Associate Vice President of Career and Professional Development, University of Virginia

Hi, my name is Everette Fortner, I'm the Associate Vice President of Career and Professional Development here at UVA, which basically means I run the Career Center. Well, this job is a General Manager job. You get to do a lot of things and every day is different. One of the great benefits of the job is that I get to work very closely with students, whether it's career peer educators or students who are just coming in for counseling. We really focus on three areas for student development. The first is exploration, helping you understand yourself and start to learn a little bit about the world of work. The second is career communities and connections. We have a group of career counselors who are experts in certain industries and they help students make connections with alumni in those areas. And then the third is experience and skill development. We believe that in order for you to be hired, you've got to be able to demonstrate that you can do the skills that the employer needs and you've gotta find experiences to get those skills developed. You know, I think as the head of the Career Center, a big responsibility is setting the strategic direction and helping shape the culture. And then, one of the things I do as a leader is really try to keep the barriers out of everybody else's way. So in a big bureaucracy like UVA, it's all about making sure that people are doing the great work that they wanna do, the kind of work that they wanna do. And so I feel like that's my job, is to really work with senior administration to get us the resources to make sure we have everything to take to bear for our students. September, October are our biggest months. Students come back really anxious to engage in their career development. And the same thing with January through March, you see a lot, then you see a lotta fourth years April, May. So the summer then we dedicate to planning for the year and what I would call professional development, going to conferences, building our skills, talking to other schools about best practices. We'll normally take one trip a year to visit another school and collaborate, think about what we can do together.