Of course I can pronounce "Kanawha!" 

Chelsea Kinzinger first visited West Virginia as a high school senior on a volleyball recruiting visit to the University of Charleston. The Illinois native initially had a little trouble pronouncing the name of the river that flows by campus, but it didn't take long for her to make the Kanawha Valley her second home. Chelsea quickly advanced through her career after obtaining her bachelor's and master's degrees from UC, and now she serves as the Vice President of Operations for General Corporation. In addition to her business success, she has over 11,000 Instagram followers, and she's a passionate volunteer for the Michael J Fox foundation for Parkinson's Disease research. We also sat down with UC student Arianna Whitehair about her leadership on campus and walking on to the UC Women's Lacrosse team. 

When he isn't leading the crowd in "You are Toast!" cheers at WV Power Park, Rod Blackstone is devoting his time to making West Virginia a better place. He came to WV for a journalism and media career, but ended up working for people like Governor Cecil Underwood and US Representative Bob Wise. He also spent 16 years as the Deputy Mayor of Charleston WV under Danny Jones. Rod has a deep understanding of the way that government affects communities, and he shared many of the lessons he has learned over his career in part 2 of our interview. 

Rod Blackstone has been a fixture in the Charleston, WV community for over three decades. He has worked for a governor, Congressmen, and a mayor, but he is perhaps best known as the "Toast Man" at WV Power baseball games. Since the early 1990's, he has sat in the front row and made toast whenever opposing players have struck out, shouting "You are toast!" as they walked back to the dugout. He has brought joy to fans and awareness to the team, and he has worked tirelessly to make Charleston a better community in both his professional and personal lives. This is part 1 of our two-part interview with Rod. 

UConnect the Podcast is one year old! We are celebrating with University of Charleston President, Dr. Marty Roth. Dr. Roth discusses his career journey from a student at the University of Pittsburgh, to the Dean of the Barney School of Business at the University of Hartford, to President at UC. He discusses leadership lessons he's learned throughout his career, including how he managed the University of Charleston through the COVID crisis.

Searching for a job is hard, but there are helpful resources out there if you know where to look.  You can find some assistance online, but it's difficult to separate the good advice from the bad.  You can hire a career coach, but there aren't many coaches who specialize in career development (and it can get expensive).  In this episode, we talked to Zach Treister, the Director of Business Development for Manpower West Virginia. Zach discussed all the free resources that Manpower gives to job seekers, and he talked about his own career journey that took him all the way to the West Coast and back again. We also spoke with Whitney Hunt for the Student Leader Spotlight. Whitney is a UC senior who has already has her own successful marketing business. 

In the second half of our interview with Dave Lavender, we talk about the importance of apprenticeships and experiential learning. Dave is a prime example of how a person can use a part-time student job as a springboard to a career. We also discuss Dave's books on regional travel, aptly called the "Dave Trippin'" series. We are also introducing a new segment called the "Student Leader Spotlight." Our first guest is UC Cyber Security student Tammy McClanahan. She talks about her journey from Utah to West Virginia and her work with the Life Bridge AmeriCorps program. 

In this episode, host Travis Kahle interviews Dave Lavender, one of West Virginia's preeminent storytellers. Dave's media career includes time as a newspaper columnist, radio host, book author, TV host, and more. In part 1, Dave talks about his winding career journey and how each job prepared him for what happened next. 

Dr. Bren Stevens is one of the most successful collegiate athletic directors in the country.

Her teams have won two national championships and participated in dozens of NCAA postseason tournaments. She attributes her success to her coaching staff, which is a direct reflection of her superb leadership development abilities.  She passed on several attractive career opportunities over the years to coach and teach at her alma mater.  Her dedication earned her a promotion to Vice President at the University of Charleston.  For Dr. Stevens, "a career is about the people you work with."  Making a career move for the sake of working at a larger organization is rarely a good idea. What really matters is your team and how you choose to invest in those around you.  

Networking is a buzzword these days, but Wes Richardson prefers the term "relationship building." If you try to meet more people for the sake of growing your network, your business won't grow.  But if you try to build relationships for the purpose of using your skills to help others, the sky is the limit.  Wes is the Managing Partner for Northwestern Mutual West Virginia, and he has built an incredible agency by building meaningful relationships with clients all over the state.  He is joined by Alex Schnulo, the Director of Recruitment for Northwestern Mutual West Virginia.  Wes and Alex joined host Travis Kahle to share stories and lessons about their successes (and failures) with relationship building. 

Remi Adeleke hit rock bottom more than once in his life.  With each experience, he developed uncanny grit and perseverance.  Remi was literally born into royalty in Nigeria.  However, his family’s wealth was stripped by corrupt government officials and he had to start over in the Bronx with his mother and brother.  Growing up in a tough neighborhood, he often found himself in some sketchy situations.  He barely made it through high school, but his “never give up” attitude eventually led him to the United States Navy.  Since then, he’s reached some unbelievable career milestones.  In my interview with Remi, he spoke about those achievements and the lessons he learned along the way.