Feb. 24, 2014
By Jerome Boettcher | Subscribe to Commodore Nation
Jenny Hahn seized the moment.
Here was former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice holding a Q&A session with nearly 100 collegiate women golfers.
Hahn, a sophomore at Vanderbilt, couldn’t resist.
“You have the opportunity to talk to her, you have to ask her a question,” she said.
So she did. Sticking with golf, she asked Rice about being one of the first two female members of Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters.
“I just asked her how did that feel?” Hahn said. “That’s pretty awesome. She was taken aback by the whole thing and just humbled.”
Hahn and her teammates were humbled by the opportunity Rice afforded them in October. Before the Stanford Intercollegiate tournament, Rice, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, hosted a College-Am, and afterwards Rice spoke to and fielded questions from the entire 16-team field.
The practice round grouped collegiate golfers with some of the top women professionals in their respective fieldsâ€â€CEOs, lawyers, politicians from around the country.
“We were just in a room with so many successful women, and it was very inspiring to us,” Hahn said.
Hahn and teammates Renee Sobolewski and Kendall Martindale played 18 holes with Catherine Kinney, the former president of the New York Stock Exchange. They also crossed paths and talked with Carol Bartz, the former CEO of Yahoo.
For nearly four hours, the Vanderbilt trio chatted up Kinney and gathered advice.
“It was an unreal experience for all of us,” Hahn said. “Just to get an insight of a female who has become so successful, it resonates to us…We basically tried to pick her brain, just kind of how she got to where she was. It was really interesting, her story, because in college she wanted to be a French professor. She didn’t expect to be where she’s at, but she said she worked extremely, extremely hard and eventually people started recognizing she is really good at what she does.”
So how was Kinney’s golf game?
“She is probably better at being the president,” Hahn said, laughing. “No, she was so cute. She was very nice.”
While Vanderbilt’s trip to Stanford was golf-oriented the Commodores finished ninth in the tournament, and Hahn tied for 16th individually it proved to be educational.
Hearing Rice speak about her endeavors was encouraging for the team.
Hahn, a native of Henderson, Nev., created her own major of management and pre-law with civil relations and plans to attend law school.
Of course, Hahn, who was named to the SEC All-Freshman Team last year, wants to pursue professional golf.
But, like Rice, she also is musically inclined, as she plays the guitar and is classically trained in the piano.
Rice actually went to college to pursue a piano major. But she graduated from Denver with a degree in political science and later received her Ph.D. She served on President George H.W. Bush’s National Security Council. Ten years later, she became the first woman to serve as National Security Advisor. And for George W. Bush’s second term, she was the Secretary of Stateâ€â€the first African-American woman to hold the position.
The underlining message was to stay in the moment, and seize it.
“She didn’t even think of where she is now  that is not what she planned,” Hahn said. “She basically told us that in our four years here, you don’t need to stress about careers because we’re going to find a job. We’re going to be all right, basically. She said in the four years, find something you’re extremely passionate about. Just never lose that passion.”