When Career Becomes a Presidential Priority: One Career Leader’s Partnership Playbook

Joe Catrino:

It’s great to know that when President Beilock and I are communicating, we’re on the same page. The direction she wants to move the institution, I can follow along that. I can build in the vision and mission. I’ve listened to her inauguration speech. We’ve had several meetings. I can see where she’s taking the institution and we can figure out where are there opportunities for the Center for Career Design to latch on. So we’re not misaligned in our mission and our vision, we’re connected.

And I think that’s important. I think the more career offices can engage with presidents, the more that connection can happen. And it seems everyone’s talking to each other. And that relationship has been really important. Like I said, President Beilock and I meet about every six weeks or so, give or take. And we meet and talk about what’s going on, how are things progressing? What are some of the builds? What are some of the challenges? And we’ve talked through those challenges of where there might be something that I’m facing a roadblock that we wanted to move through or around or collaboratively into.

And so it’s been a great relationship. We communicate frequently, exchange emails, and like I said, have those regular six week meetings on the Center for Career Design update. It’s been an amazing partnership for me.

Meredith Metsker:

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Career Everywhere podcast. I’m your host, Meredith Metsker. And today I am joined by Joe Catrino, the Executive Director of the Center for Career Design at Dartmouth College. Thank you for joining me, Joe.

Joe Catrino:

Oh, thanks for having me, Meredith. Great to see you.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I am so glad to have you back on the show. So for those of you longtime listeners, you may recognize Joe as one of our first guests on the podcast from way back in 2023. I think it was literally episode eight.

Joe Catrino:

Yeah.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. And a lot has happened since then.

Joe Catrino:

A lot has happened.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. I had a baby. You landed this amazing new role at Dartmouth, and this podcast is now quickly nearing its 100th episode. So time sure flies, doesn’t it?

Joe Catrino:

It sure does. It’s been an amazing ride. I’m just delighted to come back and share a little bit about what’s been going on with me.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. I am excited to get all the updates and talk to you today about how career leaders can most effectively work with executive leadership. So I know you and President Sian Beilock have a great partnership there at Dartmouth, and it’s really helped elevate career services on campus. For example, I think in the year since you started at Dartmouth, the career services team has, what, nearly doubled in size. Is that correct?

Joe Catrino:

Yeah, just about. I was, I believe, the 12th person in on the team. We are 20 and we’ll be probably anywhere about 22, 23 in the next couple months. So, yeah, almost doubled the staff in a little less than a year.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, so that’s obviously huge. And then Dartmouth also recently completed a $30 million fundraising campaign for student internships, another huge milestone.

Joe Catrino:

That was fun to be a part of too. That was an opportunity for us to get engagement from our alumni to support students who are doing unpaid and underpaid internships and provide that access and equity. And we really don’t want, as you know, Meredith, we don’t want students turning down great opportunities because they’re unpaid because the value of experiential learning is so important that the opportunity to gain skills and develop a network, but also to decide what you like and what you don’t like. We want students to just try all different diverse fields, experience different industries so that they can get those tangible skills for the future of work. And so this is a great opportunity for us. I’m so thankful for the alumni and parents and families who supported that cause.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, absolutely. I imagine that was a very compelling story you could tell all of them about where their money’s going to go and the impact it’s going to have.

Joe Catrino:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for us, it’s an opportunity to share the stories about what our students are doing. Our students are doing amazing things and across the globe. And they’re able to do that because of the support of the alumni and parents’ family base that supported this initiative. And our students can go and not have to worry about expenses. They don’t have to go and worry about, “I can’t afford this apartment in a big city, but this internship’s critical to my growth and development in this field.” And we’re just really lucky to be able to do this and provide the support for students from a financial perspective.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, for sure. And I imagine it’s a great signal to prospective students and there are families too about how Dartmouth is truly prioritizing this experiential learning thing.

Joe Catrino:

Bulk of the beginning of my career in higher education was in the admissions side of the house. And I always think with that hat on. I mean, I was a tour guide. I was an orientation leader. I worked in the admissions office. Admissions is kind of running through the bloodstream here. And one of the first big partnerships that I really tried to lean into at Dartmouth was with the admissions office. And we had some great connections. And right now, we do talk a lot about what we’re seeing for students to come into Dartmouth, but also we can talk about this $30 million initiative.

And one of the interesting things is we’ve actually seen an uptick in first year students that are coming in to engage with us. I think because of the partnership we have with admissions, they’re learning about what the opportunities are. And what we’re really trying to say, Meredith is, guess what, you don’t know what you want to do. We’re never going to ask you that question. That’s part of the life design model. That’s a jarring question for someone who doesn’t know. Think about a first-gen student who doesn’t know what they want to do and they do find the resources to come in and have that appointment. And then we turn around and say, “Well, what do you want to do for a living?” That’s not a great question.

It can be really jarring and students just, I think you’ll lose them. What we want to do is engage them. So what are your interests? What are you excited about doing? What are things you don’t like to do? That’s a type of conversation we’re having because we want the students to start to articulate that. And so we’ve really made that an emphasis as we talk to admissions about it’s never too early to show up. It’s never too early to engage with us. It’s never too early to have a conversation about what your Dartmouth design might be.

Because one of the big pieces of what we focus on is we focus on Dartmouth design, career design, life design. We really try to scaffold that for students. And that’s why engaging with those first year students have been really important for us, and so we’re seeing that uptick. And I think that all ties in with our partnership with the undergraduate dean’s office, the admissions office, and then embedding ourselves in orientation in different ways.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I love that. And I know we’ll definitely get into some of those partnerships with some of those other departments too, but we’ll also kind of focus on your partnership with President Beilock, because as we talked about, in addition to nearly doubling your staff size, you have this $30 million campaign. You also have the President who has made career one of her core strategic pillars. So talk about an ideal combination for a career services leader.

Joe Catrino:

Yeah. Meredith, honestly, it’s one of those things where it’s been so nice. And I’ve had in my career some really great leaders, some really great presidents who have supported the work of career, but not at this level. And this is not … Again, I’m not throwing shade at any of my prior presidents or anything like that. It’s just I’ve just walked into a new orbit and President Beilock has just been an amazing partner for us. She’s been a great leader for the institution, but when she joined Dartmouth, she outlined some key pillars of her presidency and career was right at the top of that. And she’s really leaned into that.

This has been a really important piece for her. I’ve met with her in my interview process. We had some really good conversations. I meet with her, I would say anywhere between around every six weeks or so, and we do updates and things like that, but she has just been a great supporter of ours. She and I have gone to different events together and talked about what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to engage more and more alumni and parents and families in different ways and really trying to build a best in class career office, and she’s committed to that. And it’s been a tremendous opportunity for me, and she’s just been a great support for that.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. It sounds like you’re building a really great template of what that partnership really can look like between career services and the president. So I’m excited to dig into what that partnership looks like, how you’re doing it, what you all talk about, those kinds of things. But before I get into my questions, Joe, is there anything else you wanted to add about yourself, your background, or your role there at Dartmouth?

Joe Catrino:

No, no. Again, I’d love the opportunity to come back and talk to you about this. It was fun last time. I’m looking forward to it this time. No, I think you’ll learn more about me as these questions unfold, so I’m excited to dig in.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. I mean, I’ve already learned that you have an admissions background, so there we go.

Joe Catrino:

Yeah.

Meredith Metsker:

All right. Well, cool. Before I get into more specific questions about our topic today, I do want to kick us off with a question to ask all of our guests that I have asked you before. What does Career Everywhere mean to you?

Joe Catrino:

I’m sure my answer has evolved over time, but it’s probably not that much different than what it was in 2023 is that the Career Office is an interesting office on campus. We serve a lot of constituents across the board. I think that’s why we can lean into a concept like Career Everywhere. It can be a movement, because we can facilitate a lot of that work through partnerships. A lot of what I’ll talk about today is through partnerships. It’s through collaboration. The work doesn’t solely rest on the career offices. We have to go out and facilitate that work. We have to encourage that it happens at the faculty level, at the staff level and student.

I mean, think about one of the things that we’re leaning in on right now is this meaningful work program that we’re building for student employment. We want students to be able to actually think about how powerful their on campus jobs can be. And so this is a career opportunity that’s happening on campus with a campus job that you might not even think about as a student. “Oh, that’s not that important to my career.”

I mean, I’m in the field because of what my on campus job was as a tour guide and admissions office worker, right? So for us, for me, the concept of Career Everywhere is really important in today in 2026 because students go all over the place for their resources. And I think if we have good facilitation happening by the career office, that career Everywhere actually can be lived and felt across the institution.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s a great answer. And what better place to do that than at Dartmouth with all of those things you got going for you that we just talked about? So now I would love to dig into that topic today, which is again, how career services leaders can effectively work with executive leadership on campus. So to get us started, I think it would be helpful to get a little more context on what’s been going on at Dartmouth since you started in early 2025. I mentioned a few of those things. We’ve covered a couple of them, but can you just give us a quick lay of the land? What did you walk into? And then what are you focused on right now?

Joe Catrino:

I walked into a good situation. Like I said, going into a situation where the President has made this a mandate has been a true gift to be able to build and to really imagine what my vision could be for the Center for Career Design. I walked into a very small staff and we’ve been able to build that out. We’ve structured it in a really fun way, I think. We have a coaching team, we have a programming and operations and marketing team that runs our systems, our data, our backend logistics for programming. And then I’ve really expanded a team around external partnerships.

But if you dig down underneath that, we have people that are focused on alumni, people that are focused on parents and families, people that are focused on employer partnerships. And so we built this team. And I think the way I look at us and the way I describe this is we’re kind of a startup within an institution. So we’re in startup mode, we’re building the staff, we’re garnering the interest of students. So we’re trying to get out there and meet students where they are and get them excited about the work that we’re doing.

As we talked about already, I was really lucky to walk in at the beginning of a campaign around internship funding. We had a very generous anonymous gift of $15 million towards internships, but it was also set up as a challenge to other alums and said, this anonymous donor said, “I can give 15 if my fellow alums will step up and do that.” And so we spent the rest of 25 really trying to raise that last 15 million to get to 30 million. And that gives us really an opportunity to fund probably about 250 to 275 students per year in unpaid or underpaid internships.

And we’ve actually did a study. We increased the total funding that students can get. So students can actually get up to $6,500 at any point during their time. You can get it multiple times if you happen to see yourself doing multiple unpaid or underpaid internships. I think our average gift was around 4,200 to 4,400 or so in the fall and in the winter terms. But the idea is that we have the bandwidth to do that now. And so students don’t have to say no to those experiences that are unpaid or underpaid. We really want students.

As you know, the future of work is, this is a wild, tumultuous workforce right now, right? It’s wild out there. And our students are landing really well, but I think that the need for internships and different types of internships are really important. Exploring different industries that you may not have considered. You think about education or sustainability or nonprofit, there’s so many great experiences out there. So how can students lean into those? Well, I think it’s those internships and having that funding available so that they don’t have to say no or turn their back on that because, “Oh, it’s not paid. I need to get paid.” We’re giving those opportunities.

Aside from that, we’ve really, as you know, I think we talked about this on my last episode is we have leaned heavily into the life design framework. We’re using motivational interviewing in our coaching appointments and we want everything to latch on and into our coaching. We started to partner across campus. One of the big observations that I made, I think in general about higher education is that students are doing across the country, across the globe, they’re doing amazing things. But I don’t think in higher education, we do a great job of unpacking that with students when they return from those great experiences. I don’t think that we take the time to help a student explore the skills that they just attained in an internship or a study away or research with a faculty member. I really think we need to help them unpack those experiences and talk about skills. What skills did you learn? What skills didn’t you learn that you thought you were going to learn, but still now need to learn? How do we bridge those gaps and skills?

And so what we’ve really leaned into is helping latch on our career and life design coaching to experiences. So when you go and do, say, if you go to an unpaid internship and we give you funding, you come back and you unpack that with a coach. And one of the big partnerships we have is with our Tuck Summer Bridge program. Any Dartmouth student that does the Tuck, Tuck is our business school, they have a bridge program. It’s like an intro to business program, very popular. And at the end of that, any Dartmouth student who does that program, you get a career in life design coaching appointment that you can unpack that experience, and how do you leverage it? How do you spin it up? How do you actually say, “You know what? I thought I was going to do this internship or work in this field, but it’s President Beilock …”

And I say this all the time, we actually like to hear when a student says, “I don’t like an internship. I didn’t enjoy that experience.” That’s a really good data point about what you want to do for your career. It’s like, “Wow, I just learned something I don’t want to do. Now, I don’t have to waste time doing it.” It’s still good experience. You’re not throwing it away if you just learned something about yourself. And that’s really what we emphasize is helping a student understand their values, what motivates them, what excites them so that they can make those informed decisions about their career, their Dartmouth journey, career journey, and then life journey.

And so we’re launching life design programs, we’re integrating that into our coaching. And then like I said, we’re building out partnerships and collaborating across campus. We’re partnering with alumni. We’re about to launch an expert in residence program and that it’s going to take a bunch of different variations, I guess you could call it. But Meredith, if you’re an alum and you have an expertise in a certain area, we might just invite you to sit in a Zoom room for an hour and just have office hours with students who are interested in talking to you.

It might look like expert in residents where we go to a career check. We have actually folks right now in Boston who are doing a career check and it’s an exploratory career check. We have lots of alums and students who are engaging in this exploration because they don’t know what they want to do. So they’re going to Boston and they’re meeting with alumni. They’re meeting with businesses to get that exposure. So that’s a little bit of an overview as to what we’ve been doing over the last, just a little over 13 months at Dartmouth. So I’m sure I’m forgetting some stuff, but those are the core pieces.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Yeah, that was a great overview. And man, you have been busy.

Joe Catrino:

Yeah.

Meredith Metsker:

Goodness gracious.

Joe Catrino:

It’s been good. It’s been a wild ride.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, it sounds like it, but a really fulfilling one, I imagine. Okay. Well, let’s talk now about your relationship with President Beilock. So as we talked about, she made career one of her presidential pillars, which is super encouraging and a trend I hope we’ll see more of from more university presidents. From your perspective, what does it look like when a president is truly genuinely committed to career?

Joe Catrino:

Well, I mean, just on a surface level, it’s great to know that when President Beilock and I are communicating, we’re on the same page. The direction she wants to move the institution, I can follow along that. I can build in the vision and mission. I’ve listened to her inauguration speech. We’ve had several meetings. I can see where she’s taking institution and we can figure out where are there opportunities for the Center for Career Design to latch on. So we’re not misaligned in our mission and our vision. We’re connected.

And I think that’s important. I think the more our career offices can engage with presidents, the more that connection can happen. And it seems like everyone’s talking to each other, right? And so that relationship has been really important. Like I said, President Beilock and I meet about every six weeks or so, give or take. And we meet and talk about what’s going on, how are things progressing? What are some of the builds? What are some of the challenges? And we’ve talked through those challenges of where there might be something that I’m facing a roadblock that we wanted to kind of move through or around or collaboratively into. And so it’s been a great relationship. We communicate frequently, exchange emails, and like I said, have those regular six week meetings on the Center for Career Design updates, so it’s been an amazing partnership for me.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like it. So I would love to dig into those meetings a little bit more. So you said they occur about every six-ish weeks. So what are you covering? Are there any data points or stories or updates you regularly cover? I’m just curious what those meetings look like.

Joe Catrino:

Yeah, they’re great. They’re usually like 45 minutes and we get to a lot of stuff. A lot of it is around how students are responding. I bring an impact report every time. And the impact report, Meredith, covers engagement statistics, interesting data that I pulled out and observed from some of the work that we’ve implemented.

We actually, one of the things … This is aside from this meeting, but we in-house have built a data dashboard and the data dashboard gives us live data on student appointments, student engagement and events. We have career communities. So what career communities are popular or not? What population a student is coming to us or not coming to us? So I usually bring an impact report and I talk through a lot of those data points and stories. Usually, one of the pieces that we talked about a lot was that $30 million campaign.

And so now that that has kind of moved aside, we’re moving on to other things. But a lot of it is on data storytelling, how are things going with faculty? How am I engaging with faculty partners? What are some of the examples? So I usually bring an impact report from each of the three teams. So I look at a coaching impact report, programming operations and marketing report, and then I bring out an external partnerships impact report. And these are just, again, quick bullet points, data stories that I know that are important to her because I’m mission aligned now. So I know the things that she’s trying to elevate and promote and talk about.

And then we collaborate a lot around AI and the impact of AI. That’s been a big point of discussion. I think that’s probably happening. If you could bring on any of my peers across the country in the career space, we’re probably talking about AI regularly, but that’s something that we’re really focused on. It’s something that President Beilock is focused on. And so we unpack the reports. She usually has a few things she wants to talk to me about. And then I usually bring some things. I usually have the impact report and I highlight some things from that. And then underneath there, I say things I need to discuss. And it could be a litany of things like our space on campus. It could be new partnerships I’m excited to talk about. So they vary in the time of year and what’s been happening in our space. But again, it’s a collaborative conversation that happens about every six weeks.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s great information. And I love that you’re bringing impact reports every six weeks. That’s a lot of reports.

Joe Catrino:

It’s a lot of reports. And I think that’s the one thing that we did early on is we leverage our systems, right? We leverage our uConnect system, we leveraged Handshake, we’re using Airtable, and all of those things are connecting. We’re kind of getting that live data, and so it’s not that hard to do the impact reports because we have the data and the information readily available. And we’re able to really look at things and say, wait, “I’m seeing something …”

Let me give you an example. We launched most of our initiatives in the fall. So we’re term-based, so we have four terms a year, so four 10-week terms. So our fall term starts mid-September. So we were launching and I was looking at some of our appointment data and we were down early on. And I was like, “All right.” Just trying to tell myself, “Be patient.” It wasn’t built in a day. So I’m looking at this really concern. We were just pulling it apart. We were looking at things.

Well, obviously, as I kind of check it regularly, I went in the other day, now we’re way up over last year. So because we have that data readily available, we can start to see. So we made adjustments. One of the holes that we had was we were down three coaches in the fall, early on in the fall. Now we’re fully staffed, so we have more appointment availability. We have all of the career communities represented with a subject matter expert. So those were the tweaks that I started to see, but I wouldn’t be able to pay attention to those if we didn’t set ourselves up to see that data every day instead of when I had to run an impact report.

I think the behavior of the regular reports has helped me be able to pay attention on a deeper, more granular level that I’ve ever had before. And one of my big pieces of advice here, Meredith, is to my peers, do that. Find ways to get that data in front of you as much as you can. I don’t consider myself a data guru in any way. In fact, I don’t really enjoy analyzing it, but we have AI systems for that. But for us, that’s been able to, I think, keep the relationship with President Beilock fresh. And I’m able to keep her informed on things that I’m anticipating that she’s thinking about.

Meredith Metsker:

I feel like I need to get both you and Josh Domitrovich from PennWest on an episode together just to talk about data reporting.

Joe Catrino:

It’s been great. It’s important. I mean, I think for us, it’s just I don’t want to be the reactive center. If anyone knows anything about me, I don’t like reactive. I’m more of a proactive approach. That’s why I think I lean into design thinking because I have a lot of curiosity and I want to challenge some of the, I don’t want to say traditions, but I’m not one to say, “Well, it works because we’ve always done it this way.” Let’s try something different. Let’s lean into something that’s never been done. And you got to have that data that can help you make those informed decisions.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Especially when you have a president like President Beilock who is also wanting to be proactive and innovative too. You mentioned in these impact reports that you bring her in these meetings, they’re pretty short. Of course, you only have about 45 minutes. How are you deciding what to share with her and when what to leave out? Because she’s busy, so I imagine there’s only so much you can cover.

Joe Catrino:

Trial and error, Meredith, trial and error. I mean, the first meeting I went in, I’ve learned a little bit more. I kind of guessed, and what I share with her has evolved even in the one year I’ve been doing this. I would send different cover sheets and different ways laying out the data. And I think in October we had a meeting and I did it the way that I’ve now been doing it for the last few meetings, and that seems to connect with her.

And just an aside, it’s not just me and her in these meetings either, which is I think really important. These are other senior leaders that are in this meeting as well. It’s usually me and her having a conversation, but there are other, there’s deans, there’s VPs in the room as well because they’re focused on this update of the Center for Career Design. So this has really, truly been an institutional priority. This isn’t just a thing that President Beilock is leaning into. It’s the communications, it’s advancement. It’s my boss who’s the Dean of Undergraduate Education and Arts and Sciences, and we’re all the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. So we’re all in this room talking about what’s happening in the Center for Career Design, because we want to make the connections across and stay informed as to what’s happening. But trial and error is how I got there. My first report probably is pretty ugly. I think I’d be embarrassed to even look at it right now where it’s evolved.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. So you said now it’s like, what, three or four data points from each team?

Joe Catrino:

Yeah, from each team. Yep. And then I’ll pull out, here are five topics of things that are happening. And they could be budgetary, they could be space issues, staffing, roadblocks, concerns that are emerging. A lot of times we look at our first destination data, where is that tracking? What are we hearing about what’s going on in the space of hiring for the class of ’26 or ’25 when I first got here? So it varies. And so I try to bring as much as I can. And then if there’s something that might be needed, I will go find it and I will bring it back, and that happens too. There might be follow-up data, or can you dig in here, or whatever it might be.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Which is far easier to do when you just already have that line of communication constantly open.

Joe Catrino:

100%. Yeah.

Meredith Metsker:

I’m curious, if you’re able to share what kinds of questions does she ask you? What information is she as a president seeking from you, career services leader?

Joe Catrino:

I mean, lots of questions. She’s amazingly curious about what happens with students. What are the students saying? What are students experiencing? Connecting well with faculty. Are there other lanes that we’re not opening that we could open and that she might be able to help us open? How are you doing budgetary? We’re in a new space as well, and so how’s the space working out? Are there any challenges with that space? And so it runs the gamut. Honestly, it depends on what I bring in, but also what’s on our mind. Sometimes we unpack things that aren’t even on my list that are on our mind, and then we get to my list. And so it really just depends on what’s going on in her world as well.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. I know presidents have very busy schedules and they’ve got things like their board meetings and meetings with parents and lawmakers and things like that, all trying to juggle all of that at once.

Joe Catrino:

Yeah.

Meredith Metsker:

Cool.

Joe Catrino:

Absolutely.

Meredith Metsker:

Well, and you’ve kind of touched on this a little bit, but what is the impact of these regular conversations of having this line of communication with your president so regularly?

Joe Catrino:

I mean, the impact is immense. I think, as I mentioned earlier, being able to stay connected with the lived mission of what we’re trying to do as an institution is good. I mean, but it’s easy to do because I feel like I’m hearing more about it. I’m being led in on leadership decisions that help me make decisions about the Center for Career Design. And so the impact there is we can stay connected, we can stay informed, and I can provide her with things that she might need for a speaking engagement or a talk or a trustees meeting. It allows us to sort of … The transparency is just amazing. And it’s a good back and forth because then again, I can hear directly back from say something I provided or an impact report or a program we’re trying to launch and we can make those informed decisions as a center because we’re connected to the president. So the impact is felt really widely in our work.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. It sounds like it really influences how you structure your team, what you focus on, your programming, the partnerships you pursue. Yeah. I imagine that helps you move faster when you just have clarity.

Joe Catrino:

Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s the word I was looking for, not transparency, but clarity. And I think the support, I was given a nice runway. I was told this is what we’re looking for, but other than that, like, “Joe, you can go.” And that’s why I think why these conversations are important because as I’m going and I’ve got this clear runway, I’m able to say, “All right, I’m here. Okay, let’s keep going. ” And if we’re not, “All right, let’s check ourselves for a second and let’s take a step back and figure out, all right, are there snags? Are there things we’re not considering? Are there problems that we’re not anticipating?” But those check-ins help us sort of check that runway that I’m running on with the development of the center.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that makes sense. And I’ve always felt it’s easier to take risks when you know what the guidelines are, what the boundaries are.

Joe Catrino:

Yeah. And I mean, I’m not risk averse, but it definitely helps to have a little bit more information when you’re doing those risks. So, yes, it’s good to have that clarity and perspective.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, absolutely. So we’ve talked about how career is one of President Beilock’s core strategic pillars. There’s a lot of institutional goals around that. In these meetings, in your work and any other interactions you have either with her or other senior leaders, how are you connecting your work to those institutional goals? How are you thinking through that?

Joe Catrino:

Well, we are having meetings. I’m connecting with other senior leaders. As I mentioned, there’s a lot of senior leaders in, there’s a handful of folks that join us for the meetings with President Beilock. The conversations that we’re having, paying attention to just institutional mission statements within departments and making sure we’re connected there. But I think it’s just through conversation. I mean, I think that’s one of the things that I enjoy about Dartmouth is that it’s a very relational place and I haven’t had anyone who’s said that they didn’t want to meet. Everybody’s been open to meeting and collaborating and conversing.

And I think that helps us make those connections that we can stay on target. So what are the values of the institution? What are the initiatives? What are the key goals of each of our departments? Okay, well, our goals are not that far off, but we wouldn’t have known that if we didn’t have a conversation. I think it’s been important to bring a lot of us together and have those conversations about the future of Dartmouth. And so that’s been a big part of it. It’s just been having conversations and hearing about what people are doing and saying, “Hey, we’re doing this. Maybe we could collaborate on this and share costs and share effort and share content.” So it’s been two conversations really.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, you mentioned earlier that one of the first things you did was check in with admissions, because you had that background and you know the value of that partnership.

Joe Catrino:

Yeah. And I’ll say my first … Gosh, probably my first five months, I just listened. I went around and listened. I just asked questions. I talked to the staff multiple times. I talked to other partners, admissions, different centers and institutes on campus, faculty departments, student organizations, and just listened and just asked questions like, “What are your perceptions of the Center for Career Design? What would you like to see us do? ” And everyone was so open-minded to that conversation and that’s where a lot of our initiatives have emerged because of partners and things we’re hearing in those conversations. So my five-month listening tour, and I still continue to listen even though it’s been over a year, but that first five months was really intentionally me just having meetings and hearing people and meeting key players that I could partner with.

Meredith Metsker:

And again, I imagine having the support from the President and career being in the strategic plan hopefully elevated you a little bit in those conversations like, “Of course they’re going to meet with you. ” It’s one of the key pillars.

Joe Catrino:

It did help. And I think that’s part of why everybody was like, “Yeah, we’ll meet with you, Joe.” Because they were like, “Yeah, this is an initiative. I should meet with them.” So it did make it easier. But again, that didn’t necessarily mean what we were going to do was going to work. We still had to talk through it. We still had to collaborate. We still had to ensure we were matching with some of the other goals of the partners that we were going to talk to.

Meredith Metsker:

I am curious around this topic of tying your work to institutional goals and those pillars, do you have a framework or an approach for tying career center outcomes to institutional priorities?

Joe Catrino:

Yeah. I mean, so what I did was … Can I tell you the best exercise ever?

Meredith Metsker:

Please.

Joe Catrino:

I built a business plan.

Meredith Metsker:

Interesting. Okay.

Joe Catrino:

I worked with advancement to build a business plan and that helped me really … And this was a four-month process. I started doing this in early May of last year and I built a business plan. And the business plan has our mission, our vision, what are our goals as a center? What are our signature programs? What’s our budget look like? What does fundraising look like? Looking at our data for our internships, looking at our data and our goals for data.

So I have goals for our total appointments. I didn’t just randomly pick a number. I looked at the history of the data and I made some assumptions based on our staff size of coaches, but then also the initiatives that we were going to be doing. And so that business plan was the framework for everything. That helped me. Listen, my prior role at Trinity was the Executive Director of the current Life Design Center.

I came into Dartmouth with some ideas of what I wanted to do based on conversations that I had with President Beilock and other leaders who I reported to and met with regularly prior to my arrival. And that sort of was the baseline and the foundation. But from there, once I started to have the listening tour happened and then I launched into this business plan, that’s really the framework I used. And I looked at the college’s mission. I looked at what some of the initiatives that the president was trying to achieve, what student affairs was trying to do, what the College of Arts and Sciences were trying to do. I’ve heard all of those things through the conversations and reading and research, but for me, the framework I filed was building a business plan.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s really interesting. I’m glad you brought that up. I want to dig into that. So you worked with advancement on this. So are you kind of thinking in terms of revenue, expense and kind of that aspect of it?

Joe Catrino:

Yes.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Can you say more about that?

Joe Catrino:

Yes, more the revenue. We have another campaign for fundraising that we’re rolling into. We’re thinking about all of these things, but I think the practice of viewing ourselves as a business, that’s why I always refer to us as a startup. We’re a startup within Dartmouth, because we had to figure out, what was our headcount going to be? How are we going to afford this? What are some of the programs we can run? Can we give students stipend? What can our student staff look like?

I had never done this, but it was one of the best exercises ever because it really helped me map out a lot of the pieces of the work that I had intended for us to do, the goals I had for our center. And then as I built my leadership team, we started to collaborate on that data and see what the … So it was like me starting it, and then I worked with advancement and my team, and then we built that business plan out, and that really informs all the work that we’re doing.

Meredith Metsker:

It’s just so interesting. I’m just going to dig in here some more, if that’s okay with you. Okay. So in terms of course you have any center, you have your expenses, you have personnel, you have salaries, you have technology, programming costs, things like that. But in terms of revenue, so of course you have your budget from the institution. And are you also considering donor revenue in terms of working with advancement? What are you looking at in terms of revenue?

Joe Catrino:

It’s donations, but also we’re going to be running some revenue generating programs. We want to run some high school programs for life design for summer programs and high school students. That’s one of the areas that we’re looking at for … I mean, we’re not looking at crazy levels of revenue, but we had to think about how can we maybe rely less on the college for funding or maybe we get donations and we can expand professional development for staff or lean into a new system or advance our AI initiatives beyond the budget that I walked in on. So it allows us a little bit of room to navigate budgetarily taking on new initiatives.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, especially when budget … It seems like budgets and higher ed are just tightening everywhere. I have kind of talked about this with other leaders too. You have to be scrappy. You kind of have to have that business mindset. How are you going to make this sustainable?

Joe Catrino:

That’s why the business plan was a magical practice. And the timing of what I did when I did it was really helpful because I had just been going through these listening tours. I was starting to think about where my energy was going to be spent, and that really helped me organize that. And then talking to my staff and building it out, it became a collaborative effort. And then we talked to advancement, they tied in some of the budget things and fundraising things, and it just was great.

Meredith Metsker:

It is. Yeah. And I’m hoping that folks listening to this are taking notes. So I think often in higher ed, we think in terms of strategic plans. Yes, higher ed has other benefits, but it is also a business in a lot of ways. You have to generate revenue in order to stay sustainable, so it’s interesting that you take that approach in career services.

Joe Catrino:

Yes to everything you just said. I think we need to start thinking about us a little bit differently. I mean, I have strategy in the business plan. It’s in there. So the strategic plan is there. It’s a bigger version of it. And I have Bob Lasher, who’s our, I think vice president of advancement is his title, but he was the one that really said, “I think you need a business plan.” And I was like, “That’s a good idea.” And that’s where it went, and that’s how we got here.

Meredith Metsker:

And I’m sure bringing in advancement just helps solidify that partnership too.

Joe Catrino:

I mean, we need alumni, we need parents and families to do this work. And I’m not even just push the fundraising out. We need alums to be aware of what we’re doing. We want them to bring to us jobs and internships. We want them to think about, we hear from employers and partners all the time and say, “I would love to hire a Dartmouth student, but I don’t have enough work for a full-fledged internship.” Well, that’s fine. Send us a five-week project, we’ll send you three students to work on that project. So we’re just trying to change a little bit of how we’re working with alumni and parents and families and create more opportunities for students to get tangible skills. And so, I mean, that’s kind of where I’m at.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s really cool. And I’m assuming that this plan, the business plan has been shared with President Beilock.

Joe Catrino:

From the first iteration to the current iteration. Yep. That’s part of what I would bring is my business plan and where we were and we’d make adjustments or questions. And it was very collaborative effort on getting the perspective of hers and other senior leaders on what we were trying to build.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. I’m curious, what was her reaction to this element of a business plan versus something more traditional?

Joe Catrino:

She thought it was a good idea. It was something that we talked about early on. And once I started to pull it together, we all started to lean in on the structure of it and what content needed to be where. We probably need to add this element. And that eventually influenced the creation of that data dashboard that I talked about. We need data to inform the business plan as well. And so a lot of that plan triggered other things when I would bring it and it was like maybe a four-page document, it’s now like a 10-page document, it’s in a deck form. So it’s evolved over time since May of last year. And now, we have it in a place where we’re sharing it now. For those of you listening and you’re interested, you contact me, I’m happy to talk you through that process.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Oh, I’m sure you’ll have folks take you up on that. I feel like you need to add CEO to your job title too. CEO of the career center.

Joe Catrino:

Yeah, I love that.

Meredith Metsker:

Cool. Well, thanks for indulging me and going on that little side quest there. So kind of going back to this partnership with the president, as we both know, unfortunately not every career services listener or leader listening to this podcast is going to have that kind of access is going to walk into that kind of situation. Are there other senior leaders you’re working with on campus, or do you have advice on how to get your foot in the door if the door’s not already open?

Joe Catrino:

Yeah, I mean, find ways. I mean, a lot of the work that we’re doing and listen, a lot of the focus of colleges right now is on the term ROI. And listen, we can poke holes in the idea of ROI and higher education. I’m not going to get into that, but that’s on the minds of a lot of college presidents. And I think there’s a lot of stuff that we do in the career space that can help the president tell their story, tell the institutional story, make connections, lucky your alumni data. I think take any meeting you can with leadership.

I meet with the Dean of the Arts and Sciences, my boss regularly. I meet with VP of Communications and Marketing because we want to get our story out there. I meet with advancement of, as we talked about, I talked to a lot of the other executive directors of institutes and centers across campus that we collaborate with. So again, that listening tour ran the gamut of leadership and mid-career folks and newer professionals to higher education. I just think if you can continue to tell your story through different ways and collaborate, I think your president, I hope, will pay attention to it and get you an unlocked door at least.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. It reminds me of, I think … I’m trying to remember who said this. It was another guest and they were talking about, if you can’t get right to the president, go for advancement. Advancement is the president’s best friend often, or work with the other senior leaders and just kind of take a from the ground up approach.

Joe Catrino:

Also, I really believe in attacking the front end of the funnel, as we talked about before, that admissions partnership is critical to the work that we’re doing. From a career office, you want to be in the brochure. You want to be in the conversation as admissions is recruiting students to come there because the reality is, if admissions isn’t recruiting students, you’re not going to have any students to develop careers for. And so we have to have students, we have to show the value of the institutional degree, but also what value you bring to the institution as a career office.

So really, I think admissions is a really critical partner. And that’s one of the, like I said, the early wins I had was partnering with them. And now, I speak at the mid-students’ days. I do webinars for admitted students and prospective students because I want them to know what’s available, and that’s why we’re seeing an increase in first year appointments.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. It’s such a mutually beneficial relationship between career services and admissions.

Joe Catrino:

100%. And what’s on the minds of parents and families? What job? What am I student going to do after this program? Listen, Meredith, I have a senior in high school right now. We’re going through this process. I’m asking, I’m looking at … My son kind of rolls his eyes because he’s like, “Oh my God, dad, you don’t have to tell everybody you’re the career guy.” And I’m like, “Well, I’m curious about what you’re going to do after you attend these institutions. I want to know what services and resources are available to you.” And so I’m living this right now and for me, just show that value, and I think admissions is a great way to do it.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, for sure. And you mentioned that you also talk regularly with marketing. I’m curious, what are you sharing with them? Is it data? Is it student stories? Both?

Joe Catrino:

Yes. It’s all of that. Yes. No, it’s stories. I mean, like I said, this is an institutional priority. So marketing and communications wants us to tell the story. They want to tell the story for us. They want to get us out there. They want us to get exposure. They want to show what we’re doing because it’s a pretty unique model of what we’ve been doing in Center for Career Design.

And so we want to show the differentiation, but also some of the cool initiatives. We tell stories with students and data points. And obviously, we talked a lot about the $30 million internship campaign. Those are great stories to tell. At a time when there’s a lot of not great stories coming out about higher ed, I think we’re telling some good stories and I think we’re trying to stay positive in a climate that’s not feeling positive.

Meredith Metsker:

And when you have more students doing internships, it’s a whole new avenue for student stories. They can talk about those internships.

Joe Catrino:

I mean, they have great stories to tell when they go out and do these internships. They have great stories to tell when they go and do academic research with the faculty. If they go study abroad, there’s great stories to be told across institutions. And within our institution at Dartmouth, it’s like they’re doing such cool stuff. Let’s tell that. Let’s share that.

Meredith Metsker:

Well, Joe, you’ve offered a lot of great insights already today, but is there any other advice you would give to career services leaders who are listening to this who are trying to get more executive buy-in?

Joe Catrino:

Don’t be afraid to challenge the traditions of things that we’ve been doing in the career space because the workforce is doing the same, we need to start doing it too. We need to be out there challenging students to think differently. I mean, a nine to five job isn’t going to be that in the future. Our students are going to be working in gigs. They’re going to be working for multiple employers. The jobs are going to look different. Jobs are going to be doing, don’t even exist yet. Let’s challenge the norms and traditions a bit and try some new stuff.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s a great perspective. Especially, like you said, when the workforce is doing, I mean, that’s what’s happening. May as well prepare students now and prepare career services professionals now.

Joe Catrino:

Yeah, 100%.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Well, before I start closing us out, is there anything else you would like to add?

Joe Catrino:

No, no. Just again, I really appreciate the opportunity to come back and talk to you. I always enjoy our conversations, and so I thank you for the chance to rejoin the uConnect chat.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. I am super glad to have you back and maybe in another three years, we’ll just check in again and see what’s new.

Joe Catrino:

Sounds good.

Meredith Metsker:

Well, Joe, if people would like to connect with you or learn more from you or maybe get more insights on your business plan, where is a good place to do that?

Joe Catrino:

Yeah, LinkedIn’s great. LinkedIn, you can directly email me, just jcatrino@dartmouth.edu, but LinkedIn’s great. I’m happy to have conversations about life design and my business plan and things that are going well and maybe not working or haven’t worked. Failure is a big part of this. This is that design mentality is embrace that failure because there’s a lesson in there and you can reconstruct it and get the lessons and move from there.

Meredith Metsker:

Exactly. Every failure is just a new piece of information. Okay. Well, Joe, as you know, at the end of every interview, I do this answer a question, leave a question thing. So I’ll ask you a question our last guest left for you, and then you’ll leave a question for the next guest. So our last guest was Justin Lawhead from the University of South Carolina, and he left this question for you. What is your passion in the career space and why, and how does that help you lead?

Joe Catrino:

This is easy. This is a softball, I think, a little bit. I mean, my passion is life design. As many of you know, for me, it’s such a value to help. I mean, I went through my own life design to get back into career development, to really help students dig in and empathize with themselves so that they can understand who they are. That meaning and purpose and seeing students come up with those aha moments where they unpack themselves and go, “Oh my God, I just said out loud what I think I want to do.” There’s nothing better than that. And that’s really what gives me meaning and purpose is to help people find their meaning and purpose.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. That’s a great answer. And I knew life design was going to be part of that.

Joe Catrino:

Yeah.

Meredith Metsker:

Very on brand.

Joe Catrino:

Yep.

Meredith Metsker:

All right. Well, Joe, what question would you like to leave for the next guest?

Joe Catrino:

So I was thinking about this and I figured we’d get to life design and I figured we’d get to … I would talk about failure at some point. So here’s a really … I think this is an interesting question is, what’s a job you’d be terrible at and why are you so confident about it?

Meredith Metsker:

Oh, that is a good one. Do you know what your answer would be?

Joe Catrino:

Yeah, I could definitely say, and my wife will probably agree, I would never be a good chef. I just don’t understand how people construct meals and their creativity. I’m just no good. I don’t have that creative food experience. Yes, I can eat it, but I could never construct it.

Meredith Metsker:

I feel that. I literally have made my son a cheese and chicken quesadilla for dinner three nights in a row, so lack of creativity there.

Joe Catrino:

So just very similar to that. My youngest, who is eight, he came home one day, this is years and years ago. He might’ve been three at the time and he said, “I’m hungry. Can I have lunch?” So I made him what we call a dad’s special, which is usually a piece of fruit, a cheese stick and like a yogurt or like a piece of bread. I mean, there’s no microwaving or cooking happening. And now, he requests a dad special and it varies. Yeah. So it’s like grapes and a cheese stick and one piece of bread with a glass of milk.

Meredith Metsker:

That sounds very balanced to me.

Joe Catrino:

That’s what I was going for. That’s what I said to my wife. I’m like, “Look, he’s hitting all the food groups.”

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. I’m trying to think what the job I would be terrible at. I’ve always said I wouldn’t want to do anything that was like life or death where other people’s lives are in my hands. So no police officer, no firefighter, no pilot, no airplane pilot, no school bus driver. Uh-uh. No. I’m good in a crisis, but I don’t-

Joe Catrino:

It wouldn’t work for me either. So I’m left handed, opening the bus door would be tough for me.

Meredith Metsker:

It’s like that would be really stressful for me. I like a good role where I can tell good stories and talk to interesting people.

Joe Catrino:

Amen to that.

Meredith Metsker:

Cool. Well, Joe, thank you for taking the time to join me on the podcast. This was so fun, as always. Always love talking to you.

Joe Catrino:

Likewise. It was great to see you. Thank you so much again for the opportunity to come in and share what we’re doing.