December 13, 2023 | By Anne Kniggendorf (SF97)

Sabina Sulat (A92) says she can’t imagine not being involved with her alma mater. For nearly 10 years, she and a small group of fellow alumni have helped students with resume writing and career advice on the Annapolis campus of St. John’s College.

But it hasn’t always been this way for her. As an older student with a full-time job, Sulat’s spare time as an undergraduate was booked solid—and not with waltz parties, soccer matches, crew, or any of the other student bonding activities that cemented relationships between her classmates.

So, even though she stayed in town after graduation, she wasn’t initially drawn back to campus other than for milestone reunions.

And then Career Development reached out. The college knew that Sulat had been working in the human resources field and specialized in organizational development and corporate learning. She’s since gone on to write a book called Agile Unemployment: Your Guide to Thriving While Out of Work and has a podcast of the same name.

“I was pulled in to help with writing an internship toolkit,” Sulat says. “This was probably about 2010. From that, my name kind of got in the mix, and I was asked to do mock interviews with students.”

Then, after Homecoming in 2013, she and Annapolis Career Development Director Jaime Dunn worked out a plan to offer regular resume writing workshops to students. The idea took and, 10 years later, Sulat is still offering her expertise, along with a rotating group of alumni, of which Samantha Warburton (A03) is an original member, and Gigi Escalante (A92), Kieran Dowdy (A09), Allison Hicks (A10), Haley Dunn (A17), and Thea Chimento (A10) are core members.

Dunn says this small group has gotten close to the students they help, but also to each other—almost all alumni they never would have met otherwise—satisfying in Sulat, and perhaps others, that long-ago missed bonding.

“It’s such a commitment to the college,” Dunn says. “It really is an example of how loyal alumni are to the college. The longevity of it has surprised me; they just keep coming back.”

Escalante, who also serves as the president of the Alumni Association, says it’s her belief in the power of community that keeps her volunteering. She says an obvious example of that power “is central to the pedagogy of St. John’s—striving for greater understanding through collaborative effort around the seminar table.”

Escalante says a similar benefit can be achieved through volunteerism and engagement, which enriches everyone’s life in a way that only a collective effort can.

“We have so much to learn from each other and in practicing the values we explored at St. John’s,” Escalante says.

Over the past 10 years, Dunn says that about 134 attendees have participated in the biannual resume workshops, and many received additional support from the group beyond the meetings.

One recent graduate Sulat mentions is George S. Kalandadze (A22). “George was someone who came up to me in last year’s resume writing workshop to help him do a career transition for someone who didn’t really have a career yet, and that worked out quite well for him. I’m very happy about that,” Sulat says.

Kalandadze had considered a career in medicine but, thanks to working with Sulat and the resume group, he found his way into the completely different field of branding. He says, “Make as many connections as you can … I got [to] many places by accessing things like the alumni network, talking to people, and learning from various experiences.”

Sulat says networking has been important both to her and the students she helps—once she understands the sort of work a student or new graduate would like to pursue, she often can think of an alum in that field and she connects them.

“I’ve never reached out to an alum and asked for assistance and not gotten a response back,” Sulat says, “even if it was a ‘I can’t at this time, but have you tried so and so?’ It always leads to something. I worked at another very prestigious university, and they did not have that kind of camaraderie with their alumni.”

WILLING TO SHARE YOUR INSIGHTS WITH STUDENTS?
Career Development in Annapolis and the Office of Personal and Professional Development in Santa Fe are always looking for alumni volunteers. Email annapolis.careerservices(at)sjc.edu or santafe.oppd(at)sjc.edu.