Speaker: Leah Lattimore, Director, Undergraduate Programs, Forté
Describe the importance of career services on your campus.
Leah Lattimore: Career Services is extremely important and vital on college campuses, whether guiding individual students, developing curriculum to support their career readiness, partnering with companies and organizations to create opportunities for students, working with faculty to ensure that there's alignment within the curriculum. All of these things are really crucial to the long-term success of students and that's what makes Career Services vital.
How do you support the career services office?
Leah Lattimore: Here at Forté, we are really invested in changing the balance of power in the workplace. And so my role as the Director of Undergraduate programs is to identify programs, initiatives, resources, opportunities for future women in business. We want all of our women to feel supported and empowered as well as prepared for entering the workforce, regardless of the industry or the role that they are seeking. And so specifically, we offer a number of virtual workshops. We have a NACE-informed Career Readiness certificate. We also host a number of conferences virtually and in person across the country to engage women in the conversation about business. And so we work with Career Services to provide complementary and supplementary resources and initiatives that can be offered to their students to help boost their postgraduate outcomes. We're really grateful for all of our partnerships and want to thank so many of our campuses for inviting us into the space. We really do try to support and empower your students, who in turn become our students, so that they have limitless possibilities in their future.
What does receiving this award mean to you and to Forté?
Leah Lattimore: I am incredibly honored to receive this award. There's so much great work happening at Forté and I have an incredible team who works really hard to understand the needs of our stakeholders and deliver meaningful, proactive, beneficial content. And so I really share this award with the entire team, particularly those in the undergraduate space who are being flexible and adaptable and nimble as needed to adjust to what we're seeing, feeling, witnessing and experiencing in the undergraduate space. And so thank you so much for honoring the great work of that team. And to be a part of NACE is a dream. I have held a membership for over 15 years and thanks much in part to Trudy Steinfeld, who has been a mentor, a friend, a sponsor and really emphasized the importance of making NACE a professional home. And since then, I've had the opportunity to learn from, collaborate with incredible leaders in the space from Bernadette So, Kevin Grubb, Brian Guerrero, Manny Contomanolis, and so many, many, many, many others. Way too many to name. So please don't get offended. But to be able to be honored by your peers, to have your work recognized. and especially at a space where you value the input of leaders and you value the output of professionals who are committed to supporting the long term development of undergraduate students is really powerful. And so thank you again to the NACE community. It feels wonderful to be recognized in this way and I share this honor with my incredible team at Forté.
