Doing What Makes Me Happy

Jared Glasser ’09 loved art, writing, history, current events, politics, and science when he was at The Country School. A little over a decade later, he’s finding ways to combine his varied interests in one particular endeavor: cartoons. 

Sometimes accompanied by a simple caption and other times by what he calls “One Minute Reads for That Free Moment in the Day,” Jared’s funnies are humorous and eye-catching, so much so that they’ve even been picked up by a biotech company for its client outreach.

Here’s one he did for SecondCell Bio with a little “lab” humor: 

“I love Jared's sense of humor and the simplicity of his cartoons,” said Kambiz Shekdar, CEO of SecondCell Bio, who found Jared through a LinkedIn ad for cartoonists. “He comes up with funny ways to represent lab work and lab life.”

Jared is one of some two dozen cartoonists Dr. Shekdar has assembled in hopes that their work might attract some of the ingenious, boundary-pushing scientists he likes to work with. Dr. Shekdar, who invented a cell engineering technology known as Chromovert while at The Rockefeller University, created SecondCell to make Chromovert available to other labs and researchers. 

Specifically, Chromovert allows the detection and isolation of exceedingly rare, optimally engineering cells. It’s a technology “that can help push the limits of cellular engineering, allowing certain applications that had been out of reach,” Dr. Shekdar explains, adding that he’s looking “to reach the most creative scientists out there, the adventurers who got into science to push the limits.”

He thinks that cartoons like Jared’s might help him find those types of individuals. “Creative people are quirky and have a sense of humor,” he said. “I believe our cartoons will resonate with them and be a fun way to put our technology on the radar.”

Here’s a cartoon for SecondCell Bio from late December:

As for Jared, working as a cartoonist fits right into the kinds of activities he’s enjoyed all along. A true creative, Jared spent some of his favorite Country School moments in the art studio. But, then again, he also loved the classroom and even the baseball field - anywhere he could get his creative juices flowing. “I remember there was a lot of room for students to explore what they were good at,” he says. 

Jared went on to Guilford High School then to Loyola Marymount in LA, where he majored in communications. In college he wrote a film script, which he ended up filming, directing, producing, and acting in after college. A history and politics junky, interests that may have been fostered in history class with legendary TCS history teacher Sarah Barber, he also spent his early post-college years working on political campaigns.

Jared has had roles working for small businesses and an ongoing gig as a freelance writer, work he continues to do alongside his cartoons for SecondCell Bio and his own cartoons and a personal book project he is working on. 

One of his recent freelance writing projects, “We All Quit - Sorry for the Inconvenience,” which he wrote for HR Daily Advisor, an online resource for HR professionals, focuses on the ways COVID may have affected our personal outlooks - that is, what we want out of life - more than our professional lives. The article is about “how people are really questioning what they’re doing, how much their time is worth,” leading many to make changes and reallocate their priorities, Jared explains.  

As for Jared and his personal priorities, he’s fairly certain about what he wants to do at this moment: “What I’m good at and what’s going to make me happy,” he says. And if, as he’s doing what he’s good at and what makes him happy, his work can help attract the attention of the “most creative scientists out there, the adventurers who got into science to push the limits,” then so much the better.

To see more of Jared’s work, go to jaredglasser.com. To learn more about SecondCell Bio, visit secondcellbio.com (for their funnies - where you’ll see lots of Jared Glasser cartoons - click here).