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“Find what brings you passion and joy, and chase that relentlessly. Approach each challenge or new experience with humble inquiry; you always have something to learn.”
Laura Trollinger Derry (’13), Stanford University, Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine in Palo Alto, CA
Have you been thinking about making a career change?
Join us next Tuesday, November 12th, from 12:00-1:30pm on Zoom for this online conversation about challenges, successes, and strategies in making a successful pivot between roles, organizations, or even industries.
A panel of fellow Wake Forest alumni will share their stories and lessons learned, followed by a mini-workshop with tactical strategies, including identifying and marketing your transferable skills.
We’ll wrap with facilitated networking so that you can get focused feedback and guidance on your next steps.
Grab you spot and register at the link in our bio or stories!
🎩NEW DEACON SPOTLIGHT🎩
We recently caught up with Tori Smith (‘20), Senior Consultant at EY in New York, NY. Tori is currently working for a Fortune 500 company that wanted to professionalize and expand their Innovation Center of Excellence in order to develop customer products and services that both support customer needs and desires but also help reach their corporate goals.
Here are a few fun facts about Tori:
🤿 Tori’s been paragliding, scuba diving and zip lining but doesn’t think she will ever skydive.
🗺️ She has been to 46 states and plans to hit all 50 with her sister (a fellow Wake alumna)!
🐳 Her favorite animals are orca whales, and she hopes to visit the San Juan Islands one day to see them in the wild!
We’ll leave you with some wisdom from Tori:
💡💡💡💡💡💡
“My favorite quote is, ‘The way you do anything is the way you do everything.’ Consider this as you start your life after college. Do the little things you do/say/think/eat/save align with your goals? Your priorities? Your values? Think about this as you plan your minutes and hours and days. These quickly turn into your years and decades.”
Read more of our Q&A with Tori at the 🔗 in our profile or stories.
Do you feel like you’re in control of your own career journey? 🗺️ Or are you simply following along the path provided for you?
We love the wisdom and advice provided in this month’s expert advice post on “Navigating What’s Next” from @wfualumni Cassaundra Young (‘07). 🎩
She reflects on her own career journey and offers tips for how you can own what comes next in your career path: “… I have found great value in navigating my career as a series of shifts that have positioned me for greater impact over time. These pivots may have started out as curiosity, but I have come to realize that there is a strategy for navigating what’s next.”
Visit the link in our bio or stories to read more!
One central theme to all of our Deacon Spotlight alumni stories is the importance of relationship-building and connections in life + work after Wake. 🤝
Swipe through some of our latest spotlights and learn from our @wfualumni’s advice and experiences around how networking has impacted their career path.
To read or search through all of our past 150+ Deacon Spotlights, check out the link in our bio or stories. 🎩
We hope you’ll join us next Wednesday, Nov 6th, from 12-12:30pm EST for our AI at Work Webinar! 🤖💻
We’ll be joined by @wfualumni Peter Sutherland (‘14) – who also happens to be one of our awesome 🎩 Alumni Career Advisers.
Peter is a Program/Project Manager in Monitor Deloitte’s Strategy practice, specializing in solving complex transportation-related challenges for government clients since 2011.
His expertise spans process improvement, data analytics, and leveraging technology to drive impactful decisions. Peter holds an MBA from The Wharton School and a Bachelor’s in Mathematical Business and French Studies from Wake Forest University.
In this webinar, Peter will be demonstrating how he uses AI at work to accomplish big projects for his clients at Deloitte. As a bonus, he’ll demo Deloitte’s new generative AI tools.💡
This event is open to all WFU alumni, students, faculty, and staff. Register at the link in our bio or stories!
Our final Coffee Chat with Alumni of 2024 is happening in November! ☕️ Deadline to sign-up and be included in our pairings for alumni conversations is next week on Friday, Nov 1st. Whether this is your first time participating or you’ve signed up for every coffee chat this past spring, this is an awesome (and easy) way to expand your network. 👥👥👥👥👥👥
⚡️This is an alumni-only event (students – connect with @wfuopcd or @wfuready7 for student networking opps!)⚡️
[Side note: This is NOT a live, time-specific event! And yes, you have to register for each month in which you want to participate!]
If you’re new around here, this is how it works:
1️⃣ You register.
2️⃣ We pair you up with another 🎩 Wake alum and introduce the two of you via email.
3️⃣ The two of you find a mutually convenient time for a conversation (phone, Zoom, in-person, whatever makes sense for y’all!)
💥And just like that, you’ve grown your network, one conversation at a time!💥
It’s super simple. Sign-up at the 🔗 in our profile to give it a try!
Interested in a career in sports? 🏈⚾️🏀🎾⚽️
Join us for a virtual panel on Monday, October 28th, from 5:00-6:00pm, featuring industry insiders who know their way around the world of sports marketing, NILs, corporate sponsorships, and more!
Whether you’re thinking about a career in sports, curious about branding & licensing, or just want to hear from pros who’ve walked the path, you need to check this out.
Panelists include:
⭐Mary Caroline Funk with Wake Forest University on NILs, branding & getting experience at WFU
⭐Brett Lingerfelt with Lowe’s Companies on why big brands partner with sports orgs & where to start your sports career
⭐Kendall Peters with the Minnesota Vikings on essential skills and career journey from WFU
⭐Celia Jeffords with the Atlanta Braves on pivoting from financial services to sports—what it’s really like!
⭐Elizabeth Cove with the National Football League on starting with a rotational program & global sports growth
Deacs, don’t miss the chance to learn from these pros!
Register here at the link in our bio or stories.
🎩 This event is hosted by the WFU School of Business and open to all alumni.
Should political conversations be happening at work? 😬 We know it’s a divisive time with the upcoming election. Every workplace is different and both managers and employees must navigate how and when to engage in difficult discussions about politics.
Yale School of Management Senior Lecturer in Organizational Behavior, Heidi Brooks, suggests that “focusing on a respectful, compassionate, and curious culture is more effective than an outright ban on talking politics” in her Q&A with Yale Insights (September 2024).
Read the full article at the link in our stories or bio and consider what engaging in respectful political dialogue at work might look like for you in the coming weeks. 🫶🎩
One of our favorite things about this work that we do is getting to tell the stories of Wake Forest alumni! 🎩 We’ve always seen our Deacon Spotlight features as a way to help alumni learn from each other’s experiences and foster connections to people who work in areas of interest to you.
We recently updated the Deacon Spotlight page on our website to be easier to navigate and search by the keywords that are most important to you. Just type in an academic major, company name, city, or class year to populate specific spotlight stories. 🔎
Also, we’ve included links at the bottom of each alum’s Deacon Spotlight page to their LinkedIn profile, making it much easier to view their career trajectory and connect. 🫶
Visit the link in our bio or stories to check out all 150+ of our Deacon Spotlights!