What does it actually take to make career services a campus-wide strategic priority—not just in name, but in budget, staff, and institutional structure?
In this episode, host
Meredith Metsker sits down with
Barbara Zerillo, Senior Director of the Career Development Center at Post University, to talk about how she turned career readiness into one of the institution's five official strategic pillars.
When Barbara arrived at Post about a year and a half ago, the career center was a team of three serving a large and diverse student population—including a significant online learner community. Within less than a year, she had secured approval to hire 10 new staff members, build out a comprehensive technology stack, and restructure career services as a formal institutional pillar with its own project manager, dedicated time with the president, and multiple strategic initiatives underneath it.
Barbara walks through the full journey: how she benchmarked Post against peer institutions in New England, what she included in her "Why" document for the president, how she made the case that career is not just important but that not investing is a risk, and what it looked like when the institution said yes.
She also covers the practical realities of scaling a team quickly, the role project management principles played throughout, and her honest advice for career leaders who want to do something similar.
Key topics covered:
- Stop saying "career development is important" and reframe around institutional risk
- Bring leadership into the research process through site visits, not just reports
- Mine both external benchmarking data and internal persistence data to tell the full story
- Know what keeps your president up at night and align your case to those priorities
- Why staggering your hires matters more than you think
Resources from the episode:
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