Deciding what direction to take after Denison can be confusing. The Career Exploration Conference provides an opportunity to learn about many different pathways and connect with recent grads. Over the course of the conference, you will have the opportunity to hear about internships, summer experiences, and careers from over 25 alumni and your peers. Bring your questions and have fun getting to hear their stories! Several alumni from various career fields are eager to share their insights with you. Register today to reserve your spot!

---

Alumni Speakers

Financial Services, Consulting, and Business

Khalig Howard ’19
Khalig Howard is the Director of Portfolio Services at Clear Ventures, an early-stage Institutional VC based in Palo Alto, CA. At Clear, he works closely with the management teams of 25+ portfolio companies to improve all aspects of operations, including sales, product, fundraising, research calls, and recruitment. These companies have in aggregate raised ~$1.4B in venture financing. Khalig is also responsible for Deal Origination, and due diligence, runs the Clear MBA and Deeptech Fellowship programs, and also holds budgeting and management responsibilities for the marketing team.

With a background working within startups, venture capital, and economic development, Khalig has previously worked with Ignite XL Ventures, the Foreign Direct Investment team for the Northern Irish government, and Outbrain a publicly listed tech startup. He graduated from Denison in 2019 with a Bachelor’s in Global Commerce and a minor in German. While at Denison he was a member of the Varsity Lacrosse team, a Crown Fellow, a Global Commerce Major Fellow, and an intern at the Denison Museum among many other attributions.

Kelly West ’19
In the 3.5 years since graduating from Denison, Kelly has had the opportunity to work in staffing, Social Media/Big Tech, and Fintech. She started her career in IT Recruiting at a small staffing agency before moving on to the Data Center Site Coordinator team at Facebook (now Meta), working heavily in community engagement and operations. Currently, she works on the Global Office Services team at Klarna in an Operations/Project Manager role.
Each position has presented separate problem spaces, and Kelly has relied heavily on Denison’s liberal arts approach to problem-solving. Building and maintaining her professional network has allowed her access to each of these opportunities, and Denison was the place where her first connections were made!

Jeremiah Mills ’21
Jeremiah receives inbound and outbound calls regarding participants of corporate clients. His firm sponsors qualified PRMs to acquire additional licenses such as Series 7 & 66. Those licenses qualify PRMs as registered representatives in all 50 states and territories. There is also a referral initiative to help FAs build their books.

Jessica Hopkins ’22
As an intern with AbbVie Pharmaceuticals, Jessica focused on data visualization for their drug discovery operations team. Since graduating in May 2022, she has had the opportunity to support the clinical side of biopharmaceutical/medical device R&D as a Business Intelligence Analyst at Medpace. In her current role, she works with business leaders across functional areas to build a variety of reporting and analytic solutions.

Marketing, Sales, and Communication

Maileah McMullen ’20
Maileah McMullen is a Columbus native looking to build a respectful legacy and ladder to success for her Black and Brown community. She’s spent most of her formidable years navigating the ambiguity of respect, resilience, and success by embracing vulnerability. Maleah has learned to embody her life story and magnanimous spirit as a Strategy Specialist for Geben Communications in Columbus, OH.

Alison Schafer ’20
Alison currently works as an Account Execute for iHeartMedia’s National team. From the jump, she wanted to tap into both her competitive and creative sides–that is how she found digital marketing sales! Abby finds new business and facilitates the A to Z for brands’ marketing campaigns with iHeart.

Abby Scully ’21
Abby has worked in the Ticketing Department for the Columbus Blue Jackets ever since she graduated Denison in 2021. She started as a Ticket Sales consultant where she sold season tickets and serviced accounts. Just after a year, she was promoted to a Group Event Specialist role where she currently specializes in organizing group events, selling tickets, and event planning at Nationwide Arena. She works directly with multiple departments across the organization to host events and provide high quality experiences for fans attending CBJ games.

Ryan Torgersen ’13
Ryan is a Senior Account Executive with Unum, a leading employee benefits insurance provider. In July, he will celebrate his 10 year anniversary with Unum after graduating from Denison in 2013. His primary responsibilities include the marketing and selling of Unum’s employee benefit products to employer groups across Ohio through Unum’s broker distribution channel. Ryan is currently a member of Unum’s 2023 Management Development Program and considering a career in leadership.

Nonprofit, Education, and Government

Emma Kopp ’18
Emma Kopp has five years of full-time experience in the nonprofit sector. She is currently the Program Coordinator for Youth, Health, and Human Services at the Cleveland Foundation, the world’s first community foundation. She also coordinates the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which is the only book prize focused on race, racism, and diversity. Emma’s past experience includes serving as the Heritage Home Program Assistant at the Cleveland Restoration Society and a public service fellowship at the City of Cleveland’s Department of Aging, where she led the Age Friendly Cleveland initiative.

Janet Gregory ’18, Esq.
After Denison, Janet attended Capital University Law School in Columbus, OH. She graduated law school in May 2022 and passed the bar. During law school, she had the ability to intern at the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, the Supreme Court of Ohio, and the Licking County Court of Common Pleas. She is currently interviewing for a permanent position as an attorney with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.

Samantha McLaughlin ’19
Samantha McLaughlin is a 2019 alumna of Denison University, where she studied Art History and Visual Culture, English Writing, and Latin. Her on-campus research focused on contextualizing trauma and sexual violence in the Holocaust through memoir, art, and curation. As a result, she has worked in the nonprofit sector for over three years, holding a position in public education at the Galicia Jewish Museum in Kraków, Poland and a position in marketing and communications at the Holocaust & Humanity Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. She currently works for the Remember the Women Institute, whose mission is telling women’s stories and integrating them into history and collective memory of genocide. With lifelong aspirations to be a secondary English teacher, McLaughlin is finishing her last semester of a second Bachelor’s degree, in Adolescent to Young Adult Integrated Language Arts, at Shawnee State University.

Lisette Lopez ’21
Lisette is an Orr Fellow at Indiana University Health (IUH) doing a rotational job program. Every 8 months, she rotates to a new department and gains a new role. Her first rotation was with the Government Affairs team where she worked on Community Impact Investment and Policy Development. Her next rotation was with the Community Health and Operations team where she developed and supported a system wide Diverse Community Stakeholder Engagement Council and led the implementation of a coordinated community engagement strategy across the system. Her current rotation is with the Health Equity Research and Engagement team where she is helping execute a three-year initiative to create a collaborative aimed at reducing health inequities in medically underserved areas.

Daniel Risko ’10
Daniel Risko is a native of Northeast Ohio and has spent his professional career between Columbus, Ohio and Washington, DC in a few different stints. He has a background working in the political and government arenas, including state and federal agencies, campaigns, and fundraising. He joined a technology start-up called Transfr in 2021 and helped establish their government relations department. Today, he is a Director at Transfr and oversees a team of seven that works to incorporate their technology into education and workforce partnerships in organizations around the country.

Healthcare and Clinical Research

Ben Bring ’07
Ben is a board-certified physician in family and sports medicine and currently serves as the Program Director and Director of Osteopathic Education Dublin Family Medicine Residency in Dublin, Ohio. Some of his other professional roles include serving as head team physician for Columbus Academy High School and Central Crossing High School, Medical Director for the OhioHealth Capital City Half Marathon, Medical Director for the Arnold Sports Festival, Medical Director for the Columbus Marathon, Medical Director for the Grandview Yard Half Marathon, Medical Director for Red Cross First Aid Response Team, and a member of the OhioHealth Sports Medicine Institute. His interests include osteopathic medicine, sports medicine, musculoskeletal ultrasound, medical acupuncture, exercise prescription, fitness, wilderness medicine, preventative medicine in primary care, and teaching in medical education. In his free time, Ben enjoys traveling the world and visiting national parks with his family.

Jayla Johnson ’19
Jayla is a Health Equity Specialist for Aetna OhioRISE, a new managed Medicaid program in Ohio for youth with complex behavioral health needs. Prior to Aetna, Jayla worked in community health where she taught substance use prevention to pregnant individuals at a community care clinic and served with AmeriCorps as an Emergency Department Recovery Navigator. Throughout college, Jayla was passionate about public health. She took public health courses while studying a semester abroad at The University of Edinburgh, conducted summer research at Johns Hopkins University, and received 1st Place for Denison’s Nan Nowik Memorial Award for her senior thesis titled “Race, Risk and Maternal Health: Examining the Role of Racism on the Maternal Mortality Rate among U.S. Black Women.” At Denison, outside of public health, Jayla played violin in orchestra, enjoyed being a tour guide and senior interviewer, and was co-president of the equestrian team.

Nicole (Nikki) Powell ’05
Dr. Nikki Powell is a licensed psychologist and Board Certified Behavior Analyst – Doctoral (BCBA-D). Her clinical psychology training focused on cultural diversity and psychotherapeutic interventions, while her clinical work is behavior analytic. Nikki enjoys using behavior analysis to improve access to services for populations that have traditionally been categorized as “too hard to serve.” She has expertise in the treatment of severe behavior disorders in intellectually and developmentally delayed populations, as well as behavioral stabilization in acute psychiatric populations. Nikki is passionate about healthcare quality improvement and implementing systems using behavior analytic sciences to create effective and efficient care models.

Max Newton ’21
As a research assistant at the Center for Suicide Prevention and Research, Max helps clinicians, epidemiologists, and social workers develop and manage federally funded research projects surrounding youth suicide and suicide prevention. In this role, he also recruits eligible participants and manages study retention efforts. Through this work, the Center hopes to improve suicide prevention efforts as well as expand the literature surrounding suicide and the treatment of suicidal youth.

Visual, Written, and Performing Arts

Brooke Stiles ’20
Brooke Stiles is a passionate marketing expert for CCT (Columbus Children’s Theatre), professional stage manager, global researcher, and co-founder of Wheelwright Theatrical Company. She’s on a mission to connect young artists to the professional world in dynamic and hands-on opportunities.

Rachael Williams ’19
Rachael works as a freelance medical illustrator creating assets for both digital and print publications. She has worked for ScholarRx for 3 years creating new illustrations, algorithms and graphs, bringing old illustrations up to date, as well as editing clinical images. These assets are all created through collaboration and teamwork with medical students, doctors and editorial staff.

Anna Spears ’07
Anna Spears spent 11 years as an Intelligence Analyst in both tactical and strategic roles with the Counterterrorism Division of the FBI. Anna has spent time overseas working in Algeria, Germany, and Tunisia in furtherance of the counterterrorism mission, and developed intelligence and writing classes for a counterterrorism center in Tunisia. In late 2019, she stepped back to be closer to family and work as a due diligence investigator in the private sector. She is currently also working on a chapbook of poetry inspired by her time with the FBI.

Technology, Data, and Science

Manan Ganeriwala ’20
Manan is a Product Manager at Cyanna. He works with the technology team to grow their cloud based software products. His primary responsibilities include product strategy, roadmapping, ticketing, launch planning, marketing strategy, as well as overall profitability analysis. Manan started at Cyanna in the summer of 2020 as a Business Analyst. It was a rotational role across four different verticals–Strategy/Operations, Technology, Real Estate and Accounting. After being in the BA role for two years, his sole focus has narrowed down to technology as a non-technical PM.

Sarah Mercier ’09
Throughout her college career, Sarah balanced a full course load with hands-on work experience at non-profits, startups, and academic internships. After graduating with a B.S. in Computer Science, Sarah accepted a job at JPMorgan Chase where she worked for nine years as an application developer focused on anti-money laundering. In 2021, she began working at Spotify as an engineer in Music Personalization. In her time with the company, she has worked on three main projects: a UI application used by music editors to curate playlists, a data engineering team responsible for aggregating and reporting playlist insights, and most recently a backend engineering team that owns the platform responsible for selecting and ordering songs in algorithmic playlists and radio.

Hanh Pham ’18
Hanh Pham is a data analyst at the American Electric Company. She graduated from Denison in 2018 as a Posse Scholar, majoring in International Studies with a pre-medicine track. Early 2019, she transitioned from clinical research into tech with product management in mind. During her transition, she also attained a MBA through the Quantic School of Business and Technology. In her free time, she likes to create food content, read, and work on side projects.

Stephanie Liu ’22
Stephanie graduated from Denison University in 2022 with a dual degree in Global Commerce and Economics, and a certification in Organizational Studies. She was a distinguished leadership award recipient. Her involvement on campus includes being a Red Corps Fellow, VPSL Intern, Admission Docent, and Senior Fellow for both her majors. Stephanie currently works as an associate consultant for Slalom, a management consulting firm headquartered in Seattle, Washington.

---