Expanding Mentorship at Scale at Fordham University

I'm Annette McLaughlin, Director of the Career Center for Cura Personalis at Fordham University. My team is responsible for assisting over thirteen thousand students in finding internships and getting jobs. Fordham has had a mentorship program for over fifteen years. We'd plateaued at two hundred and five matches. And so we were looking for scalability, for access, and for consistency, and Peoplegrove was that solution. One of the key driving factors at Fordham University or key success is our alumni. We have amazing alumni. They're very engaged. They're always wanting to support our students, and we needed also a platform or way, a technology to help them connect with our students and to give them opportunities to give back. As we went through evaluating different platforms, Peoplegrove and the Experiential Learning platform became a no brainer. When we looked at Peoplegrove and the analytics and what we could discern from that, we knew that that was the right solution for us. We now have over eleven thousand people on the Peoplegrove platform that are connecting with or without us and continuing to grow those relationships. The PeopleGrove platform has made an enormous difference in many ways. First and foremost, it has given opportunity for our alumni to give back in so many different ways. We also are engaging more alumni who are changing careers, and we're able to help them connect with other alums. In today's age, you really have to embrace technology. Looking at how to use AI effectively and responsibly is very important. And in order to scale, have access, scalability, and consistency with content, you need a system. And that you need to find partners that have the same values in the technology and the systems to make that effective for you. At the Career Center, we focus on helping our students gain experiences and connection. Fordham's ideal vision of supporting the student life cycle is that every incoming student would actually get on the PeopleGrowth platform and go through the PathwayU from day one. And then we would like for them to stay on the platform so that we can continue to serve our alumni throughout their entire life cycle and career. And we know that when students feel like they belong, feel that they're gaining more connections and experience, they'll see the value of Fordham education. Fordham's journey with Peoplegrove has been an amazing experience.