Over the past five years, the knowledge and service-based employment sectors in which many Baruch graduates have built their careers have faced uncharted waters. With the emergence of Covid-19 as a global health threat in 2020, companies and employees alike were challenged to adapt to new ways of conducting business, shifting to remote and hybrid work arrangements out of necessity. The novel office environment that has emerged has surfaced an alphabet’s worth of work-related issues, from accountability to burnout to Zoom etiquette. Post-pandemic, buzzwords like “quiet quitting,” “the Great Resignation,” “RTO” [return to office], and “job crafting” hint at underlying circumstances that continue to roil the professional landscape.
How will this latest period of upheaval play out—and how will it shape tomorrow’s workforce? Here, three multigenerational Baruch alumni describe their career trajectories amidst the changing business environment and share thoughts on what work might look like in the future, both for them and for the next generation of Baruch graduates.
Staying Connected
A young Baruch accounting graduate, Julia Coto (’04), began her career on a traditional path. She joined Deloitte as an auditor and passed the CPA exam the following year.
“What excited me about audit was the variety,” she says. “I got to interact with different people, companies, and industries… I never wanted a job where I’m sitting in my cubicle and not talking to anybody.”
After five years in public accounting, three of them at Deloitte, Coto temporarily relocated to Boston while her husband earned a business degree and joined a search engine optimization company that had been one of her Deloitte clients. The position was her gateway into private accounting, where she’s spent the past 15 years, primarily in executive roles in the healthcare technology field. Until the pandemic, all of Coto’s positions had been full-time on site. Yet she found the Covid-driven transition to remote work fairly smooth.
“The company I was with when Covid hit had a couple of offices, so Zoom was something we had already gotten used to using,” she explains. “And there was a really good team culture, so our Zoom meetings included team-building games to keep people feeling connected.”
In two subsequent executive roles, Coto worked remotely from day one, including when she was the executive VP of finance for a wellness company with personnel throughout the United States and Dublin. “Working remotely allowed me to connect with everyone on the same level, no matter where they were located. In my prior position, I’d felt a huge difference in my relationships with people I was physically with in the office versus those located in other offices,” Coto notes.
Most recently, Coto has been CFO at a chronic care management company that went remote well before the pandemic. “The bulk of the client work is phone-based, and we employ a lot of clinicians in the South and Midwest,” she explains. “At higher levels, being fully remote enables us to attract executive talent based throughout the country. From New Jersey, I work with a Colorado-based CEO, a CTO in Wyoming, a head of operations in Kentucky, a chief revenue officer in South Carolina, and a general counsel in Texas. Never would you be able to have that pool of employees and executives if we were in-person, or even hybrid.”
Coto finds remote workers’ accountability a non-issue. “People balance different needs throughout their careers; you might have kids to drop off, other personal demands, so maybe you work before school or some evening hours. As long as the necessary work gets done, to me it doesn’t matter.”
She sees advantages to remote mentoring when teaching her team.
“Screen sharing lets me see exactly what they’re doing and where they might need more guidance.”
Originally from Belarus, Coto views sensitivity to cultural differences as essential in a remote workplace.
“It’s not only international differences, but even within the U.S.,” she says. “If you’re working with people from another region of the country, taking the time to understand something about their world and their communication style is important for fostering connections that will help you all better accomplish your work.”
Coto feels that the current RTO trend will continue at large companies, but regardless of whether employees are on-site, remote, or somewhere in between, comfort with business communication technology will remain a vital career skill, she says.
“Basic things like how to present yourself on camera, how to operate the technology, general Zoom etiquette—these should all be part of basic business education.”
Structuring Work For Mutual Benefit
Although remote and hybrid positions became common during the pandemic, they’ve been feasible ever since the introduction of internet-driven office technology, says John Richards (’88), an attorney specializing in mortgage finance technology regulatory issues. Richards has worked in hybrid and remote roles for over 30 years.
Richards’ early experience navigating work outside of the office stemmed from a family tragedy. After graduating from Baruch with a BA in economics and international business and earning his JD in 1992 from Georgetown University Law Center, the Kingston, Jamaica, native had joined the Washington, D.C. headquarters of mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae, ultimately becoming associate general counsel. His sibling’s unexpected passing necessitated his spending lengthy periods in Florida assisting her family.
“Management was fine with my basing myself there, particularly as I was presenting at industry conferences at the time and often worked from the road,” he says.
After taking a buyout from Fannie Mae and briefly pursuing other law ventures, Richards joined government-sponsored mortgage enterprise Freddie Mac in 2012 as associate general counsel. His hybrid position there became fully remote in 2017 when he negotiated what at first had been a temporary relocation to Scotland, where his family has deep roots, both his wife and his mother having been born there. The unique arrangement worked well for both Freddie Mac and Richards, but as the pandemic drove other employees to scatter across the globe, the company faced HR and compliance challenges in accommodating workers in multiple non-U.S. locations.
Post-pandemic, a blanket policy was implemented that required all personnel to return to the office. He left Freddie Mac and remained in Scotland. In 2022, he established his law firm there. Richards notes, however, that he trained his replacements remotely.
“That speaks to the robustness and reliability of electronic communications, which makes not only remote office work but also remote mentoring feasible,” he says. “The technology to support it is there; what needs to be brought along—just as we’ve seen with respect to resistance to certain industry implementations of electronic signatures and records—is the mindset of ‘that’s not how these things are done.’”
Richards, whose major at Baruch reflects his affinity for the humanities, takes a holistic view of the forces that shape the modern office. He ponders the nuances of defining and discussing hybrid work, suggesting that “custom-fit” or “intentional” work—terms coined by journalist and author Brigid Schulte in her writings on the U.S. labor force—better reflect the ideal of structuring work to foster both bottom-line productivity and employee well-being.
He suggests that business-oriented course curricula should be designed “both for aspiring managers and for those comfortable staying in a nonmanagement track to better understand the issues surrounding business and employee rights and interests in the workplace of the 21st century.”
Richards urges those who aspire to attain management roles to recognize that “people in your organization should be appreciated as valuable assets to be nurtured, not only for their own sake but also for the company’s sake. It costs money—especially in today’s knowledge economy—to train up workers in substantive subject matter expertise only to have them poached by the competition because they’re unhappy.”
His advice?
“Companies that want to attract and retain talent need to revisit their experiential biases against change and flexibility.”
New Definitions Of Success
Flexibility and adaptability, combined with a personal growth mindset, have served Stephanie Nuesi (’21) well in her career. A proud Latina who emigrated from the Dominican Republic eight years ago with limited English proficiency has since mastered the language, earned a BBA in accounting, obtained her CPA designation, launched a corporate career as a financial analyst, and built a six-figure content creation platform with a following of more than 400,000 across social media.
While at Baruch, Nuesi founded Max Up, a career coaching enterprise whose mission is to maximize the potential of future business leaders. An in-demand Fortune 500 keynote speaker, she has been recognized as a LinkedIn Top Voice, Silicon Valley 40 Under 40, and Forbes 30 Under 30 Scholar with an impact extending to a global community of more than 20,000 members.
Her work as a content creator and career influencer focuses on helping others access opportunities and mentorship that drive meaningful career growth. Nuesi sees her unusual career path as an example of how generational differences are changing the conventional understanding of the business environment.
“Gen Z professionals view careers as nonlinear and more fluid—success isn’t just tied to a title or salary but also to work-life balance, personal fulfillment, and impact,” she says. “Many of us want to pursue multiple interests, whether through side projects or remote work, and we prioritize flexibility and mental wellbeing over the traditional ‘9-to-5 until retirement’ mindset.”
Besides delivering practical tips and advice about job seeking and self-promotion for a Gen Z workforce, Nuesi’s online content focuses on career issues that increasingly resonate with professionals of all generations, including burnout and mental health, work-life balance, career transitions and pivots, pay transparency, and diversity, equity, and inclusion—topics that reflect shifts in both societal and business expectations.
“There’s a growing demand for workplaces that prioritize mental health, well-being, and inclusivity as more employees seek careers that align with personal values and offer flexibility,” says Nuesi. “The conversation has shifted from ‘How can I fit into the workplace?’ to ‘How does the workplace support my growth and expectations?’”
Nuesi suggests that business programs also need to adjust to reflect the realities of modern work, including coursework on digital literacy and emerging technologies, remote work strategies, and mental health.
“The future of work is changing rapidly, and students need more than the existing teaching methods and information to thrive,” she says. “Many graduates juggle multiple careers or freelance roles, which isn’t fully addressed in traditional curricula; and critical skills like adaptability, emotional intelligence, and virtual networking should be integrated into business education as well.”
Nuesi offers advice for those currently navigating or embarking on business careers. “With industries evolving faster than ever, Baruch graduates need to develop a growth mindset and the ability to pivot, upskill, and manage change in uncertain environments.”
Future Ready
In work and life, change is constant. It remains to be seen what global, national, and regional forces affect Baruch graduates’ workforce experience and what roles they, themselves, might play in shaping how business does business going forward.
By equipping students with a foundation of relevant skills and knowledge and the tools to persevere amidst uncertainty, Baruch plays a critical role. As President S. David Wu states in the College’s Strategic Plan, “In an era that is increasingly turbulent and unstable… now is the time for us to accentuate the essence of what we [are]—an institution that creates opportunities, demands excellence, and delivers outcomes.”
– Sally Fay