Ciocca Center for Business, Ethics, and Society Blog
Blog offers information to students preparing for a career in business.
Alumna: Seton McFarland ’16
Major: Accounting
Profession: Analyst, UBS
Who/What inspired you to enter the business world? Both of my parents worked in business, so I definitely gravitated to what I was familiar with coming out of college. Within the business world, I chose to enter into the financial services industry because it complemented my strong interest in economics. Continue reading “Alumna Spotlight: Seton McFarland ’16”
Each semester the Ciocca Center hires a new intern to complement the Academic Internship Program through the JD Power Center on campus. Partnering again with Prof. Dan Ricciardi’s course offering, Leif Johnson ’21 is currently enrolled in “Managing Business in Society” and is interviewing alumni to show how a Jesuit liberal arts degree is an excellent foundation for a career in business. Check out his fall alumni interviews:
STUDENTS: Interested in the internship? View the description and consider applying next semester.
ALUMNI: Interested in being interviewed? Reach out to business@holycross.edu
This spring semester the Ciocca Center offered a new course through the Academic Internship Program. Professor David Chu, Director of the Certificate Programs and Prebusiness Advisor at Holy Cross, partnered with Katharine Quigley ’13, Digital Marketing Manager at Centage, to teach an Introduction to Online Marketing tutorial.
Complementing the Ciocca Center’s mission to connect the liberal arts to the job market, this new tutorial covered introductory marketing content through various readings and in-depth discussions with a focus on the Google Ads Platform. The five students then applied this to the design, implementation and assessment of an actual online marketing campaign for a non-profit, West Seattle Junction.
“A strong liberal arts education prepared me for an ever-changing digital marketing landscape.” starts Katharine. “It was rewarding to help current Holy Cross students learn new digital marketing concepts and vocabulary, and then see them pair those tools with their existing critical thinking and leadership skills to make a real impact on a nonprofit client.”
Thank you to Katharine for reaching out and offering to work with students on this technical topic. She worked with Professor Chu to identify readings, design a syllabus and spent every Wednesday night on campus working with students interested in a career in marketing communications.
Who were the lucky students involved? 18 students applied for this opportunity and only five were selected: Joe Egan ’19, Tim Haemmerle ’19, Olivia Lozy ’20, Lilly Puccia ’19 and Madeline Thero ’19.
UPDATE: Each of the students involved won a “Top Marketer Certificate” from Google! The award is based on successful completion of the Google Ad Grants Online Marketing Challenge, passing the Google Ads Fundamentals Assessment, and a positive client experience survey rating from their nonprofit. Congratulations on the excellent work!
Read more about the Google Awards here.
Thanks for reading! Cassie
Cassie Gevry, Associate Director
Ciocca Center for Business, Ethics, and Society
Anne Fink ’85, P17
President of Global Foodservice, PepsiCo
“One of my mentors has been a real model for servant leadership. This notion of putting others first stands out to me: just because you’re at the top of the organization, doesn’t mean that people are serving you.”
On April 1, 2019, Ciocca Center Student Intern Sarah Anderson ’20 interviewed Anne to learn about her journey in the food and beverage industry. Anne is the President of Global Foodservice at PepsiCo and is a member of the Holy Cross Board of Trustees.
What did you want to be when you grew up? Did you always know you wanted to work in the food and beverage industry? I grew up in a business family. My father and mother started a business when I was in grade school and it ended up being a family affair. It was a company called Mats Incorporated, a commercial floor matting business. My father started it from the trunk of his car selling doormats to businesses. Little by little, he grew the business into a pretty large and successful entity. Actually, my three brothers own the business and run it today and they have hundreds of employees. My mother would type the invoices at night and I used to help her. So, it was very much a family business. I grew up interested in business, curious and involved. I knew I liked business and was interested in pursuing a career in it. I had a good feeling for that pretty early on in life. Continue reading “Ciocca Center Intern to Interview Anne Fink ’85, P17”
Bill Abbott ’84
President & CEO of Crown Media Family Networks
“This is where being a major in English really comes in handy. I feel like I learned story, characters, and emotion and all the things that comprise great storytelling at Holy Cross.”
On March 29, 2019, Ciocca Center Student Intern Sarah Anderson ’20 interviewed Bill to learn about how he turned his English Major into a career in the entertainment industry. Bill is the President and CEO of Crown Media Family Networks.
What did you want to be when you grew up? Did you always know you wanted to work in the entertainment industry? No, not at all. I was an English major, with a lot of political science classes mixed in there. I was really focused more either on law school or teaching when I was at school. But, after college I felt like more school wasn’t really where I wanted to be my first year out. So, I was fortunate enough to get a job in the media world, loved it from the beginning, and decided that’s what I would focus on. Entertainment is not something I intended on, but the liberal arts education provided me with a great backdrop for really anything I wanted to do because it teaches you and gives you a good sense of how to communicate and critically think and write. All of those are crucial aspects to any job. Continue reading “Ciocca Center Intern Interviews Bill Abbott ’84”
Business on campus at College of the Holy Cross is developing as the newly named Ciocca Center for Business, Ethics, and Society expands its offerings to students eager to learn about the industry. The business program at HC includes the following: Certificate in Business Fundamentals (with an optional track in finance and banking), Certificate in Entrepreneurship, and a minor in Business Ethics, and Society.
My name is Sarah Anderson ’20. I’m a junior at Holy Cross, majoring in English with a Religious Studies minor working towards my Certificate in Business Fundamentals. As the current chair of the annual Women in Business Conference, I am interested in learning more about different leadership styles and company dynamics within the workplace. For the Academic Internship Program, I am taking a seminar called “Boards and CEOs: Governing America’s Businesses” with Professor Dan Riccardi and interning at the Ciocca Center. My main project is crafting a blog featuring my research and interviews with HC alums that highlight current CEOs and board members of a variety of companies with a liberal arts education.
Check out the following blog posts to learn from HC alum CEOs and board members about their roles and how they got there!
The annual fall Women in Business Conference comes but once a year, but the student committee would argue differently. With conference planning that takes a full year, and various student events each semester, the student committee has a new goal: Create a network of women in business.
Kate Beckerman ’20 decided after the 2017 conference to create the Women in Business newsletter, Purple Pulse, with the first edition sent out mid-April 2018. She explains “I saw how special of a community we had at the conference and I wanted to have a way to keep us connected and inspired throughout the year.” She went on to say the name “Purple Pulse” was inspired by the phrase “Bleed Purple” which speaks to how passionate students and alumnae are about HC. “Pulse” refers to our strong network and the burst of empowerment we receive at each conference. Beckerman hopes this newsletter will help to strengthen this amazing community year round.
>> Join the Community! Register for the next installment of the Purple Pulse newsletter to see student and alumnae highlights, conference announcements, upcoming events, career tips and year-round inspiration!
Meet your 2018 Women in Business Student Committee!
Top Left to Bottom Right: Nalani Ramos Ruiz ’21, Kate Beckerman ’20, Casey Carty ’18, Rosangel Cruz Cabrera ’18, Grace Ingram ’21, Clare O’Leary ’19, Sarah Anderson ’20, Margaret Anderson ’21
Not Pictured: & Mary McGregor ’19 and Delaney Wells ’20
HAVE YOUR HEARD? The Ciocca Office of Entrepreneurial Studies is excited to announce a new program structure that rewards students with focused business skills – the COES Professional Program. This structured co-curricular program is designed to complement the excellent Holy Cross liberal arts education by offering you an introduction to business workshop, followed by access to a number of alumni-led, industry specific workshops and advising. The workshops listed below, combined with internship experience, recommended HC courses, student club involvement and required Excel workshop, will enable HC students to connect their education and experience to the marketplace.
Thank you for reinforcing your education and future career goals through the many opportunities our office provides.
On Monday, October 27th the Holy Cross Sales Group hosted J.R Butler ’08 in a workshop on translating a Holy Cross degree into a successful career in sales. During his time on the hill, Butler found success both in the classroom as a Sociology major, Art history minor and as a Varsity athlete playing for the Men’s Hockey team. More recently, he has been busy in his professional career, recently being named as Regional Sales Director at VM Turbo, one of the fastest growing tech companies in the Boston area.
To Butler, the three most important things that Holy Cross can offer a student interested in sales are: an inquisitive mind, critical thinking skills, and the ability to interact with a variety of people. As liberal arts students, we are taught to understand a wide variety of topics at a deeper level that allows us to apply these skills in the real world. Furthermore, we learn to make reasonable arguments that would appeal to a wide variety of people. Someone with a successful career in sales utilizes these skills to find why a client may need a service or product and is able to help the client understand why it is necessary to the well being of his/her company.
The Holy Cross Sales Group thanks everyone who was able to attend the event and we encourage those who are interested in sales to attend any future meetings. Our next meeting is Monday, November 24, 2014 at 7:00pm in Stein 120. We look forward to seeing you there!
—
Thanks to Kyle Larkin ’15 and the Holy Cross Sales Club for inviting J.R. Butler ’08 back to campus for a lively talk on the sales industry. As always, don’t forget to “like” us on FACEBOOK and follow us @HCPrebusiness Watch for our next blog post…
Cassie Gevry
Associate Director, Entrepreneurial Studies
The Ciocca Office of Entrepreneurial Studies Office worked with the HCEG Alumni Group to host the bi-annual HCEG Boston Networking Event last month on Thursday, October 23rd at the Racepoint Global offices on State Street. It was a fun-filled night with good company, food and drink. Present alumni covered a broad area of careers from commercial real estate to communications to c-level executive at technology companies. The theme of the night was “The Ability to Adapt to an Ever-Changing Market” and this topic was covered by the keynote speaker of the evening, Ray Jorgensen ’91. He is the President and CEO of PMG which specializes in revenue cycle management for community health centers. Ray gave a powerful speech on the art of adaptation in a career.
He broke this concept into three separate ideas to become successful in a perpetually changing career.
1) Find a “Hedgehog Concept”
a. Do what you love
b. How can you be the greatest in the world at what you do?
c. Success is very gradual until you hit a tipping point in which it skyrockets
2) Be Resilient…Persevere!
a. Fail and learn
b. Jim Collin’s Stockade paradox: the resilient and realistic persevere, not the optimists in the world
3) Be “Lucky”
a. Create your own like; be in the right place at the right time and out work everyone
b. Solid support network
c. Good fortune is rarely unplanned
d. Control what you can control: your attitude and effort
Ray’s speech was incredibly informative, entertaining and relevant to his audience. The Holy Cross community is truly fortunate to have such successful and passionate alumni like Ray who are willing to share their advice and story. Next time we hope to have more students in the mix for networking! Watch for the spring event registration.
—
Thanks to Matt Campbell ’15, for attending the Boston event and writing this succinct review. Great keynote, great food/drink and great networking! As always, don’t forget to “like” COES on FACEBOOK and follow us @HCPrebusiness
Cassie Gevry
Associate Director
Ciocca Office of Entrepreneurial Studies
College of the Holy Cross •1 College Street, Worcester, MA 01610 •508-793-2011
© 2024 College of the Holy Cross All rights reserved.
