The University of Arizona Alumni Association is working to create more job opportunities for UA alumni through its program “Wildcats Hiring Wildcats.”
Susan Kaleita, Alumni Career Services program director, said the Alumni Association is committed to helping alumni throughout their careers by helping them find jobs and build their networks.
“Part of the overall vision for Alumni Career Services at the [UA] is to create a culture of Wildcats hiring Wildcats and Wildcats helping each other out in their careers to create an alumni network,” Kaleita said.
The program has three parts, which include providing career services and resources to alumni throughout their careers, building relationships with employers, and creating opportunities for alumni who network with each other and the students.
“There are 250,000 [UA] alumni out there,” Kaleita said, “so we can’t personally help all of them, but if we can create a network where they can help each other, whether that’s a Wildcat hiring a fellow Wildcat or a Wildcat just helping each other out in their career.”
Kaleita said they want an alumni network that rivals Ivy League schools and to create a network that alumni and students can rely on anytime in their careers. Kaleita added that they want to get students to come here in the first place because they heard about the great network.
Since the Alumni Association cannot do this alone, it relies on Wildcats helping each other out by hiring them or being career resources.
Kaleita said that doing an information interview with somebody and connecting them to someone in their network or answering questions about their industry contributes to building a stronger alumni network to help students and alumni get jobs.
There are many alumni across the country that have created companies and have chosen to hire Wildcats whenever they can to build the network and make it stronger.
Kaleita added that all of these companies are excited about giving career opportunities to fellow Wildcats.
For example, a company called Sinfonía Healthcare, which is run by UA graduate Fletcher McCusker, is a big industry in Tucson led by a team of Wildcats and has a significant relationship with the UA College of Pharmacy.
Kevin Boesen, the founder and CEO of SinfoníaRx and the founder of the Medication Management Center, said that SinfoníaRx is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sinfonía Healthcare, and the Medication Management Center is the forerunner of SinfoníaRx.
Doug Hockstad, the director of Technology Transfer, said the Medication Management Center was a grand experiment that was successful in helping people that get multiple prescriptions to understand how those prescriptions interacted, and they trained pharmacy students through this practice.
“It was a training ground for U of A pharmacy students that was unique in the industry,” Hockstad said. “To my knowledge, there is not another university that has done something this big.”
UA pharmacy students will rotate through SinfoníaRx as part of their educational training.
According to Boesen, SinfoníaRx has call center-based pharmacists along with student pharmacists that help patients who have multiple chronic medical conditions that take multiple medications to better manage their medication.
SinfoníaRx uses a software tool to help manage a large patient population to identify patients most at risk for drug problems.
Kevin Boesen has many pharmacists who work for him that are UA graduates.
“The call center is within the College of Pharmacy,” Boesen said, “but we have 20 pharmacists, 30 pharmacy technicians and 150 student pharmacists that are all employed at the center.”
The top goal of SinfoníaRx is to improve the health of patients with chronic illnesses and promote their health, but another big goal of the company is to stay loyal to the university.
“We want to hire as many people from the university,” Boesen said. “We want to create as many jobs in Tucson as we can. We want to really be a successful business model for the city of Tucson and promote jobs for university graduates.”
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