Keynote Speakers
Dr. Marina Astitha
Associate Professor & Associate Department Head for Graduate Education, Equity and Inclusion, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Dr. Astitha is an Associate Professor and the Associate Department Head for Graduate Education, Equity and Inclusion at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Connecticut. Dr. Astitha is leading the Atmospheric Modeling Group since 2013. The group includes graduate and undergraduate students in Environmental Engineering conducting research on extreme weather and air quality prediction, renewable energy, and lake ecosystem protection in the face of climate change. Dr. Astitha is passionate about diversity and equity in higher education. She is committed to support and nurture students from all backgrounds, especially women and minorities in Engineering, to innovate, lead and thrive in solving complex environmental problems and sustain a healthy society in the years to come.
Ashton Beason-Jones (‘11 CLAS)
Product Manager, The Cigna Group
Ashton grew up in a single-parent household with his mother in Windsor, Connecticut. As a first-generation college graduate, Ashton went to the University of Connecticut to pursue a degree in Political Science. While at UConn, he held several leadership positions, including but not limited to being a member of the Community Service-Learning Community, an e-board member of the West Indian Student Organization (WISO), and a founding member of the organization Brothers Reaching Our Society (BROS). After graduation, Ashton briefly worked at Apple prior to being accepted into Cigna’s Technology Early Career Development Program (TECDP). During his tenure in the program, he managed to help create a new media subcommittee and was a member of the Lead Team for the program. After graduating from the Technology Early Career Development Program, Ashton held numerous positions, from an agile product owner to a scrum master and technical product owner. He is currently an Agile Product Manager for Cigna’s Client Reporting team for their Pathwell Program. Outside of work, Ashton enjoys watching and playing sports. He has coached high school varsity boys’ basketball and now assists with high school girls’ basketball. He works on his church’s media team and enjoys working out in his spare time.
Jonathan Bellamy (‘12 CLAS, ‘19 MBA)
Product Manager, Stanley Black & Decker
Jonathan was born and raised in Hartford, and he went on to the University of Connecticut to obtain a degree in Political Science. Shortly after graduation, he was commissioned with the United States ARMY as a Signal Officer for the 102nd Infantry Battalion. Jonathan directed, managed, and trained a platoon of 40 Soldiers in communications and field operations. Jonathan served 3 years with the ARMY while he simultaneously obtained his Master’s in Business Administration from UConn. Jonathan started with Stanley Black and Decker in 2018 as a Supply Planner. Jonathan transitioned to a Product Management role in March of 2020. He is a Product Manager for the Measuring and Layout team at Stanley Black and Decker and now leads the product development process of the DEWALT Lasers business.
Presenters
Kaitlyn Anderson
Career Readiness Program Designer, UConn Center for Career Development
Session: Integration of Career Competencies into the Undergraduate Curriculum
Kaitlyn Anderson is a Program Designer for the Center for Career Development. Kaitlyn received her Masters degree in Curriculum and Instruction from the NEAG School of Education in 2010, and spent 12 years as a local high school math teacher. Kaitlyn designs and develops career readiness programs and resources for faculty and staff to integrate into their courses, advising, student employment and conversations with students. Kaitlyn also creates online resources and modules that are both faculty and student facing to enhance UConn students’ career development on topics such as job application materials, interviewing, networking and career competencies.
Christina Badini
Assistant Director of Corporate Partner Relations, UConn Center for Career Development
Session: Fostering Career Readiness Through Collaboration
As an Assistant Director on the Corporate Partner Relations team at the UConn Center for Career Development, Christina works with employers interested in connecting UConn students. She cultivates relationships with employer across different industries to learn more about their recruiting goals and help develop a strategy to meet and recruit UConn students. Her goal is to partner with employers to create engagement opportunities that will assist in their recruiting efforts. Christina is also a member of the Career Everywhere Team. One of her responsibilities is coordinating Employers & Alumni in the Classroom matches where she helps UConn faculty connect with employers. Christina has a BA in Psychology and Italian from Binghamton University and a MA in School Counseling from Fairfield University.
Isaac Barber
Director, UConn Student Union and Event Services
Session: Student Development: Building Student Leaders
Isaac is an experienced business professional who has spent much of his professional career working in higher education administration and Student Affairs. He has a Master of Arts in Education (Focusing on Higher Education Administration) and a Bachelor of Science in Business Management (Focusing on Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Technology) from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). He is passionate about student learning and development; and social justice issues related to equity, ally-ship, and intercultural competency.
Nick Boston
Educational Program Administrator, UConn Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Session: Turning Undergrads into Wundergrads – Unlocking Your Students’ Potential at Work
Nick has worked as an administrator in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) since November 2017. In his own undergraduate career here at UConn, Nick was a Biological Sciences major, with minors in Physiology and Neurobiology and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Nick is a second-generation UConn alum (mom graduated UConn Class of 1991). Nick directly supervises a small team of professional staff and several undergraduate student administrative assistants. In his 6 years, Nick has worked to transform the student admin experience in his office and in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences as a whole. Nick’s proudest accomplishment in the EEB department is creating regularly occurring professional development seminars for student employees each semester.
Dr. Craig Calvert
Assistant Professor-in-Residence, UConn School of Business Operations and Information Management Department
Session: Integration of Career Competencies into the Undergraduate Curriculum
For Dr. Calvert, teaching is about infusing in students the skills that they need to be successful in real-world situations. The ultimate goal is for students to leave the classroom able to apply the ideas and concepts. Knowledge is power, but what is more powerful is the ability to apply knowledge and use it to develop actionable plans. To be able to create and execute actionable plans in real situations, the learning process needs to provide challenges similar to those which students are likely to face in their careers. Practicing in a low-stakes environment, such as a classroom, helps to ensure that students will have the proper knowledge to solve on-the-job challenges. Dr Calvert has won the Teaching Excellence Award – Early Career: (American Association of University Professors) – 2023 an annual university-wide teaching award, awarded by UConn’s AAUP chapter that honors teaching excellence for faculty with 5 or less years of teaching experience. He has also won the Innovation in Teaching Award: UConn School of Business twice. He has also published multiple papers on education pedagogy.
Ryan C. Cooper
Associate Professor-in-Residence, UConn Department of Mechanical Engineering
Session: Fostering Career Readiness Through Collaboration
Ryan C. Cooper is an Associate Professor-in-Residence at the University of Connecticut. His background is in mechanics and materials science with an emphasis on numerical simulations. He has been using Jupyter and GitHub to enhance the classroom experience for over six years. Prof. Cooper has developed free open source materials for computational work in engineering and has worked with the NumPy documentation team through Google Season of Docs. He has a Ph.D. from Columbia University and spent two and a half years at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a Postdoctoral researcher.
Kay Kimball Gruder
Associate Director of Graduate Student & Postdoc Career Programs and Services, UConn Center for Career Development
Session: Strategies for Inclusive Career Conversations: Reducing Biases, Career Choice Disparagement & Bullying
As Associate Director for Graduate Student & Postdoc Career Programs and Services, Kay leads and manages career service and programming operations centered on the career development of graduate students (master’s and doctoral degrees), international students (undergraduate and graduate), and postdoc fellows at the University of Connecticut. Kay is an advocate for career needs in and beyond academic departments, supports career diversity exploration, and contributes toward transparency in career outcomes. Kay consults with faculty and departments to integrate career milestones within graduate degree programs and curricula, and address barriers to career success.
Jenna Hartwell
Academic Advisor, UConn Waterbury
Session: Career Ready, UConn Ready: Mapping NACE Career Competencies to the First Year Experience
Since earning her M.Ed. in Counselor Education from North Carolina State University, Jenna Hartwell has worked in a variety of professional roles, for an even wider variety of students, resulting in an interdisciplinary perspective inspired by the principals of Universal Design. Jenna is currently an Academic Advisor on the Waterbury campus where she is also responsible for coordinating the UNIV 1800, First Year Experience, courses. Prior to UConn, Jenna was the Director of Engineering and Technology Career Pathways at Thrive Scholars, and the Director of the Career Design Center at William Peace University where she and her team reimagined and revised three career courses to better meet the needs of students. Jenna believes in continuous learning and continuous improvement, and she welcomes the opportunity to learn from you!
Dr. Svetlana Kalnova
Assistant Professor-in-Residence, UConn Department of Communication
Session: Integration of Career Competencies into the Undergraduate Curriculum
Dr. Kalnova’s research interests are focused on health communication, specifically on food marketing to children and childhood obesity prevention. She is interested in the impact of imagery in advertising on consumer attitudes and behaviors. She has several peer-reviewed conference papers and journal articles in the field. As the Research Assistant Professor in Residence Dr. Kalnova has collaborated with the Marketing team at the UConn RUDD Center for food policy and health. Dr. Kalnova has served in several departmental committees, she is a chair of the Speaker Series committee, and is a Career champion subcommittee faculty member at UConn.
Katie Maroney (‘16 Business)
Talent Acquisition Specialist, Enterprise Holdings
Session: Fostering Career Readiness Through Collaboration
Katie Maroney is a Talent Acquisition Specialist with Enterprise Holdings! Katie graduated from UConn in 2016 with a degree in Marketing. While at a campus career fair, Katie met a representative from Enterprise and was intrigued by the company culture and ‘promotion from within’ philosophy. She started with Enterprise after graduation in the Management Trainee Program. Katie has been with the company for 7 years and has been promoted to various levels of leadership in the Daily Rental operations before receiving her most recent promotion to the Talent Acquisition Team in 2019. As a Talent Acquisition Specialist, Katie recruits and hires top talent for Enterprise and continues to develop employees as they move upwards in the organization. Katie looks forward to partnering with career centers and professors to assist in professional development and expose students to the career opportunities available to them.
Jose (Joel) Nebres
Academic Advisor & Adjunct Instructor, UConn Department of Communication and Advising & First-Year Writing Program, UConn Department of English
Session: Leveraging CliftonStrengths to Develop Career Readiness in Students
Jose (Joel) Nebres is an academic advisor in the UConn College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, primarily serving the students majoring in Communication. He has taught an FYE course since Fall 2016, and a UNIV 1810 section for the Communication Major Learning Community since Fall 2018. He is also an Adjunct Instructor in the First Year Writing program, Department of English, having taught ENGL 1003, 1004 and 1007 (1010/11) since Fall 2006.
Dr. Diandra Prescod
Associate Professor and Program Coordinator of Counselor Education, UConn Neag School of Education, Department of Educational Psychology
Session: Strategies for Inclusive Career Conversations: Reducing Biases, Career Choice Disparagement & Bullying
Diandra received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; her master’s in mental health counseling from Monmouth University; and her Ph.D. in counselor education from the University of Central Florida. Diandra is a Licensed Professional Counselor, National Certified Counselor, and Certified Career Services Provider. Diandra’s research focuses on effective career development interventions for STEM undergraduate students and underrepresented students in higher education. Currently, She is Co-PI on a $2.5M National Science Foundation grant that aims to recruit and retain STEM undergraduate students using career development interventions. Diandra is active in the field of counselor education, consistently publishing and presenting her work both nationally and internationally in countries including Germany, Greece, Austria, Hungary, and Italy. She was a member of the organizing committee for the Pennsylvania Career Development Association (est. 2019) that won NCDA’s Outstanding State Division Award in 2020. From 2020-2023, Diandra served as the Trustee for Higher Education Career Counselors and Specialists for NCDA and the Secretary for the European Branch of the American Counseling Association (EBACA). In her role as trustee, she created the Career Teaching Academy, which supports career professionals who teach undergraduate career planning courses.
Mark Reckmeyer
Ed.D, Senior Education Consultant, Gallup
Session: Leveraging CliftonStrengths to Develop Career Readiness in Students
Mark Reckmeyer is a researcher and consultant in Gallup’s K20 Education division. In his current role, he provides strategic advice and solutions for districts, colleges, and universities across the United States and Canada. The work Mark and Gallup provide their clients includes public release studies and reports, general case studies regarding employee and student engagement, teacher and principal talent selection, culture transformation, and creating CliftonStrengths based campuses across faculty, staff, students, and leaders. Mark has worked at Gallup for over 11 years and worked within the data analytics department, Gallup Global Practice team, Selection Research division, and the Education department. He has collaborated with education leaders to create the Gallup Strengths Academy in Washington, D.C., and has collaborated with the Clifton Strengths Lab to run a summer entrepreneurial program for high school students. Before joining Gallup, Mark was a teacher in the Chicago Public School system. Mark received his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Texas Christian University, his master’s degree in education from DePaul University, and his doctorate in education administration and policy from The George Washington University.
Vida Samuel, PhD
Assistant Professor in Residence, Faculty Affiliate, Center for Applied Research in Human Development, Department of Human Development and Family Sciences
Session: Fostering Career Readiness Through Collaboration
Vida is a scholar in women’s studies and intercultural communication. Vida is active in her community and is often a featured speaker for issues impacting women and girls. She appears on podcasts examining the consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision to repeal Roe v Wade, on young college women. Each semester she holds conversations with high school and college women on race in America, and education access and success. Vida currently serves on the board of LiveGirl, an organization committed to producing the next generation of inclusive leaders. Her varied interests in the arts and women’s causes resulted in working with The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame, The Fairfield County Community Fund and The Permanent Commission on the Status of Women in Connecticut. Vida also holds a certificate in culinary arts.
Paul Scott (‘02 Engineering)
Engineering Specialist, General Dynamics Electric Boat
Session: Fostering Career Readiness Through Collaboration
Paul Scott is a 2002 graduate from the UConn School of Engineering who has been with General Dynamics Electric Boat for over thirty years. He began his career serving in the US Navy before transitioning to Electric Boat, first as a janitor, then running the massive air compressors that supply the shipyard. He then returned to school, starting at Three Rivers Community College where he received a General Associates degree before transferring to UConn. As a UConn student, Paul won several awards and scholarships and served as president of Eta Kappa Nu (HKN), the electrical engineering honor society. Most recently, Paul has been the lead engineer for the Mission Ship Control Trainer that will support crew training for the USS Jimmy Carter [the third and final Seawolf Class nuclear submarine commissioned by the U.S. Navy]. In this role, he leads a team of eight engineers and oversees four subcontractors working on the trainer. Paul is an actively involved alumni, regularly recruiting at UConn and providing guidance to current students.
Dr. Natalia Smirnova
Associate Professor-In-Residence, University of Connecticut – Stamford Campus, UConn Department of Economics
Session: Integration of Career Competencies into the Undergraduate Curriculum
Dr. Smirnova is an alumna of the University of Connecticut, receiving her Ph.D. in Economics from UConn in 2004. Her career has spanned government, academia, and non-profit sectors. This applied economics experience provides the basis for her approach to teaching: to engage students with real-world applications and data-driven explorations, to focus on the relevance of economics to everyday decisions, and to develop workplace-transferable skills. Dr. Smirnova received the Grillo Family Excellence in Teaching Award in 2021 and CLAS Strategic Goals – Broader Impacts, Service, and Visibility Award in 2022. Dr. Smirnova’ served as the inaugural Career Faculty Fellow at the UConn’s Center for Career Development in the Spring 2023. Her work as a Faculty Fellow was focused on career competencies’ promotion to faculty, and articulation and integration of career readiness into the curriculum. Dr. Smirnova is a Career Champion and serves on the faculty subcommittee for that program.
Damiao Zoe Xu
Ph.D. Candidate in Leadership, Learning, and Education Policy with a concentration in Adult Learning, UConn Department of Educational Leadership
Session: Strategies for Inclusive Career Conversations: Reducing Biases, Career Choice Disparagement & Bullying
Zoe holds a B.A. in English literature and a master’s in applied linguistics. Prior to starting her doctoral study, she worked as an online learning specialist to assist faculty with the adoption of technology in teaching. Her recent research interests include supporting adult learners and faculty in online and distance learning. Currently, she is a Graduate Assistant for Graduate Student and Postdoc Career Programs and Services at the Center for Career Development, UConn Storrs. In her role, she facilitates career programs and helps create and update career learning modules for graduate students in HuskyCT.
Conference Emcee
Steve Kligerman
Assistant Director for Programming & Career Everywhere, Center for Career Development
Steve is a higher education professional in the role of Assistant Director of Programming and Career Everywhere at UConn’s Center for Career Development. In this role, he coordinates the scheduling and reporting for all career-related events within the department, ensuring successful execution and evaluation. Steve also leads the Career Champion Advisory Board, a group that helps shape the direction and impact of the Career Champion Program, and serves on the Career Readiness workgroup that collaboratively focuses on integrating NACE’s career competencies into the work of the Center for Career Development and the broader campus community. Prior to joining UConn in 2020, Steve was the Associate Director of Admissions and Nichols College, where he also instructed professional development seminars, imparting his knowledge to students seeking to enhance their career-building skills. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies from Westfield State University and a Master of Education in Higher Education with a concentration in Student Affairs from Merrimack College.
