Alumni Career Collective

The technology revolution has unleashed a number of changes in the career development world for higher education, students, alumni, and employers. This is illustrated by the increasingly varied career pathways that require job placement across multiple different industries over lifespan, employers seeing an increase in the number of applicants per job posting (if they are even posted publicly at all), the increased use of applicant tracking systems and robot resume review, the automation of numerous sectors in the future, and a shift to ongoing lifetime skill acquisition (compared with the traditional frontloading within a four-year degree).

As we explore these trends that are taking place at the intersections of alumni, career, and other higher education services, we hope to “engage the entire university network of students, alumni, faculty, and employers” (Dey and Cruzvergara, 2014) and thus improve our understanding of career needs for current and future alumni. Please join the conversation!

Higher Education and Career Services: A Panel Discussion

Date: Wednesday, June 23, 2021 from 10–11 a.m. ET

The acceleration of technology, coupled with the formation of the Taskforce on Higher Education and Opportunity to address the impact of COVID-19, all point toward a significant change in the career landscape.

Join this conversation with Jeremy Podany of the Career Leadership Collective and Katrina Ward, director of Outreach & Engagement with the University of California, as we discuss the trends impacting the career development and social mobility of our students and alumni.

The conversation will touch on the following:

Career Agility: Why it is important to balance education with tactical skills such as emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and other liberal arts strengths moving forward.
Social Mobility: How national data about career services impacts the career lifespan of students and alumni.
Internal Partnerships: How changes in education affect lifelong learning.

Panelists

Jeremy Podany is the founder and CEO of The Career Leadership Collective, home of The National Alumni Career Mobility Survey. Jeremy is an innovation, leadership, and organizational growth connoisseur with unique expertise on the confluence of university career services, systems-thinking, leadership, and organizational growth.

Jeremy enjoyed nearly 20 years working inside higher education in career services and corporate education and has helped build six unique startups inside and outside of universities. His inventions and consulting solutions have systemically helped thousands of university leaders and hundreds of thousands of college students with career education and social mobility.

Jeremy regularly writes, speaks, trains, and consults for universities, businesses, and tech startups. His specialty involves helping university upper-administrators to weave career education into the fabric of the campus and maximize results.

Katrina Ward currently serves as the Director of Outreach & Engagement for the University of California, Office of the President, where she leads alumni career engagement efforts across the University of California system by partnering with staff at the 10 University of California campuses. Under Katrina’s direction, UC has launched a number of innovative career programs aimed at uniting and supporting a community of over 2 million alumni.

Prior to this role, Katrina served as the Executive Director of Alumni Career Initiatives and Partnership at UCLA. In this role, Katrina designed and pioneered a transformative engagement program to support students in the transition from classroom to career by uniting alumni, faculty, and corporations to implement full-scale change in the academic classroom, co-curricular programs, and virtual touchpoints.

As a higher education leader, Katrina has developed community partnerships and innovative career programs to serve students and alumni at UCLA, University of Denver, Pepperdine University, Santa Monica College, and The New School University.

Katrina holds a Bachelor of Science in Human Development from Cornell University, a Master of Arts in Psychology, and a Master of Education in Counseling Psychology, both from Columbia University.

Have ideas or are interested in a certain topic? Want to be on the steering committee? Please reach out to Louise Jackson at [email protected].