The International Education Week kicked off on Monday, November 16th with a series of international career webinars. International Week is a joint initiative of the US Department of State and Department of Education that aimed to educate the campus community and address the importance of international opportunities.

This event was hosted by the International House and incorporated several campus organizations. Monday’s opening session featured welcoming remarks from Vice Provost for International Affairs and Director of the Center for Global Engagement, Gretchen Neisler.

“International Education Week is a time for all of the universities who have international programming on their campus to pause and reflect about what we’re doing, how we are engaging with our students, and how we’re engaging in the world. This is a really exciting opportunity to engage with international partners across the globe,” said Neisler.

The Center of Global Engagement partnered with the Center for Career Development and Academic Exploration to host the inaugural International Career Day.

This is a day-long event that features a diverse group of panelists including entrepreneurs, global industry leaders, government employees, non-profit organizations, and the Peace Corps. International Career Day was held as a virtual webinar allowing people from all over the world to join. All of our guest speakers for the Entrepreneur Session joined remotely, Alex Wang was live from Mexico while Traci Snowden and Nancy Youssef joined from Nashville.

Each of the International Career Day sessions partnered up with a different college and organization. The Entrepreneur session was moderated by students, Lucy Buck and Lauren Gateley, from the International Business Club. The Industry Session was co-hosted with the Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures and moderated by Dr. Lisa Parker. The Career Beyond Industry incorporated four different sessions that were organized with help of Dr. Lisa Parker.

Haslam College of Business’ International Business Club to start the day off with an International Entrepreneur Session. The event featured three expert panelists to share their experiences in global business, along with an active audience that contributed to the informative discussion.

Founder and CEO of Apto Global, Traci Snowden, was the first global leader to share her story as a leader in international business. Snowden is a bicultural polyglot who started international travel at the age of 14. The mission of Apto Global is to use technology to make real-world connections and be able to adapt to environments anywhere.

Snowden talks about her experiences launching her own business and the biggest lesson she has learned throughout this process.

“The biggest lesson I learned is to spend more time on strategy and looking at the bigger picture. There needs to be a balance in making decisions quickly, but not foolishly” said Snowden.

To learn more about being an international entrepreneur watch the recording below to hear from the Founder of Curves with Purpose and Chief Business Officer of Soles 4 Souls, Nancy Youssef, and Co-Founder of Tekmovil, Alex Wang.

Click here to watch the recording for International Entrepreneur Session.

The International Entrepreneur session was followed up with the Industry Session which was cohosted with Modern Foreign Literature and Languages and featured five skillful panelists.

A special thanks to Dr. Lisa Parker for moderating the informative discussion with our featured guest speakers.

We heard from Clifford Brown of Accenture, Scottie McCormick of TN Econ, Loren Jones of PepsiCo Frito Lay, Erica Green Smith of Denso, and Alex Allamong of Nissan North America discuss the impact of COVID-19 on the work environment.

“It has really changed our industry because if people are working at home they are not relying on cars as much and that is something rely on them to need transportation to and from work. It has made a great impact on us and it is really changing how we look at things on the supply chain side” said Alex of Nissan.

To learn more about our panelists’ experiences in the international industry watch the recording below to hear from all our featured guest speakers.

Click here to watch the International Industry Session.

International Career Day came to an end after a Career Beyond Industry webinar, a series of four speaker sessions. The series featured four panelists with insight into a variety of different international programs and opportunities.

The Career Beyond Industry webinar included the Director of UT’s Office of National Scholarship and Fellowship, Andrew Seidler, the JET program coordinator for the state of Tennessee, Tye Ebel, the Diplomat in Residence for the South, Allen O DuBose, and UT’s peace corps coordinator Adam Willcox.

Seidler has been UT’s director of National Scholarship since 2016 and since then, UT has emerged nationally as a Fulbright top-producing research university.

“Fulbright is a one-year postgraduate fellowship and it operates in more than 140 countries around the world. Part of our job in the office of undergraduate research fellowships to help students strategize where they want to apply and which type of award… Fulbright is a program that is about a whole cultural exchange with students who are going to be great cultural ambassadors,” said Seidler.

To learn more about the scholarship and work opportunities from Fulbright, Peace Corps, Diplomat in Residence, and the JET Program watch the recording below.

Click here to watch the Career Beyond Industry session.

If you attended the event, please fill out our survey to help us improve! Don’t forget to check out the recordings of other events during International Education Week.