What does it actually take to make career services a campus-wide strategic priority—not just in name, but in budget, staff, and institutional structure?

In this episode, host Meredith Metsker sits down with Barbara Zerillo, Senior Director of the Career Development Center at Post University, to talk about how she turned career readiness into one of the institution's five official strategic pillars.

When Barbara arrived at Post about a year and a half ago, the career center was a team of three serving a large and diverse student population—including a significant online learner community. Within less than a year, she had secured approval to hire 10 new staff members, build out a comprehensive technology stack, and restructure career services as a formal institutional pillar with its own project manager, dedicated time with the president, and multiple strategic initiatives underneath it.

Barbara walks through the full journey: how she benchmarked Post against peer institutions in New England, what she included in her "Why" document for the president, how she made the case that career is not just important but that not investing is a risk, and what it looked like when the institution said yes.

She also covers the practical realities of scaling a team quickly, the role project management principles played throughout, and her honest advice for career leaders who want to do something similar.

Key topics covered:

• Stop saying "career development is important" and reframe around institutional risk
• Bring leadership into the research process through site visits, not just reports
• Mine both external benchmarking data and internal persistence data to tell the full story
• Know what keeps your president up at night and align your case to those priorities
• Why staggering your hires matters more than you think

Resources from the episode:

• Barbara's LinkedIn profile
• Post University Career Hub (powered by uConnect)
• uConnect—the virtual career center platform Post University uses, referenced by Barbara as a key part of their tech stack. Three other career centers mentioned in this episode (Bentley University, Suffolk University, and Boston University) also use uConnect.
• Career Everywhere Community—free network for higher ed career services professionals; mentioned by Meredith during the episode
• Recent episode with Josh Domitrovich of PennWest—Barbara cited Josh's persistence data research as an influence on her own internal data strategy. Other episodes featuring Josh are here and here.
• Episode with Joe Catrino of Dartmouth—another example of presidential buy-in for career services, referenced by Meredith

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