Students and alumni connect in breakout sessions during the 14th annual Sophomore Connections event. (Photo by Mark DiOrio)
On January 16 and 17, nearly 500 Colgate sophomores and 130 alumni gathered on campus for Sophomore Connections. Presented by Colgate Career Services, the two-day signature program features alumni panels, networking events, and workshops aimed at preparing students to begin summer internship searches.
“During the past five years, Career Services has re-engineered this long-standing program to make it into an immersive networking and career exploration event, and reflect the sophomore-specific elements of Colgate’s four-year career development plan,” says Teresa Olsen, Milone Family AVP for Career Initiatives.
Running concurrently with the Alumni Council meeting, Sophomore Connections is designed to teach basic networking and internship search strategies, give students practice connecting with alumni, and provide additional opportunities to explore career interests. “Hearing directly from alumni helps humanize the career development process in a different and important way,” notes Olsen.
The weekend began with a kickoff session in Colgate Memorial Chapel and LinkedIn and networking workshops. On Friday evening, Christopher Nulty ’09, head of external communications at Anthropic, gave the keynote address — 13 lessons he’s learned from his own career.
Nulty assured students that most careers don’t go in a straight line. “From the outside, it looks scattered,” he said. “From the inside, it makes perfect sense. Try things. Don’t worry if they don’t stick. The zigzag will make sense eventually — probably in ways you couldn't have planned.”
Nulty also urged students to “know your strengths. Not what you studied, not what your title says — but the thing you do better than anyone else. Once you find your thread, your job is to find roles that let you pull it. That’s how careers get built.”
These keynote themes resonated with many alumni on the weekend’s 17 career panels, which spanned four career categories: STEM and health care, business, arts, and common good. Melissa Graham ’91 shared her own professional zigzag from law to starting a nonprofit organization, and later working in fundraising as a major gifts officer for Saint Ignatius College Prep. She found her thread after years of experience, and now describes herself as a professional dot-connector.
Nulty’s themes echoed throughout the weekend for Colgate student Andres Carvajal ’28. “From personal conversations during dinner to rapid-fire networking sessions, each interaction felt intentional and grounded in the 13 lessons Christopher Nulty shared, which helped me approach conversations with clarity and purpose,” Carvajal said. “I listened more closely, asked better questions, and walked away with conversations that actually mattered.”
Panelists also emphasized the importance of the Colgate alumni network for career exploration.
Mara Stein ’19 of NBC News told students that she reached out to NBC investigative reporter Jonathan Dienst ’90 after hearing him speak on a Sophomore Connections panel when she was a student at Colgate. He invited her to his NYC office for a conversation and a tour of the newsroom. When a job was posted at NBC a year later, “he helped with my interview process since we had already established a relationship,” Stein said.
Sophomore Connections accentuates the strength of the Colgate alumni network, and it did not go unnoticed by students. Sophia Dabney ’28 felt the passion Colgate alumni had to support students throughout the weekend. “It gave me the confidence to reach out to more alumni to ask questions about their current role and career path without feeling like an annoying undergraduate student,” she said.
Olsen sees the interactions and lessons shared during Sophomore Connections, now in its 14th year, as a point of pride. “I am proud of how our former students have grown into mature professionals who prioritize a commitment to giving back to something bigger than themselves and supporting others along the same journey.”
