-: 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.