women’s Center plays on campus today. In her visiting artist position, she spoke at an Opera seminar, worked with the Lowell House Opera, and was interviewed by WHRB, all over the course of last week.