International Business Career Conference offers students advice on global careers
Sandy Sharp, the senior director of strategic partnerships and initiatives for NBCU Academy, delivered a powerful keynote address in front of a packed room at the International Business Career Conference. (Photos by Derik Holtmann)
As the keynote speaker for last week’s International Business Career Conference on the campus of the University of Missouri–St. Louis, it was Sandy Sharp’s responsibility to set the tone for the event, speaking to a standing room-only crowd at Anheuser-Busch Hall. This was the 16th year for the event, which is sponsored by CSI Leasing.
Sharp, the senior director of strategic partnerships and initiatives for NBCU Academy, delivered a powerful keynote presentation. One of the many things she said that resonated with not only the students but the other presenters and UMSL faculty members on hand involved the idea of a “pivot.” And Sharp wasn’t talking about her career as a basketball player with the University of Missouri team in the 1990s.
“She’s amazing,” said Renita Miller, the program manager for UMSL’s International Business Institute, who helped organize the conference. “To hear about her background, how she made a lot of pivots work for her was great for the students. Sometimes you think of a pivot as a bad thing, so when she talks about how things actually came out better for her, I think that was a really good tip for the students. It’s okay to make a mistake or to turn left after you turn right. That’s something students need to hear.”
Participants in the executive panel, which was moderated by World Trade Center St. Louis Executive Director Tim Nowak, picked up on the unofficial pivot theme. The panel included Brian Garcia, the vice president for global franchise support for Enterprise Holdings; Dave Shogren, the president of U.S. International Foods; Scott Bell, the former vice president of global sales operations at Siemens; and John Guckes, the chief commercial officer for CorneaGen.
“I did my pivot midway through my career arc,” Garcia said. “I went away from telecom to Enterprise Mobility and have been thrilled ever since.”
Guckes, an UMSL graduate, has lived all over the world.
“What is a young guy from North County, from St. Louis, doing in international business? Talk about pivots,” he said. “I went to work in the medical industry, and we were starting up an international division with an ophthalmologist company right here in St. Louis. Nobody knew much about international business, but I took the chance to get involved, and 40 years later, I’m still involved with international business. You just never know where your journey will take you. When I was a young guy, the thought of living in Singapore, spending time in Tokyo, living in Hong Kong, starting up businesses in Germany, being the first person from my company to start up a business in China, I never even thought such a thing was possible.”
Bell had a similar story.
Tim Nowak (at podium) was the moderator for the event’s executive panel. Participants included (from left): Brian Garcia, the vice president for global franchise support for Enterprise Holdings; Dave Shogren, the president of U.S. International Foods; Scott Bell, the former vice president of global sales operations at Siemens; and John Guckes, the chief commercial officer for CorneaGen.
“Curiosity was part of my pivot,” he said. “I was with the company 40 years, and 30 years ago, the CEO came to me and said, ‘I know you’ve never been overseas or outside this country, but we need somebody to globalize our IT systems and globalize a lot of our processes.’ So I said I would do it. I remember going to my boss and saying I was a little nervous about traveling or going somewhere where people speak a different language, where just everything is different. He handed me a book that’s still in my library today, called ‘Kiss, Bow or Shake Hands.’”
After the executive panel, the conference offered two workshop sessions, addressing topics including global citizenship, global learning opportunities and cross-cultural communication. The event wrapped up with an alumni panel featuring Annie Mbale (World Trade Center St. Louis) and Clara López Bueno (World Wide Technology).
The goal of this annual International Business Career Conference isn’t to have students bring resumes and meet with dozens of executives and recruiters. The goal for this event is to bring in professionals from the St. Louis region and beyond to offer students the opportunity to understand what a career in international business offers, and the wide variety of forms that career might take.
So how do the organizers of the conference know what types of topics and presenters will be of most value to the students? The students themselves help design the conference, as part of a dual-credit class taught by Miller. The course offers dual credit, toward both management and international business degrees. Miller starts with a few essential questions for her students. What are you interested in? What would you like to see? Who would you like to hear talk about different aspects of jobs and moving from the backpack to the briefcase?
“From there, I help them to flesh out their thoughts before we reach out to the different presenters, and then as we go from there,” Miller said. “It’s really built off the students’ ideas on what they want and what they think their peers will want to hear.”
The event is going strong.
“We have such strong support from our International Business Advisory Board,” said Professor Joe Rottman, the director of UMSL’s International Business Institute. “All of these panelists and many of the guests are the people who make the study abroad scholarships possible, they are the people who also make our internships possible. Our Advisory Board give a lot of their time and treasure because they care about the international business mission at UMSL.”
