Dear Colleagues —

This summer, the Career Center updated its strategic plan. Building on the inspired strategic vision laid out in 2018, we have defined new strategic pillars, outlined a set of ambitious initiatives, and discerned the core values that will guide our work in the years to come. Our five new strategic pillars are:

• Predict and act. Collect, analyze and interpret student and employer engagement and outcomes data to inform our outreach strategy, programming initiatives, and the equitable allocation of resources.
  
  
• Integrate with the student journey. Continue to champion a career everywhere mentality by meaningfully integrating career and professional development services into the students’ academic journey as well as co-curricular activities.
  
  
• Introduce and connect students to the Santa Clara network. Facilitate formal and informal opportunities for students to be introduced and connected to alumni, employers, faculty, staff, and peers for the purposes of career and professional development in Silicon Valley and beyond.
  
  
• Design clear and customized roadmaps. Simplify and make more accessible the career and professional development, engagement and recruitment processes for students, alumni, employers, and campus partners.
  
  
• Tell unique stories. Surface and share stories that communicate the unique value proposition of both the Career Center and of a Santa Clara University education.

Throughout the year, we'll continue to share updates and examples of how we are executing on this new plan. If you want to learn more about specific initiatives or how to collaborate with the Career Center, please reach out to me.

The process of updating our strategic pillars, initiatives, and values involved many collaborators to whom we are deeply appreciative: Jeremy Podany from the Career Leadership Collective, Shirley Mata from Human Resources, and Margaret Higgins and Tony Cortese from the Ignatian Center. To my team in the Career Center, thank you for the time and energy invested in this process.

As always, I am excited to work together to deliver on the promise of higher education for all of our students: a good job, social capital, and economic mobility in pursuit of a more humane, just and sustainable world.

Thank you,

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The Career Center is pleased to announce that we have successfully launched a paid Employer Partner Program. Under the leadership of Melissa Thiriez, Director of Employer Relations and Partnerships, the program is off to a great start with already eight partners signed up for the coming year: Enterprise, ServiceNow, AlphaSights, Synopsys, Veritas Technologies, AbilityPath, and Rebekah Children's Services. These partnerships have brought in more than $25,000 to the Career Center.

Over the summer, Amanuel Bizuneh, Assistant Director of Employer Relations, and Allison Hoff '24 visited two of our inaugural partners to film testimonials. Watch the videos to hear why these companies like recruiting at Santa Clara University.

The Employer Partner Program, which for right now is invite only, will enable us to better help our partners boost their brand recognition on campus, increase the ROI of their recruitment efforts, and streamline logistics and planning on their behalf.

Questions about the Employer Partner Program? Please email Melissa at mthiriez@scu.edu

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The Career Center is pleased to announce that Sunaina Gulati-Ruh will be joining our team as the Assistant Director of Employer Relations - Business and Entrepreneurship. Her first day will be Monday, September 11. (You may already know or recognize Sunaina; she is an internal hire and is joining us from the Leavey School of Business's Graduate Business Career Management (GBCM) team.)

A fan of the power of networking as an accelerant to career success, Sunaina's focus will be on connecting student talent with local, national and global employers in the business and entrepreneurship sectors through career fairs, coffee chats, and boutique recruiting opportunities. She will report to Melissa Thiriez.

At GBCM, Sunaina led a team of three to develop and scale a range of career services and initiatives to create purposeful connections between 700+ graduate MBA & MS students and employers. Students had opportunities to grow their network through industry panels, company information sessions and treks and networking events to support their goals for career pivots, advancement or entrepreneurship. 

Previously, she has held sales and marketing roles at Citibank, NY, Intuit and as an Executive Coach at Lee Hecht Harrison. She holds a BA from Skidmore College, and a MA in Counseling Psychology, with an emphasis in career, from Santa Clara University. 

As we welcome Sunaina, I want to take this opportunity to thank Melissa Thiriez for leading a highly efficient search process. I also want to thank the search committee – Alyse Mason and Cindy Cooper – who helped to identify the strongest candidates. And most importantly, thank you to the Career Center staff. For all of the time and energy invested in this process, I am very grateful. 

Please feel free to send Sunaina a note of welcome and congratulations at sgulatiruh@scu.edu.

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Four members of the Career Center team are enrolling as students in SCU graduate programs this academic year while one of us — Noel Kreidler — will return for a second year to the head of the classroom as lecturer for MGMT 50: Professional Skills Seminar. Wish us luck!

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The Career Center is excited to offer a full and dynamic menu of events, programs, workshops, and fairs this fall quarter. Up-to-date information on our events calendar.

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Visitors to our About page can now see which members of our team are multilingual and the non-English languages they speak.

Why are we doing this?
After sharing my experience traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border as part of a faculty/staff immersion trip led by the Ignatian Center, our team discussed ways to make our services more accessible to the wider SCU community, including the families of current and prospective students for whom English may not be their first language. Our hope is that by sharing the languages we each speak, and celebrating the diversity of our team, more members of our community will feel seen and supported. — Dylan

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Questions, concerns, ideas, suggestions?
Please email careercenter@scu.edu.