Career panel guests at VCU Business share the realities behind their professional paths
Across three career panels, students heard how professionals built their careers through uncertainty and unexpected opportunities.
By Megan Nash
For students hoping for a yellow brick road into their careers, the fall career panels offered a more honest map.
Throughout the semester, several classes at the VCU School of Business gave way to conversations featuring professionals working in supply chain, management and entrepreneurship and marketing. The sessions offered less a primer on industries and more a look at the choices, frustrations and small discoveries that pushed each career forward.
A few moments stood out to students in particular.
They heard what it looks like to write your own way forward
Ayana Andrews-Joseph (M.A. ’22), a data and analytics consultant at Atlantic Union Bank, told students that her entry into the field began with exhaustion. Months of job applications had turned into a kind of loop — refresh, apply, repeat — with little to show for it. “Getting a job for was … a full-time job,” she said.
At some point, she’d had enough. “I got so frustrated that I wrote my own algorithm,” she told students. It surfaced five roles. She applied to all of them and ultimately landed the one she ranked first.
Now she works on a team that’s helping the mid-sized bank build something new: scalable data systems that leadership can use to make real-time decisions. Andrews-Joseph described her work as a kind of supply chain, though she’s moving information rather than freight. She builds end-to-end workflows, handing pieces off to specialists when the job requires it. “They’re not building something physical,” she said of the engineers she works with, “but they’re building the data I need in order to get the insights out.”
Her background — epidemiology, public health and analytics — taught her that tools change, but the fundamentals do not. And at the heart of those fundamentals is the human element.
“I’ve always been looking at data,” said Andrews-Joseph. “And what I carry with me throughout every single job is that every touch point is a person no matter what. The data that I’m analyzing is because somebody collected it or somebody did something and we have it.”
They followed a founder through the uneasy days of building a business
Before he became founder of multiple businesses, Sam Anderson, president and owner of Enso Media Firm, hit a stretch where money ran thin enough that he considered sleeping in his car.
After leaving college, Anderson tried launching Bubble Soccer and a laundry service before eventually starting Enso, which now offers video production, podcasting, social media management and targeted advertising.
But in the beginning, he said, entrepreneurship looked nothing like the version people romanticize. “Some people think you get to make your own hours and you’re your own boss,” Anderson told students. “I felt like I traded one boss for a thousand. Our new bosses are our clients.” With little cash coming in, he was also everything else the business needed — “the janitor, the social media manager, the editor, the head of HR,” as he put it.
As money tightened further, he began preparing for the possibility of losing his apartment. He arranged for friends to store his clothes. He kept a $10 gym membership so he would have a place to shower. “I told my roommate, ‘I’m going to have to sleep in my car,’” he said.
Then, on the final day he could pay rent, he got a call from a company he had quoted months earlier. “We’re ready now,” the caller said. “Who do I write the check to?” Anderson drove over immediately to pick it up.
Looking back, he said the moment forced a question he believed every entrepreneur eventually reaches: “Do you really want to do this, or have you just been playing the entrepreneur?” Fear, he said, isn’t a sign of doing something wrong, it’s something you learn to work alongside.
They learned small observations can spark big change
Kevin Flores, managing director of Relentless Lab, reminded students that not every turning point comes from crisis. Sometimes it comes from listening.
His team was managing the branding, website and marketing for a local dermatology practice when they began noticing something unusual in the website’s search data. Visitors were looking for dermatologist-recommended makeup products — a service the practice didn’t offer.
Rather than ignore it, they responded with small experiments. “We put out an article,” Flores said. “Then another. And it kept coming — more and more.” Interest grew enough that the practice tested a new idea: an in-office “morning makeover” event, where visitors brought in their own beauty and skin care products for guidance from an esthetician.
There was only one problem — the practice didn’t have an esthetician. So they hired one. Then another. Over the next 18 months, the practice expanded its services and launched its own skin care line. All of it, Flores said, started by paying attention.
“We were listening,” said Flores. “Not just talking at them, but talking with them.”
VCU Business extends its thanks to all panelists who contributed to the fall career panel conversations. Alumni and professionals interested in participating in future panels may contact Business Career Services to get involved.
Supply Chain and Analytics
- Christian Lane (M.S. ‘18), Supply Chain Analyst, Bonterra Organic Estates (Viña Concha y Toro USA)
- Ayana Andrews-Joseph (M.A. ’22), Data & Analytics Consultant, Atlantic Union Bank
- Bryant Thompson, Global IT Strategic Business Partner, Supply Chain, Solenis
- Diclecis Millner (B.S. ’17), Analyst ll Outbound Logistics, ADUSA Distribution
Management and Entrepreneurship
- Juan Bialet, CEO, Productive AV
- Greg Provo (M.B.A. ‘98), CEO & Founder, Strategy Cafe, Inc.
- Carl Gupton (M.S. ’10), CEO & President, Greenswell Growers
- Sam Anderson, President and Owner, Enso Media Firm
Marketing
- Kevin Flores, Managing Director, Relentless Lab
- Roger Garcia, Senior Brand Manager & Product Manager, Weston Brands (part of Hamilton Beach Brands)
- Susan Jensen, Chief Marketing Partner, Susan Jensen Marketing
- Chantelle Milton (B.S. ‘11), Product Marketing & Brand Strategy Consultant, The Market Fit
- Sheila Villalobos (B.S. ‘13; M.S. ‘21), Senior Strategist at SYLVAIN