Prepared for life

Most 18-year-olds don’t come to college with definitive career plans. Five years ago, Sam Secrest ’23 was a political science, philosophy, and economics major who loved to write and had a passion for football.

But how would that translate to a career?

Secrest signed up for Denison’s Journey Program, where he and a career coach put together an action plan that helped him discover and land his dream job. Secrest began to build a network of people in football-related careers and connected with Max Paulus ’13, director of college scouting for the Cleveland Browns.

“Our first conversation lasted 90 minutes,” Secrest says. “He helped me turn my hobby of writing about football into the practice of writing scouting reports and gave me coaching on how to make them better.”

After graduation, Secrest was hired as a film analyst with the Browns and was recently promoted to scouting assistant. He is proud to call Paulus a colleague.

Secrest’s touchdown with the Browns is testimony to Denison’s personalized and pragmatic approach to career exploration — four years packed with career-oriented experiences, including classroom learning, internships, research opportunities, and mentorship from both faculty advisors and professionals with decades of experience.

Denison is bucking the notion that career preparation is not part of a liberal arts education, a view that President Adam Weinberg says sets up false choices for prospective students. “We can deliver a life-shaping liberal arts education,” he says, “that also prepares our students to launch quickly and successfully into lives and careers and supports our alumni during career pivots.”

Through classroom work and a variety of tailored programming, Denison’s career-forward education helps students answer three pivotal questions:

• What are my values and passions, and how do they fit into the life I want to lead?
• What career paths can help me build that life?
• How can I get what I need to enter that life successfully?

“This is far more than a theoretical exercise,” says vice president and chief of staff Raj Bellani. “Our people are dedicated and agile, always looking for ways to connect and deliver opportunities to students.”

Bellani leads three teams dedicated to the work: the acclaimed Austin E. Knowlton Center for Career Exploration, Denison Edge skills development program, and Red Frame Lab consulting and entrepreneurship initiative. Among the proof the model is working: Denison ranks No. 4 nationally for career services among all colleges and universities, according to the Princeton Review.

“We used to benchmark against other careers centers,” says Melanie Murphy, Knowlton’s director of career communities and coaching. “Now they’re calling us.”

The college builds career-forward infrastructure and opportunities throughout the campus by linking every academic department to a career coach at the Knowlton Center. Through this partnership, faculty and career professionals liaise to share data, provide joint programming, and hold events for students.

In addition, dozens of career-oriented programs and opportunities are built into every semester, summer, and seasonal break at Denison. With so many options — ranging from career expos and candid career conversations with alums to career pathways and internship programs — every student can build a resume that reflects their individual goals.

“Each student experience scaffolds onto the one before it so they build a tailor-made career and find their way into it,” says Ryan Brechbill, the Knowlton Center’s director of employer and alumni relations.

During his first year on The Hill, data analytics and financial economics major Suryansh Agrawal ’25 was a frequent visitor to the Knowlton Center. He landed an internship as an ESG impact investment analyst with HIP Investor Inc. and was invited to continue with them into his sophomore year.

That year, Agrawal joined the Knowlton Center’s immersive two-day career exploration Journey Program to help him “figure out my passion,” he says.

“I started with 10 ideas, narrowed them down to five, and then finally focused on three.”

Agrawal decided on a career in data and investments, influenced by his first internship and by stories of how his father, who was in a similar field, helped change lives. He joined one of Knowlton’s seven industry-related career communities, this one for students interested in financial services, consulting, and business. Each career community is led by a team of professionals and a student career ambassador who share information, resources, and internship and job leads.

Agrawal landed two more internships that helped him gain industry-specific knowledge and build his network. An investment analyst position with Denison’s investment office extended into his junior year, and last summer, he lived in New York City and interned with the investment firm CAIS on alternative investment post-trade solutions.

Now in his final year at Denison, Agrawal is leading his career community as a senior peer and preparing for his Chartered Financial Analyst Level I exams. He is confident in a future in his chosen profession.

An international student from Ecuador, David Montalvo ’23 spent hours researching companies, prepping for interviews, and talking to Denison alums. A career coach gave him advice and helped Montalvo craft his resume. “It was hard work,” Montalvo says, “but he helped keep me motivated.”

Montalvo also took advantage of a unique opportunity at Denison, spending the summer in Columbus as part of a Denison Edge business immersion program.

Denison Edge offers year-round courses and workshops taught by industry experts in areas such as analytics, business, finance, logistics, marketing, and communications. During a six-week period as a team member on a consulting project, Montalvo helped identify potential funding sources, wrote a financial analysis, identified risks and ways to mitigate challenges, and conducted market research.

The experience was more valuable than the sum of its parts, Montalvo says: “It also helped me build out my resume, and I got to network with professionals in business and industry.”

Montalvo got another career boost in Knowlton’s career-readiness boot camp, a winter break program specially designed to help seniors hit the finish line as winners. The three-day experience was “intense,” he says. “It was 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day, working on resumes, connecting with alumni, and practicing interviews.”

He was surprised by an unexpected side benefit — the opportunity to bond more deeply with his classmates. That feeling of connection remains. A year after graduation, Montalvo is a policy and quality analytics analyst at Goldman Sachs — and he always answers the call when Denisonians come to him for advice and counsel.

The Red Frame Lab, Denison’s hub for entrepreneurship and consulting, offers students additional ways to gain real-world experience. Dozens of professionals with decades of expertise among them provide mentorship and connections, helping students workshop ideas and solve problems.

Last fall, a team of students in the Red Frame Lab’s Denison Consulting program partnered with Wendy’s International to find ways to increase its franchise opportunities in 20 cities, especially among women and minority groups.

The group conducted interviews, crunched data, and met weekly with Red Frame Partner-in-Residence Rosa Ailabouni. With extensive experience as a consultant, including time with Booz Allen, Ailabouni is a managing partner of RMA Strategies, consulting with international businesses.

Blake McDonald ’25, a varsity swimmer and global commerce and East Asian studies double major, found talking with Ailabouni formative to how he approaches his workplace. Three pieces of advice especially stand out: accountability — the need to be attentive and present at every meeting; efficient meeting management; and communication, “so you can get the help you need and the project doesn’t fall off track.”

At the end of the project, McDonald’s team met with Abigail Pringle ’96, president of Wendy’s International. “The opportunity to present your findings and back up your evidence in front of a Fortune 500 company at the age of 20 — it doesn’t get better than that,” he says.

The experience gave him an edge when interviewing for an international trade summer internship with KPMG, where he will return as an international trade consultant after he graduates in spring 2025.

Denison’s multiple resources, such as Knowlton’s internship program and the college’s Handshake platform, help students find, connect with, and land their preferred internships. In 2023-24, the Knowlton Center internship stipends funded 63 students for academic term internships and another 57 students with funding to complete consulting projects with companies through the Red Frame Lab. An additional 249 students received funding for summer 2024 internships, bringing the total invested to $822,000.

For many, those internships could be a look into a career path that doesn’t quite fit — or a gateway to a dream job.

English major Alexandra Redrick ’25 returned to campus in the fall of 2024 after taking a gap year with the Walt Disney Company as a global public relations intern. Situated in Disney Experiences, she worked with members of the business empire — Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Pixar among them — on campaigns that rolled out in Disney parks, stores, and cruises around the world.

Just a few days after her yearlong internship with Disney ended, Redrick moved to Washington, D.C., for a summer internship with the Motion Picture Association, which asked her to continue her work into the academic year.

“I came in green, and I learned so much,” Redrick says. “I’m excited to pick up the projects I had to leave at the end of the summer.”

Cinema and psychology double major Yaz Simpson ’23 attained a summer internship with Peter Jarowey ’09 and his L.A. film company, Vertical, thanks to cinema professor Mark Wiskemann. Jarowey even introduced Simpson to John Petro ’99, who gave her a place to live as his house-sitter that summer.

In her senior year, Simpson met weekly with a career coach who specialized in the arts industry. “She read my scripts, reviewed my resume, and helped me build my website,” says Simpson, who returned to Vertical for a final internship after graduation — only to have her future plans derailed by the 2023 Writers Guild strike.

Fortunately, the Knowlton Center was still in her corner. The career coach found her a job as a book editor, which helped tide Simpson over until a former boss at Vertical contacted her about an opportunity at the STARZ network.

Now a coordinator for program acquisitions at STARZ, Simpson reads, analyzes, and writes script synopses and “runs around L.A. to watch movies and write reports for the ones that work for us.”

Assistant professor Julie Mujic networks and uses the Ask a Denisonian tool (read about it here) to invite alums and Denison “friends” to share their sports-related career paths with her Global Sport & Profit class. Dyrol Joyner ’81, a two-time Emmy Award-winning TV sports anchor, reporter, and iHeart Sports Network anchor, was one of eight alums who responded to her invitation.

After sharing his own career journey, Joyner asked each student about their own career goals and followed up, connecting them with people he knew who could help. “He was amazing — the students just loved him,” Mujic says.

Joyner’s two-day visit involved meeting dozens of students, touring campus, enjoying meals with students and faculty, and participating in a global commerce fireside chat. Mujic invited Ben New ’27 to dinner with Joyner, knowing of her student’s interest in a career in sports.

It was New’s first experience with networking. “Professor Mujic told me to be direct and ask for what I was looking for,” he says.

New shared his desire to work in baseball, and Joyner passed his resume to his contacts in the Mets franchise. While he was too late for a 2024 internship, he says he’s already working on next summer.

“I appreciated his advice,” New says, “and he’s told me multiple times that if I need anything, just to let him know.”

Riley Bel Bruno ’22 enlisted a career coach to help her pivot from sales to marketing. Today, she’s a marketing operations analyst with American Express.

The coach advised Bel Bruno to educate herself and reach out to Denison’s alumni network to build a ladder in this new industry. She conducted dozens of information interviews, ultimately talking with about 65 people. Her mantra: “Never say no.”

“I learned how important — and fun — informational interviews can be,” she says. “I started getting into a groove and asking creative questions like ‘What podcasts do you listen to?’”

Eventually, Bel Bruno reached Andrew Knerr ’10, a director for product marketing at Amex. Knerr connected her with people in several roles across the company, and she spoke to a dozen on her way to landing a position with the company.

“Everyone has been so incredibly willing to help,” Bel Bruno says. “I truly believe we have one of the best alumni groups anywhere.”