Advancing social change is difficult work. It is certainly not solitary work. A strong and supportive community matters.
Connections facilitate learning, unite unlikely partners to test and scale solutions, and even help social entrepreneurs find new and challenging jobs. Stand Together Fellowships must embrace the notion that education and support continue long after a program has ended. We must be the community alumni need.
Whether an alum is looking to connect with our community or searching for their next role, our team is here to serve as a first point of contact in their evolution as social entrepreneurs. That conversation starts by emailing us at alumni@standtogether.org.
Whatever you do next, don’t do it alone
“Job searching can be one of the most frustrating processes, and it’s really easy to feel alone,” KIP and KAP alum Krystin Roehl said.
We walk with our alumni throughout their job search. After contacting us, the Stand Together Fellowships alumni team sets up a call with the alum to examine areas of career interest — both in terms of industry and type of position. But we’re invested in more than just title and location. We want to dive deeper and learn what has excited people about their past work and how they are looking to transform their careers. These early conversations help individuals develop awareness of their strengths and how they can leverage them in unique and exciting ways to advance societal change.
“I went into the process thinking I wanted to get back to policy work, but through conversations and looking at roles sent over by the alumni team, I became more open to different types of roles in the criminal justice reform space,” Roehl said. “I ended up applying for a couple of roles related to partnership building and have discovered it’s something I really enjoy.”
Roehl did find her next challenge: She has accepted a role as Stand Together partnerships coordinator.
These career conversations often are surprising for alums.
“After searching for a narrow set of jobs after law school, I was ready to consider a wider range of opportunities,” KIP and KAP alum Autumn Billings recalled. The alumni team “encouraged me to look even broader. The job I have now never would have never been on my radar but for these kinds of conversations.”
After learning more about an alum’s skillsets and strengths, Stand Together Fellowships works with its community of partners to identify potential roles that are mutually beneficial. By having meaningful conversations with both our alums and partners, we can work to find matches that challenge our alumni to stretch themselves while connecting with their unique passions.
Throughout the job search and interview process, our team is in constant contact, offering to help prepare for interviews, explore professional development opportunities, or connect alums directly to our own internal talent acquisition team. “It was great to have another person on my team when I had more questions about the open positions,” Billings said. “The alumni team was a great resource and helped me feel much more prepared for applying to positions than I otherwise would have felt.”
Building the next generation of social entrepreneurs
We are eager to help alumni find placement with the nonprofit, for-profit, and academic organizations and institutions that are driving social change. One of the greatest benefits of a Stand Together Fellowship is that the experience brings together people from different sectors trying to drive change. As a result, our alumni relations team can help graduates find opportunities across industries.
There are currently more than 4,800 social entrepreneurs within the Stand Together Fellowships community. These people are working across the nation and around the world to advance change. They are eager to share what they have learned and to collaborate with recent graduates of the Koch Internship Program (KIP), Koch Associate Program (KAP), and the Poynter-Koch Media and Journalism Fellowship. Alumni frequently collaborate directly to help one another find new jobs, solve problems they’re working on, or brainstorm. This collaborative effort leads to more opportunities and a sense of community for our alumni.
Again, we encourage our alumni to connect with us at alumni@standtogether.org to see how we can support rising social entrepreneurs searching for their next opportunity.
If you need to update your alumni contact information or you’re doing something exciting that we should know about, please let us know!
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