Charles Hwang (MBA ’15) was eager to land a job in forensic accounting, but he had one crucial question: How do I break through? The answer came courtesy of the Executives on Campus (EOC) program, a popular Baruch initiative—now in its 15th year—in which students are mentored by experienced professionals.
Hwang, at the time a first-year MBA student, was matched with mentor Dennis Hickey (’70), CFO of Colgate-Palmolive. Hickey’s first piece of advice: Get out of your comfort zone. Hickey encouraged Hwang to run for president of the Zicklin Graduate Accounting Society, something Hwang hadn’t previously considered.
Hickey explained how hiring managers often look for extracurricular leadership to distinguish a résumé. Ultimately, Hwang took his mentor’s advice and won the election; today Hwang is a senior associate at Ernst & Young. “My EOC experience provided me with a clearer direction than I’d ever had,” he explains. “And I have Mr. Hickey to thank.”
For alumni mentors like Hickey, the EOC program is the perfect way to reconnect with Baruch and pay it forward. “Mentorship is critical in today’s professional world,” says Hickey, who has mentored on average two Baruch students each year for more than a decade. “With all of my mentees, it comes down to either seizing what you’re good at or getting out of your comfort zone. And with students like Charles, it’s so rewarding, because they take your advice and really put their hearts and souls into it.”
Stories like Hwang’s abound. On average EOC serves more than 2,000 students a year through its long- and short-term mentoring programs; approximately 500 mentors, half of whom are Baruch alumni, participate. Of course, EOC didn’t reach these heights overnight.
The program started informally. A professor and friend of Dick Merians (’55) asked him if he would be willing to start a small mentoring program on campus. With no previous mentoring experience, Merians signed on and was joined by four alumni also from the class of ’55: Paul Koren, Norman Brust, and the late Joel Zweibel and Allen G. Schwartz.
“We literally went down the halls during club hours; grabbed five students; said, ‘Follow us’; and began mentoring them,” Merians recalls, laughing. “Talk about humble beginnings! But sure enough, those students came back for a second mentoring session, and we had 20 or 30 students by the second year.” Today EOC offers not only a yearlong mentoring program but multiple speed-networking events, special lectures, and panel discussions.
Koren is not surprised by the program’s success. “It’s a thrill to see what it’s become,” he says, “and it didn’t take very long for it to grow. Each of us brought in new mentors, and then they brought in new mentors. It was almost like a crowdsourcing project.”
With stories like Hwang’s, it’s no wonder EOC has become so popular. And Hickey, who still keeps in regular contact with Hwang, notes that the benefits of EOC continue long after the mentoring ends. “We aren’t simply handing students job offers,” Hickey explains. “We’re empowering them to further their goals, which lasts them a lifetime.”
Koren agrees and often remarks that mentors get just as much out of the program as students. “The gratification we get is all the compensation we need,” he says. “Simply put, people want to do good things, and EOC is a place to do it.”
—Gregory M. Leporati
FOR MORE INFORMATION on becoming a mentor, contact ExecutivesOnCampus@baruch.cuny.edu.