Max Moy-Borgen ’08

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If you’re a world arts & cultures / East Asian studies / Asian humanities triple major (with a minor in Asian American studies) at UCLA, what type of employment are you likely to find when you reach the working world? If you’re Max Moy-Borgen ’08, perhaps a better question is, “what type of employment are you not likely to find?”

In a career path that is still evolving, Moy-Borgen has been, among many other occupations, a cell phone field technician, a luxury hotel jack of all trades, a teacher, a tax preparer, a dance and self-defense instructor, and is now pursuing a nursing degree. This foray into the medical field is just the latest step in a long, winding and unconventional career path. But for Moy-Borgen, it makes perfect sense in his lifelong search for personal growth, variety and the opportunity to serve others.

These jobs were not your work-your-way-through-school occupations. They all occurred after Moy-Borgen graduated from UCLA and all were potential careers that never quite satisfied his wanderlust for growth. He said, “For better or worse, I'm interested in a lot of different things.”

Moy-Borgen grew up in the Bay Area, in the Oakland suburb of Piedmont. At UCLA, he started as a world arts and cultures major, and ended up graduating with a triple major and minor. This was indicative of his tendency to take on a lot of different types of projects, whether they were short term, long term, part time, full time or on a per diem basis.

It didn’t help that he entered the workforce during a global recession, when job vacancies were hard to come by. He said, “After I graduated and moved home, the first job I got came about because I was trying to look for basically anything I could find. It wasn't really in my wheelhouse, but I needed a job and they were a very interesting small company that was open to hiring pretty much anyone who was willing to work. I had a lot of coworkers who pretty much taught me on the job. They gave us certain routes to drive and we would have cell phones connected to laptops recording the information for when the (connection) would get dropped. It would also track downloading and uploading from the Internet, when it would slow or if it would stop. I was like the T-Mobile guy – ‘Can you hear me now?’”

After about six months, he got bored and moved to the East Coast where he found work with the union working for hotels and restaurants. He said, “I ended up finding a job working at a local hotel where I started from the ground up. I was working first as a valet and then they quickly trained me to pretty much do every job the hotel offered. I was a guest service agent and front desk manager on duty for the night. I was the night auditor, where you enter all the information for the hotel sales and make sure everything matches up and there's no discrepancies. And I also ended up being the night cook and bartender. If anyone ordered room service, I would deliver it to their rooms. Pretty much anything that happened from night until the morning manager came on, I would do it or I'd be in charge of the people who were figuring it out.”

Moy-Borgen also spent a considerable amount of time working with youth. He got a tutoring job and helped “the kids that got left behind by the no Child Left Behind Act” by teaching them math and English. He taught chess, swimming, gymnastics and acrobatics to children, as well as youth financial literacy classes and financial coaching.

After returning to California, one of his jobs was managing a special needs-open gym, continuing the theme of working with those who needed special attention. He said, “That was really interesting because they had special classes available for students on the spectrum and with various disabilities who didn't feel comfortable or needed extra support compared to the other classes that we would do that were much more structured. They got a chance to learn the equipment and be in the space and learn some skills. I really enjoyed working there for a while, but eventually I was doing it as a side job on top of working full time.”

During his student days at UCLA, Moy-Borgen became interested in tax preparation. “I didn't really take any math classes, but kind of on a whim, a bunch of friends who were econ business majors decided we should do an accounting program in order to learn how to do taxes," he said. "There was a Bruin leadership project which encouraged you to do community service, so I got involved in the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program at UCLA, which was predominantly student run. They had partnerships with the IRS and some of the big four accounting firms like Ernst and Young and Deloitte. We would do the taxes for the local community, mostly focusing on the custodial or maintenance staff, food service workers, etc. They also had a few satellite sites throughout the community for people that needed tax preparation assistance.”

After he got back from the East Coast, he started managing and teaching paid staff and volunteers about taxes, working in East Oakland as well as in Chinatown. He said, “I did that for several years, and it was a really great community, really great organization. The volunteers were all very dedicated. Students came through and helped, and a lot of young professionals and people willing to give back to their communities. I was really grateful to make those connections. But eventually, I felt like I was hitting a plateau and wanted to be able to do and grow more, but not at the pace of the organization.

“One of my coworkers from there went to work at this organization in San Francisco and I kind of followed her. They had just gone through some transitions and got some major grants. They had four tax sites instead of two. So instead of doing like 1,500 tax returns annually, they were doing close to 4,000 at the time. It was a good opportunity to go over there and grow their program – they were also really involved in doing the individual taxpayer ID numbers (ITINs), working with the immigrants. They had a lot of connections with the embassies and the consulates. Being able to go give presentations there and be the organization's spokesperson for Univision and TeleMundo were all really amazing opportunities,” he said.

He continued in that role until he started working for a Bollywood dance company, which was based in Fremont and Pleasanton, and then he worked for a home share program that helped seniors find affordable housing in nearby Contra Costa.

All the while, Moy-Borgen maintained a side job teaching self-defense. His interest in this field began even before attending UCLA when he studied mixed martial arts before it was popular. He explained, “At the same school where I learned martial arts, I also studied several different types of dance, which was partly how I got focused on the WAC program (at UCLA). Several of my classmates from the dance and martial arts school went on to do dance as well, and that was how I got connected to that program.”

As a self-defense suited instructor, Moy-Borgen wore special equipment that allowed the students to practice the techniques full-force under realistic scenarios. To see this in practice, watch the video demonstration.

As interesting and rewarding as these jobs may have been, they still weren’t holding Moy-Borgen’s complete attention or any long-term commitment.

He explained, “Early into my career, I'd always be asking my supervisor, my coworkers, my manager, ‘What else can I do?’ I want to develop my skills and get to the next position.”

Even the job that might have seemed the most promising, becoming a CPA, did not quite feel right to Moy-Borgen. He said, “I just felt like it wasn't ultimately the right path for me because it felt like too much of a risk at the time to go down that path: you had to start taking the exams and then you had 18 months to finish all four parts. And if you didn't, you had to start all over again.”

Eventually he decided he wanted to pursue nursing, and needed to give up accounting and tax preparation for this new career path. He said, “Nursing has surprised me. There have been many people my age and older in my class. I have a grandmother who is doing the program with me and there are several students in their late forties, fifties, sixties who are wanting to do it for whatever reason and making it happen. I've been super impressed and inspired by their stories.”

Moy-Borgen has no regrets over waiting so long to find his latest career.

“I had a few friends at UCLA who studied nursing and a few family members who worked in health care in various capacities. I was kind of always interested in it. But when I was younger, I was turned off and overwhelmed at math and science. Had I done it back then, I definitely don't think I would have been prepared or as successful. I feel like I needed to try other things and interests first. I think my experiences made me a little bit more rounded compared to the other people who are going into it straight from high school or college.”

There are signs that this might be the occupation that holds Moy-Borgen in a way that others have not. He’s excited about the possibility of lucrative job offers after graduation, working long shifts for only three days a week and the myriad of opportunities open to him.

“They have me in what's called the float pool,” he said. “It's perfect for my personality, because I get a chance to try out all of the different departments throughout the hospital — the cardiac floor, the med surge floor, the transition care unit (TCU) floor, the emergency department — they even had us briefly in the intensive care unit (ICU). I'm definitely really grateful for the opportunities to learn and develop. And being paid for it on top of it is definitely a nice plus.

“As a nurse, I can work in a school, I can work on a cruise ship and be the de facto medical staff. NASCAR hires nurses for the drivers as well as the spectators. There's just a lot of different options for things that you can do with nursing.”

Throughout his unconventional career, Moy-Borgen took the lessons learned from one job and applied it to the next. His curiosity and zest for service led him through a series of odd jobs, where he acquired and honed a well-rounded set of skills, which ultimately prepared him for his next venture. While he deemed none of his previous roles were worth settling for, somewhere along the way he discovered that his work ethic, detail-orientation, multitasking prowess, compassion for the helpless, passion for service, diverse interests and patience with people were just the right character traits and skills to make a good nurse.

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