The UC Santa Cruz alumni group is 140,000 strong throughout the world. The power of so lots of Banana Slugs sharing comparable academic experiences can guide to a must have advice, perception, and option.
For Morgan Jones (Stevenson ’04, philosophy and linguistics), connecting with two other UCSC alumni—occupation coach Marcia Wall (Stevenson ’92, English and American literature) and leadership mentor Frank Marquardt (Stevenson ’92, American experiments)—helped Jones land her desire occupation 18 several years following graduating from the college.
“I sense like because we were being all alumni from Santa Cruz, there was previously a crafted-in have faith in and knowledge in between the three of us,” Marcia* mentioned. “When you align with persons who align with your values, I consider that’s in which great factors can materialize. And I assume these values that we figured out at UC Santa Cruz keep on to implement.”
Jones graduated from UCSC with a B.A. in philosophy and a insignificant in linguistics in 2004. She experienced intensive careers as a author, freelance audio operator, an editor, and worked briefly as a dialogue designer. In 2020, Jones was laid off from her work and promptly started looking for a new profession in UX and conversation design and style.
She was interviewing for as quite a few as three distinct companies concurrently, most of which encompassed 4 rounds of interviews. She was regularly interviewing, was modifying to on the internet interviews early into the pandemic, and sought out the suggestions of a profession specialist.
She landed on career mentor Marcia Wall, a Stevenson alumna who presented a price reduction for her providers to UCSC alumni.
With the assistance of Marcia, Jones honed her interviewing and presentation abilities and attained profound self-confidence in herself and her perform.
“It was extremely valuable for her to instill me with self-confidence and make me truly feel definitely good about telling my story,” Jones reported. “She was rather straightforward with her suggestions and was normally useful in remaining a spouse in my course of action.”
Marcia graduated from UCSC in 1992 with a B.A. in English and American literature. She worked as a K-12 instructor in San Diego for four many years ahead of training college or university English courses at the University of San Diego, San Diego Local community School, and the University of New Orleans.
Marcia stated that at some point during her educating occupation, she recognized that aiding people today “realize and exceed their have expectations” was what she relished most about teaching. Marcia sought the expert services of a occupation coach and saw firsthand the job she preferred for herself.
“When I started wanting back again on my job, I understood the by thread was that coaching piece,”Marcia reported. “As a senior in higher education, I was a peer mentor to 1st-calendar year pupils at UC Santa Cruz, and later on I had also been dean of a complex school and a occupation advisor for high university pupils. So I’d been undertaking that type of do the job, and I hardly ever really set two and two jointly.”
Marcia has stayed related to UCSC considering that graduating, supplying professional bono career expert services as a result of webinars, team coaching, and a UC career good. Very last 12 months all through alumni 7 days, Marcia gave a presentation on imposter syndrome.
When she labored with Jones, Marcia reached out to an aged buddy from UCSC, Frank Marquardt (Stevenson ’90, American scientific studies), who attended UCSC for two several years just before transferring to Reed University. She related Marquardt, now a management mentor with an substantial qualifications in UX design, with Jones so they could share activities.
“It’s generally worthwhile for us to try to remember that we are connected, and it’s simple to ignore how connected we are,” Marquardt claimed. “It took a long time to determine out my vocation path and undo some of my personal mental blocks about networking. But about time, I have appear to see networking as a seriously stunning way to discover a different person’s expertise.”
As of April, Jones has started doing work as a conversation style supervisor for Verse.io and carries on to acquire leadership classes with Marquardt.
“I feel that the ethical in this story is to assume a lot more about reconnecting when you’re at a crossroads in your life and perhaps achieve back to your university—in this scenario, UC Santa Cruz,” Jones stated. It’s a fantastic sensation to know that we all shared that knowledge.”
*Marcia desired to be determined by her initially title in this story.