She tracks down the truth behind elusive business hacking, fraud, scandal, and other illegal activity for a living, and she got her start in challenging history courses at Haverford College.

One of the few female leaders in the global corporate investigation industry, Lisa Silverman, the Managing Director of Chicago-based K2 Intelligence, is living proof that a sharp “ability to observe and think critically” is more important than having a resume that just looks good.

“I can teach you how to crunch numbers and how to read a piece of litigation, but I can’t teach you how to think critically about what you are reading and see how it fits or doesn’t fit into a larger pattern of facts,” Silverman said in a Haverford College interview by Michelle Martinez.

“I tell people all the time how well my Haverford education prepared me perfectly for this job — particularly my junior and senior history seminars. The Historian as Detective (one of the texts) sits on my work bookshelf.”

Though the Class of 1989 alumna says that “it’s rare my daily life feels like TV,” some of her investigations have prevented her clients from getting involved in deals that turned out to be major frauds.

“The hardest thing about my job is to not try to make my facts stick to theory, but to develop a theory based on the actual facts,” she said. “My job is to find the accurate story, not just the popular one.”

Read more about Lisa Silverman’s work and career journey from Haverford College here, and check out previous DELCO Today coverage of the college here.