Already an accomplished musician, Nicole Lam focused on studying applied mathematics and computer science at Yale — and found a new career in the arts.
Nicole Lam
Photo by Daniel Havlat
Nicole Lam
Photo by Daniel Havlat
Graduating from Yale College with a double major in applied mathematics and computer science and a joint B.S./M.S. in the latter, Nicole Lam looks like an ideal candidate for a career in finance. Instead, the Ezra Stiles senior and longtime pianist is Broadway-bound, having discovered at Yale the form of music-making that is “closest to my heart.”
A native of San Gabriel, California, Lam has had music in her heart since she was three years old, when she first sat down at her family’s piano. She went on to become a virtuoso pianist and talented vocalist, and she planned to continue focusing on the piano after high school. Then a music conservatory professor advised her to study something else, “because the more you understand the world, the more meaning your art can hold.”
So Lam came to Yale to study applied mathematics (she added computer science later). “I was drawn to applied mathematics because it’s everywhere — woven into the structure of the world around us,” she said. “I wanted to learn how to formalize those patterns and apply them to real-world questions.”
She was a research assistant for a study on machine-learning in medicine and a tutor for multiple math courses. She interned in the Yale Investments Office and at the D.E. Shaw Group in New York; for her senior project in applied mathematics, she devised a new way for the Yale office to compare fee structures between marketable and illiquid investment models.
At Yale, Lam also studied the piano with Professor Elisabeth Parisot at the Yale School of Music. She sang with the Yale Glee Club and Yale Cantorum, performed with the Yale Artists Cabaret in peers’ senior projects, and served as musical director for campus shows by the Yale Dramat and other organizations. She was music director and head conductor of the Berkeley College Orchestra, which tripled in size during her tenure. And as assistant conductor of Yale Symphony Orchestra (YSO) during her senior year, Lam conducted the sold-out Halloween show in Woolsey Hall and made her European conducting debut during the YSO’s spring tour to North Macedonia and Greece.
While she’d been a performer and tutor before coming to campus, Lam had never been a conductor or musical director. Those roles “became the form of music that felt most meaningful to me,” she said. “It wasn’t a pivot from finance; it was a step toward the kind of music-making I hadn’t known how to name before college but quickly came to love.”
“These experiences have shaped me into the kind of leader I hope to be: someone who creates spaces where people feel encouraged and inspired to bring the fullest version of themselves,” she added.
Lam was honored for her collaborative spirit and leadership last year when she received the Joseph Lentilhon Selden Memorial Award for a junior in music or the humanities, which cited her work as founder of Love Through Music, a student-run nonprofit that brings music performance and education to underserved communities.
While the worlds of science and music rarely overlap for Lam, they merged this spring in her senior project in computer science, for which she created a website featuring a “soundscape” of the Yale campus. She later performed pieces related to the soundscape in her senior recital, titled “Uncharted.”
After graduation, Lam is off to Maine, where she will be associate music director for “Guys and Dolls” at the Ogunquit Playhouse. Then it’s on to New York City, where Lam has spent the last year studying music direction and conducting through masterclasses and one-on-one mentorships with Broadway music directors. There, she’ll continue to pursue opportunities in musical theater and orchestral conducting. “I’m especially committed to bridging the divide between Broadway and classical music, two worlds that share so much, but are too often kept apart,” she said.
Wherever the future takes her, Lam hopes she’ll continue to feel the same excitement she has on campus. “I want to maximize each moment. Everything feels incredibly precious,” she said. She is grateful for the many at Yale who have “mentored and inspired” her, she adds, and will always be a student at heart. “I want to always be learning — being more ignorant, in the best way.”