Exploring career opportunities

NYC Finance Track

By Madeline Marriott ’24

Over 100 industrious Lafayette students spent their winter breaks getting a glimpse of potential career paths through Gateway Career Center’s Career Tracks program. 

The program, which spans 1-2 days, gives participating students access to the daily lives of alumni working in their industry of choice. There are opportunities in a wide range of “tracks,” or fields of study, with the goal of including students in all academic areas. This year, the program featured nine tracks that connected 133 students to 124 hosts, almost all of whom are Lafayette alumni.

“The alumni who participate are not just there to speak to the students and move on—they take an interest in their readiness for a career in their field, preparedness for the interview process, and their general success as a Lafayette student and beyond,” explains Josh Walker, senior associate director of employer relations and outreach at Gateway Career Center.

Because of its availability to students of all class years and the wide range of hosts contributing, Career Tracks has the unique opportunity to “expose students to a broad cross-section of opportunities within a field,” explains Holly Akers, senior associate director of employer relations and outreach at Gateway. 

Media and Communications Track

“One of the moments that stuck out to me was experiencing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange,” says Lucy Collins ’28, an economics major who attended the in-person NYC Finance track. “With news cameras in the background and everyone waiting with anticipation as they counted down, this was truly a surreal experience, and getting to speak with a trading floor broker gave me more insight on how the trading floor operates and their position.” 

“D.C. Career Tracks has opened my eyes to many networking possibilities to enhance my future career,” says Jaylene Martinez ’26, a government and law and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies double major. “This experience has provided clarity on my next steps and boosted my confidence in pursuing my desired career path.”

Duncan White ’26, a studio art and anthropology double major, was originally drawn to the Arts and Humanities track because of the speakers. He hopes to work in a museum one day and was interested to hear about the experiences of two alumni who work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

“I tried to ask as many questions as I could during each meeting,” White says. “The most important things I learned from the speakers were their interpretation and experience in their respective professions. I wanted to know what it was like working in those fields, how projects were organized, and how they collaborated with colleagues and professionals in adjacent fields.”

Hosts, too, enjoyed their time participating in the program. Alyson Shumeyko ’14, director of content production at Lippe Taylor, wanted to pay forward the guidance she received from alumni during her time as a Lafayette student.

“By speaking to groups of students like those in the Career Tracks program, I am reminded of the reasons I pursued my career in production,” says Shumeyko, who hosted students on the Media and Communications track. “It also gives me a renewed sense of confidence in the knowledge I’ve obtained over the past 10 years and how much I’ve grown in that time.”

“I hoped to advise the students to look at not just the type of work the company does, or what type of work they would do in the role, but to investigate the company’s culture and the people, adds Doug Fox ’05, who works in Global Services Continuous Improvement at Lutron Electronics. “I was happy to see that students were engaged, asking great questions, had done some amount of preparatory research, and seemed to be deriving value out of the session.”