WGU Alumni Podcast
WGU’s alumni network now has more than 350,000 graduates living in all 50 states. The WGU alumni podcast highlights the incredible work that our alumni are doing in their local communities. We also share benefits, perks, resources and partner information to help our graduates stay engaged and get the most out of the alumni community.
WGU Alumni Podcast
From Graduation to Growth: How WGU Supports Alumni for Life
WGU Senior Director of Alumni Engagement Robert Sullivan joins the alumni podcast to explore what happens after graduation—how a WGU degree becomes real momentum through lifelong career support, community, and connection. He walks us through the services alumni can tap into at any stage, from resume reviews and interview prep to region-based events and local networks that help graduates stay relevant in a changing job market.
Robert also pulls back the curtain on WGU’s AI-powered Ask-a-Grad tool, which gives learners and alumni fast, practical insights from people who’ve walked the same path. He shares why commencement remains such a powerful milestone, how community shapes resilience, and what it means to build an alumni ecosystem that supports every learner for life. His perspective is a reminder that the WGU journey doesn’t end at graduation—it expands.
Hey everybody, welcome to the WGU Alumni Podcast. We're thrilled to have you tuning in yet again. My name is Jeff Burton. I'm the senior manager of alumni engagement here at WGU. And we've got a great episode dialed up for you today. I'm excited to welcome in Robert Sullivan, who's the senior director of alumni engagement.
SPEAKER_00:Robert, welcome. Glad to have you. Jeff, I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me. A little intimidated to be on the alumni podcast with you today. Oh, you're my boss, Robert. But you interview just our best alumni. And every time I listen to the podcast, you know, I'm either crying or excited. And so to be one of the guests on the podcast, I'm just uh excited, intimidated, and hopefully get to add to the great stories that we hear all the time.
SPEAKER_02:Aaron Ross Powell Well, thank you for being here. And you're exactly right. It has been such a fun season of the WG Alumni Podcast. We are featuring our distinguished graduates, other graduates, and people that are just having a real impact within their communities and in their chosen professions. And I'm with you. Every time I uh leave an interview, I'm just like inspired and I'm like, wow. And I it makes me want to go out and work on my bucket list, you know, do better at work, do better just with my relationships and everything.
SPEAKER_00:It's just really inspiring. Yeah. And the theme this year has been, you know, it's never too late because our graduates get this opportunity, uh, whether they're mid-career or uh, you know, they've tried other options and they didn't work, and WGU is the answer to that, that it's never too late. And hopefully some of the things I get to share today follow that theme as well, that uh even after graduation, it's never too late. It's never too late to turn back to WGU and see the resources that we have, the support we can give our graduates, our alumni, and continue to help everybody in the whether it's a bucket list item or their career progression, whatever it might be, that we can continue that well beyond graduation. Yeah. So, Robert, let's start there. Um if I'm just graduating from WGU, what's next? Yeah, that's a that's a really good question. I mean, most people are coming to get education because they want to progress their career, right? They either changing their career path entirely or taking that next step in a career path they might be in. And so what's next is continuing down that career path. Now we're pretty lucky at graduation, about 65% of our graduates already have that job that they've been trying to get. So that's a great I love that sharing that number because that means at day of graduation, their WG WGU degrees already paying off, right? But hey, there's still 35%. Now we know over the next five years that raises nearly to 90%. Uh, but we want to help. We want to continue to help. So what's next is let's look at the resources that WGU continues to offer so that we can help you with that goal. The whole reason you signed up for WGU in the first place, how do we help you continue down that goal now that you have the degree in hand, now that you have the education, the skills, the certificates.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So let's start there just in terms of career uh upward mobility. So uh I understand there are a ton of resources in the career space and a team that we actually collaborate and work closely with. Uh what are the resources there and what does that look like for our graduates?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So a great thing that we have at WG is we have career services for life. Uh so we I hope that you go and find them while you're a student as well. But if you've already graduated, come back and we can help with interview prep, resume reviews. Uh, we have job boards, and you just go and connect with the alumni or the career services team, and we have those resources ready and available to help you down that path for life, always for free.
SPEAKER_02:That's great. That's awesome. Um also what's kind of interesting about WGU is it's a completely online experience, as you know, the audience knows. They they lived it. Um, but we find a lot of uh graduates and a lot of people in our community they they want to connect with other like-minded individuals, they want to connect in their regions, really where where they live. Um tell me a little bit about that and how people that uh again got a degree online but want to network, want to connect with others, how can they access and take advantage of that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I love that question because it's true. WGU is a unique community, and uh in fact, uh we do a Gallup poll every year, and we always blow the results out of the water. We compare to kind of traditional universities of like, what's our affinity and community like? And we always trend nearly double of what traditional universities you say, oh, but you're an online university, where does that come from? Well, there's a strong affinity to WGU, but also these opportunities to connect with others. And so we try to be everywhere we can be. I mean, we have alumni from coast to coast, every state, uh just everywhere. But we will work with individuals in the community to set up alumni groups, to have uh different events, especially career-related events, where it's not just online resume review, but we could come to your city and have uh different partners and other businesses that we work with come in and be the reviewers of your resume. Those are some of my favorites because we will they'll the the studio will come and set up all the fancy lights to get you a really good picture for your LinkedIn profile, uh, take a look at your resume, maybe even do a mock interview. We don't do all of it at every event, but we try to always bring those components of support to our students and alumni where they live. And uh and if you need to know, like you can go out to our website and find, hey, where are the next places you're coming for those events? So we have a whole event list where we're coming to help out and and make those connections.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Do you have a website people can access to check that out?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Uh pr pretty simple uh to remember, it's this wgu.edu slash events to find all the events or slash alumni, and you can see all of these resources. You can get links to the career, you can get links to the different groups that we have and other opportunities that may exist on how to collaborate with other night owls in your area.
SPEAKER_02:Awesome. Tell me a little bit about uh the alumni team and who puts these events on and who supports our graduates from coast to coast, to your point.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so we have an amazing team. We have seven different alumni managers that live around the country in our seven different regions as we split it up that help oversee uh several states at a time to make these happen. But they're collaborating with other people across the university and other volunteers, other alums that want to help make that happen. They're collaborating with uh uh uh people from the career services team that can help bring those services locally, but uh the they're everywhere. You know, they they only live in seven different places, but uh it's pretty amazing the the all the different places they're able to get to. And you can also find them on the website too. So if you're like, oh, I'd want to either volunteer or find out what's going on next, and I can't find it on the website. You know, you can go on the website and you can find their names, their contact information, and and be part of what they're doing too.
SPEAKER_02:Our graduates are able to shoot an email off to somebody and and ask about upcoming opportunities.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and they and the alumni managers love it. They love it, uh they love talking to our just all of us do. I mean, anytime we get the opportunity to just work one-on-one and talk to somebody, we're excited. And uh the alumni managers are just the same, you know. So if if there's something that you either want to know about or you say, I want to help bring this to my community, reach out and they'll they'll talk to you.
SPEAKER_01:Great stuff, Robert.
SPEAKER_02:Love talking about events, love getting the WGU community together. And I wanted to ask you a little bit about your first commencement here at WGU. I know you've attended a lot of commencements, you know, prior to WGU and and several since you've been here at the university. But what was that experience like for you uh to attend a WGU commencement?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the quick answer is mind-blowing. I mean, uh like you mentioned, I've worked for other universities, I've helped with a lot of other commencements, gatherings, alumni communities, and to show up, it was actually in Las Vegas, and uh I I went to the alumni celebration, and thousands of people, graduates with their families, showing up to this party that we brought on the road to celebrate our graduates. I was like, I can't believe that we like brought this on the road, that we brought all the WGU signs and boards and a DJ and games and resources as well. But I was like, how did we do this? And then the very next day I was even more impressed as I we go to commencement and not only just the the volume, right? Uh how many graduates we had and one of seven commencements during the year, uh, but the stories, right? And that's where I was excited about coming to WGU in the first place. But within two weeks, I go to Las Vegas and I watch a commencement and I hear the stories. The powerful um student graduate speaker that talked about how WGU changed her life, and I was sold on WG forever. And the funny thing is, is it's like, oh, well, that's a new experience. And so, like, of course, it was super touching and emotional, and I was excited, but it happens every time I go to commencement. And I just love like that's one of our biggest gatherings, right? Thousands of graduates and their families getting together. And so anytime anyone can make it to uh celebration at commencement, if you haven't walked, you've got to do it. If you if you we just want to, if you're close to a celebration, just come and celebrate with your night owl community. It's a lot of fun and rewarding and rewarding.
SPEAKER_02:That's awesome. So let me follow up on that. If somebody graduated, say, like five years ago and they have not walked, is there an expiration? Are they able to come and still participate?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that that's a great question because you can walk. You can walk one time per degree. And so if you have recently graduated or graduated five years ago and never walked, come join us and uh come be a part of that community and and see what it's all about.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:And information on the website as well, backslash alumni. All of it, all of it at the alumni website, right? It'll take you to different places. But you know, if it's information for our graduates, you can find it there.
SPEAKER_02:Awesome. Love that. All right, great stuff, Robert. So what's new in alumni relations? Any any new platforms, any new tools that the community should know about?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah. I mean, just like in every industry, there's a lot of change. AI is introducing a lot of change places. Um, you know, we mentioned a little bit, I have a long history of working with alumni associations and helping schools build community. And one thing that I've always people want, our graduates want, our students want as a school we want to facilitate is mentoring, right? Is some way for students and alumni to connect. Students often have questions, recent graduates have questions that can be answered by a graduate to a much better degree than an employee of the school, right? Because the graduate has sat in those classes, has passed those tests, and has applied them to the workforce and gotten the promotion. So making that connection is so important. And I've done everything from uh, you know, trying to manage it on a spreadsheet in Excel to pay for really expensive third-party programs that uh can try to do the matching. And honestly, all of them have worked for those that it connects, but it has connected very few people because you got to sign in, you gotta sign up, you there's a lot of follow-up. It's just there's reasons that these systems don't work. And with AI, we found a way that a student can ask a question. And within that question, there are keywords about their major, the career they want to go after, and the the where they live, all of those things that AI is able to pull out and then match them with 30 of our of the best alumni that can answer that question. And it sends an email out and says, Hey, do you just have a couple minutes to answer this question to help the student out? Or alum, it could be an alum. And uh, and if they do, they say yes and they they connect. If they don't, they say no and we say, Hey, thanks for your time. Um, and if all 30 say no, then guess what? We just send it to 30 more. We have nearly 400,000 alumni. We can do that. So do these alumni sign up to be participants in answering the questions? You know what? They're just part of the alumni base, and if they match the profile, and and we have their email on file and and they're contactable, you know, all these things. There's some things, but no, they don't have to sign up. That's one of the reasons it works so well, is that we're able to match them with the best person. And it keeps working. So we introduced this kind of a soft launch uh several months ago, and immediately we saw results where the questions were getting answered directly. We had somebody in Fort Lauderdale, Florida say, Hey, I am graduating in accounting and I need an internship, but everyone I interview for, I'm not getting. I'm wondering if it's something on my resume, something in my prep. Is there someone that can just review my resume and help me out with this? Hey, preferably it would be in Fort Lauderdale just so I could make that connection. Within hours, an alum in Fort Lauderdale said, Hey, I live here in Fort Lauderdale, I'm in charge of recruiting for my accounting firm. I would love to review your resume. And that keeps happening over and over again. And it is amazing, heartwarming, uh almost miraculous, right? That like you take this huge group of graduates with diverse backgrounds, and you take one specific question, and we say, Hey, we found someone that can help you out with that.
SPEAKER_02:That is so cool. It's fun. So people that are watching this on our YouTube channel or listening wherever they're listening to their podcasts, can they participate in this if they had a question?
SPEAKER_00:Like walk me through what that looks like and how do they do that? Everyone can do it. Same thing. It's it's just so easy. You don't have to sign up, nothing. It's it's just called ask a grad. So askagrad.wgu.edu. You go there, there's a blank form for you to enter your question. It'll ask you, you know, your name, uh, what program you graduated in or a part of, and ask your question and hit submit. And it's literally that simple. There's just not a lot to it. There's not a lot of barriers to entry. People can just do it. And you could be a prospective student, a current student, a graduate, and you can ask a question. Uh the one thing it doesn't have is if you're an alum, you're like, I want to answer more questions. Well, AI matches. So we we we don't really have a way to funnel questions to you, but that's kind of the magic behind it, right? Why it works. Uh, but anyone can ask a question with this very low barrier barrier to entry and get an answer.
SPEAKER_02:Aaron Powell So you've got my brain thinking as you're talking. So if I wanted to do a career change, for example, that would be a legitimate question. I could say, hey, I'm thinking about getting into data analytics. What do I need to know? Or whatever my question is, that would be an okay question.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell That would be an amazing question. I mean, just like the uh the accountant, we had someone that was a nurse. That exactly actually what you said. They're a nurse and they're like, hey, I've actually seen a lot more uh opportunity on the tech side and in the data. I still want it to be related to the medical field, but I want to change careers. And it's like, man, that's that's a very specific question. Let's see what happens. Well, she got two answers. Two different people said, I did the exact same thing. Let me tell you my experience. So absolutely.
SPEAKER_02:Or I'm thinking too, like, hey, I'm thinking about getting a uh you know, a degree, a master's degree in this field, uh, you know, should I go for it? Something like that. That would be filtered by graduates and they'd be able to provide insight.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and and real answers, right? Because it's a graduate with the same thing, just a blank field to answer you. You get a real answer unfiltered, just uh back and forth. And then if you want to continue that conversation offline, you know, not in the platform, many people have. We'll see the graduates say, hey, here's my LinkedIn, here's my email, here's my phone number, please contact me directly. I'd love to chat. Love it. I love it. So much good stuff going on in alumni these days. I hope so. I mean, that that's what we're trying to do. It's pretty easy because we have amazing graduates and people that want to have community, people that want to help the next generation of students, people that want that believe in the mission of WGU. And so honestly, it's an easy job. Like, let's get all these people together with these great desires and uh that that have these goals that are doing amazing things, and and then we just know the result of that is going to be more amazing.
SPEAKER_02:So, Robert, as things from time to time shift in the economy and uh you know we're we're watching that closely, what can graduates do to land a job that's secure, uh, develop resilience, and and ultimately succeed in their careers?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that is a good question, a timely one. And it's timely regardless, right? Because if the economy's on an upswing, like what a great time to uh get the skills to get a promotion, get a new job. If the economy's on a downswing, it's like, what skills do I need to stay relevant in my job? Do I need to upskill for AI? Do I need so very great question? And there's a couple answers on how WGU and the alumni network is going to help you out. One is WGU is here and it's always here. Like if you got a degree in one thing, you can always upskill through our certificate program, through master's programs, and stay relevant in the workplace. But two, and really important, I mean, our alumni network is approaching 400,000. It will be well over 400,000. We'll be the largest alumni network within five years. And being able to connect with that community with people that have probably weathered through economic turmoil before, that have probably changed jobs and used WG to help them in their career, to connect into that network, to have those relationships before economic uncertainty disrupts your job, right? Is going to be something extremely valuable that can help you navigate that. So that whether it's finding a job on a job board that we provide, like we mentioned with our career services, or connecting with a graduate through the different resources that we have, whether in person, at an event, through technology and the different ways that we're finding to connect our graduates with our current students and alumni, wherever that would be, having those connections before uncertainty disrupts your career path is going to be a tool in your tool belt to uh always make sure that you are meeting the goals that you have in your career, in your salary, in uh in your network and in your life goals. Such great information.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you. All right, Robert, great stuff, great information. Um as we conclude the interview, I wanted to see if I can put you on the hot seat. Oh, okay. One of the uh new features that we have on the Alumni Podcast is what we're calling from the nest, and it's rapid fire questions for our audience to get to know you um uh a little bit uh more on a personal level. So are you are you okay to be on the hot seat? Let's do it. Let's see how I do. Okay, okay. So just rapid fire, all right? Okay. Uh Robert, are you an early bird or a night owl?
SPEAKER_00:Night owl, a million percent.
SPEAKER_02:First thing you do in the morning. Uh check the time, I guess. Uh one word to describe working with WGU graduates. Inspiring. Uh, what's your favorite sport? College football. Favorite late-night study snack? Anything with peanut butter.
SPEAKER_00:All right, how about a quote or a mantra that you live by? Quote that I live by. I'm only one, but still I am one. I cannot do all things, but still I can do something. And although I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something I can't do. It's close enough. Close enough.
SPEAKER_02:Wow. No, I'm I love it. That's great. How about a dream job or a project still on your list?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I'm at my dream job. I get to work with you, I get to work with our graduates. I mean, honestly, I I'm not even just saying that because we're on a WGU podcast, but uh I get to use all of my past uh experience and skills to work with some of the best people on this planet that are just uh working with WGU to help make people better. I love it. Awesome. Then I'll pivot. How about a bucket list item? A bucket list item, I want to learn to play the guitar. That's a skill I don't have. I'm not musically inclined, but I want to be.
SPEAKER_02:Stay tuned. That might be a future episode, Robert. That's good. All right, and lastly, what makes you proud to be part of this night owl community?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, just the people that you associate with, right? Um you just go to a commencement, go talk to one of our distinguished graduates, go to an event, connect with someone online, and you see time and time again just people that have turned to WGU for opportunity. And WGU has offered that opportunity and they've seized that opportunity to be better, to have more education, to make career changes, to make progress in their career. And those are the kind of people you want to be around. Just people that are trying to be better. And I love that. Well, Robert, thank you for coming by today. Yeah, thanks for having me. Uh, you know, I hope I lived up to all the great people that you've had on here because our graduates really are amazing. I love working with them. I love talking about them. I love that you have this podcast. We have this podcast to be able to highlight what they're doing. And so I hope there's something in here that uh is anywhere even near the amazing things that they're doing.
SPEAKER_02:Thanks for tuning in to the WGU Alumni Podcast. We hope that this was helpful for you. We invite you to stay connected by visiting wgu.edu slash alumni or find us in the LinkedIn community. WGU Alumni Group is an active community of thousands of WGU graduates. So find us there, stay connected, and stay safe, everybody.