Alumni profile

Career maestro offers tips for the next generation

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 01:35:01 +0000

Career maestro offers tips for the next generation Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 06/01/2023 - 19:35

Bradley Worrell

CU Boulder alumna and businesswoman Nancy Fisher Wilhelms shares her secrets for a successful, fulfilling career with her book, Yes! You Can Do It! The Young Woman’s Guide to Starting a Fulfilling Career

In the years since she graduated from University of Colorado Boulder with a degree in fine arts, Nancy Fisher Wilhelms has gone on to work in corporate communications for a Fortune 500 company, as the press secretary for Nevada’s governor, as the owner of her own consulting firm with several high-profile clients, as the executive director of a renowned arts center that prospered under her leadership, and more recently as an executive coach and the author of a book intended to help guide young women to starting successful, fulfilling careers.

All of which suggests a question: Did she have a sense of where life would take her—much less what she wanted to do—immediately upon graduating from CU in 1971?

“I was clueless,” she admits with a laugh. “I had no idea of what I wanted to do; I didn’t have anything specific in mind.”

In that respect, Wilhelms was like many students graduating from college at the time and today—and that’s perfectly OK, she is quick to add.

Top of page: Nancy Fisher Wilhelms is the author of Yes! You Can Do It! The Young Woman’s Guide to Starting a Fulfilling Career, which combines stories from her career, simple workbook exercises and personal success profiles of seven dynamic professional women. Above: After graduating from CU Boulder in 1971 with a degree in fine arts, Wilhelms went on to find success working in corporate communications for a Fortune 500 firm, as the owner of her own marketing communications firm with several high-profile clients, and as the executive director of a renowned arts center that prospered under her leadership. Today, she is an executive career coach and the author of a book intended to help guide young women to starting successful, fulfilling careers.

What was important were the things she was able to take away from her college experience, thanks to CU professors who she says stimulated her inquisitive nature and encouraged her to be open to new challenges.

“I had wonderful professors,” Wilhelms says. “One of them that stood out was Gene Matthews in the art department, who was always very open, encouraging and enthusiastic. Another was Dr. Kim Malville in astronomy, who was just a very dynamic professor who made us ask the big questions.”

Life plans sometimes meet detours

After graduating from CU, Wilhelms attended Rhode Island School of Design, but cut her studies short. She then contemplated heading out to the Pacific Northwest to find work and embrace whatever life might hold for her … but instead ended up in Milwaukee.

“Life sometimes comes with detours,” Wilhelms says. “I came to Milwaukee to rest and recover, because I wasn’t feeling well, and that’s where my mother lived.”

After she convalesced, Wilhelms decided she might as well stay a bit longer in the city known for its breweries to get some work experience before proceeding with the next step in her career and life.

“So, I went out to get some experience and that’s what I did,” she said. “And I landed some great opportunities.”

As it turned out, her first opportunity proved to be big: Obtaining the job as the program coordinator for the 10-day Milwaukee SummerFest, which today bills itself as being the world’s largest outdoor musical festival. Despite having no prior experience managing musical venues or stage acts, following a formal interview with the executive director and an informal interview with members of his team at a staff event, Wilhelms received a job offer as she headed out the door. “They were looking to see if I could think quickly and successfully interact with a wide variety of people.”

Wilhelms calls overseeing the festival staging the experience of a lifetime, noting that she got to interact with big musical acts, including The Doors, B.B. King and Aretha Franklin.

“The job with Milwaukee SummerFest was one of constant problem-solving and thinking on your feet,” she says. “It was a lot of work, but I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.”

From there, Wilhelms went on to work for a small ad agency in Milwaukee, which she says was a natural fit for her given her passion for photography and design.

“I learned from someone who was an outstanding writer and a really great, creative thinker, and was someone who really cared about teaching me the craft,” she says. “He was an outstanding mentor. He taught me and believed in me, so he entrusted me to do the work I was assigned without constantly looking over my shoulder.”

Wilhelms says that experience taught her about the value of finding mentors, which is an idea she strongly promotes in her book.

Find mentors in every job you take—especially when you are starting out in your career, and don’t take a job if you’re not going to be learning from people who really know what they’re doing … and who are good leaders and teachers.”

“Find mentors in every job you take—especially when you are starting out in your career,” she advises. “And don’t take a job if you’re not going to be learning from people who really know what they’re doing … and who are good leaders and teachers.”

Trusting yourself and making the big jump

From working for the small ad agency, Wilhelms made what she acknowledges was the remarkable jump to corporate communications, working for a Fortune 500 firm—something she says would never have happened had she opted not to follow her passion and to trust herself.

“I created some good savings when I was working at the small ad agency, and I had always wanted to photograph the rodeo circuit,” she says. “So, I went out and bought a pickup truck, I added to my photo gear, and I took off for the summer photographing the rodeo circuit, because my true love has always been photography.”

Later, when she started searching for jobs, Wilhelms says she included her experience photographing the rodeo circuit on her resume—despite strong protestations from some friends who counseled her against doing so.

“And I said, ‘This is who I am.’ And so, of course I put it on my resume. I sent off my resume and cover letter, responding to a blind ad in a newspaper, because this was the day when everything was still done by mail. And I received a phone call from the head of communications for an international corporation … and he told me that out of 300 applicants for the job, I was one of three people he had selected to interview.

“I asked him why he selected me, and he said, ‘Anyone who had the moxie you did to go and do what you did, traveling the rodeo circuit and photographing it, is exactly the kind of person who would be very comfortable in this job.”

Wilhelms would go on to work for the company, a heavy equipment operator, for two years, interviewing employees and taking photos of the company’s operations across North America, gaining invaluable experience along the way.

It was an extraordinary job where I learned so much and had so many great opportunities, and it happened because I included something about myself, about traveling the rodeo circuit, on my resume."

“It was an extraordinary job where I learned so much and had so many great opportunities,” she says. “And it happened because I included something about myself, about traveling the rodeo circuit, on my resume."

“That’s really one things that I focus on in my book, which is to be yourself and trust yourself,” she adds. “You’re different; you’re unique—be who you are. Don’t stand in your own way. Don’t listen to everybody who tells you what you should do. Do the things that excite you.”

From there, Wilhelms would go on to work as the press secretary for the governor of Nevada for about a year and then to form her own ad agency, with offices in Fort Collins, Colorado, Newport Beach, California, and later Basalt, Colorado. Wilhelms describes her decision to form her own company as the next logical step after doing corporate communications for Harnischfeger Corp.

“I had a feeling for what it could look like and how it should be structured from the start,” she says simply.

Wilhelms says her business started out with a broad focus, offering advertising, marketing, communications and publicity services to a range of small and mid-size companies. However, with the passage of time, the company added Kodak Colorado and Hewlett Packard to its client roster and “grew its reputation with technology companies, so that became a focus for us,” she says. Another notable client was the Colorado Lottery.

However, when the Great Recession of 2008-09 struck and companies slashed their budgets for outside work, Wilhelms says she realized she needed to change her focus. Fortunately, an unexpected opportunity presented itself.

In 2011, she and her husband where living in the Aspen, Colorado, area when the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in nearby Snowmass Village advertised for a director of marketing. Wilhelms says she was a good candidate for the job, given her degree in fine arts and her experience in marketing and promotions.

After a bit less than two years on the job, Wilhelms was asked to become the organization’s executive director. She says the accomplishments she is most proud of during her roughly six years at the helm of the Anderson Ranch was organizing a successful 50-year anniversary celebration for the arts center and working to grow the organization’s reputation into a sophisticated venue in the contemporary art world.

“Doing that required a good strategic plan and a strong team with a shared vision for the organization,” she says. “You have to build the plan and then implement it.”

Transitioning to a coach, mentor and author

For the past five years, Wilhelms has worked as a business consultant, mentor and advisor, with a particular focus on coaching up-and-coming female business and arts professionals.

“I was really fortunate that my mom was a professional woman, so I had a role model, but so many women entering the workforce today don’t,” she says. “I enjoy being able to do my part.”

And when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Wilhelms says it seemed like the perfect time to write a book so she could share her experiences and career advice with a larger audience, primarily women—although she says some men have also told her they have found her insights valuable.

First, know who you are and what you love. Second, always put yourself into learning opportunities throughout your career, working with leaders and mentors. And third, believe in yourself and trust yourself—that you’ll make the right choices."

In addition to sharing her own stories in the book, titled Yes, You Can Do It! The Young Woman’s Guide to Starting a Fulfilling Career, the book also contains short stories of seven other women who took risks to find successful, fulfilling careers, as well as worksheets designed to help readers sharpen their focus when it comes to finding the right career for them.

“What the worksheets do is keep you, the reader, from taking yourself for granted,” Wilhelms says. “They make you focus on what is unique about you? And what excites you? What is it you really want from life? What do you want people to say about you and what you’ve done with your life? And how to get off the path you’re on and to doing something that really sets you on fire.”

Among the book’s plaudits, Debra Benton, New York Times bestselling author of How to Think Like a CEO, wrote, “I wish I had this advice when I was starting out. The climb would have happened faster and been a whole lot more fun.”

Asked if she would have a few words of advice for recent CU Boulder graduates, Wilhelms says: “First, know who you are and what you love. Second, always put yourself into learning opportunities throughout your career, working with leaders and mentors. And third, believe in yourself and trust yourself—that you’ll make the right choices. A lot of people are going to tell you what they think you should do, but only you know what is right for you.”

CU Boulder alumna and businesswoman Nancy Wilhelms shares her secrets for a successful, fulfilling career with her book, Yes! You Can Do It! The Young Woman’s Guide to Starting a Fulfilling Career.

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Five decades after starting college, tenacious student to graduate

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 18:12:49 +0000

Five decades after starting college, tenacious student to graduate Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 04/13/2023 - 12:12

Bradley Worrell

Rita Garson, now 76, will celebrate her special day at CU Boulder with her sister, adult children and grandchildren, two of whom are also alumni

Like many University of Colorado Boulder graduating seniors, Rita Garson will have several friends and family in attendance when she participates in May commencement ceremonies on CU’s Boulder campus.

Her guests include her sister, her three adult children, including daughter Dr. Kirsten Nielsen, who is a CU alum, and her five grandchildren, including her 25-year-old grandson, Kyle Webber, who graduated from CU Boulder in December 2021.

Garson is 76 years old. That makes her the second-oldest person to obtain an undergraduate degree at CU Boulder, coming in just behind a 77-year-old woman who graduated with a degree in history in 1996, according to the CU Office of Data Analytics, which notes that its digital records only go back to 1988.

Top of page: Rita Garson loves to travel. She is pictured here in Mykonos, Greece, a popular tourist attraction on the Aegean Sea. Above: Garson, age 76, will join other University of Colorado seniors in May participating in commencement ceremonies on the CU Boulder campus. Garson is the second-oldest person to obtain an undergraduate degree from CU Boulder in at least the past 30-plus years, according to the CU Office of Data Analytics.

Officials with the CU Registrar’s Office and the archives division for the Norlin Library say they don’t have ways of easily identifying the school’s oldest graduates prior to 1988.

For Garson, earning her college degree was always the plan; it just took longer than she anticipated.

Asked what finally getting her undergraduate diploma means to her now—more than 50 years after she first started taking college courses—she pauses for a moment to consider.

“I’m proud of myself—that I finished and that I stuck to it,” she says. “It’s a feeling of accomplishment. And I really feel that it has broadened me and encouraged my sense of curiosity.”

Life got in the way

After graduating from high school, Garson attended the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, in the late 1960s. She took a few courses and earned 11 credit hours, but after meeting the man who would become her husband, she decided to elope and marry.

Later, Garson and her husband moved to northern New Jersey, where she enrolled in what was then William Patterson College (now William Patterson University). She accumulated an additional 81 credit hours.

However, after raising a family and later going through a divorce, her plans to finish college were once again put on hold. In the early 1990s, when she was hired by McGraw-Hill publishing and rose to become a vice president of marketing with one of its flagship publications, she briefly contemplated going back to school to become a doctor. But she decided she would like to pursue a career writing about the pharmaceutical industry.

Garson says she landed an interview with an Oregon-based trade magazine that reported on the pharmaceutical industry, but the owners of the business repeatedly told her how hard it was to understand the industry and how difficult it was to break into the field.

She was undeterred. Her response to the owners of the trade magazine was succinct: “You can’t tell me what I can’t do! Watch me!"

With her degree now completed, Garson is looking forward to devoting more time to the things she loves, including horseback riding and skiing.

“So, I started my own company,” she adds with a laugh. “And I’ve been doing that job ever since. I had a love of the medical field—and still do. I love going to medical conferences and learning about the latest developments.”

She thought about going back to college then, but her top priority was helping to put her three kids through college, as well as concentrating on building her business.

“With or without a degree, I knew I was going to make it,” she says. “But it was important that my kids get degrees, given that their whole lives and careers were ahead of them. And so they did!”

In the late 1990s, Garson’s youngest daughter, Kirsten, moved to Colorado to attend the University of Colorado. Garson, who was living in Connecticut at the time, moved to Evergreen to be closer to family.

After establishing residency in Colorado, Garson says she decided it was finally time to return to college, so she enrolled at the University of Colorado Boulder. Still, she says she wasn’t really sure what field of study she wanted to pursue. So, she took a variety of classes, including science and business courses, because she thought they would be beneficial to her as the owner of a medical publishing business. She also took women’s studies courses because the field interested her.

“I love learning,” Garson says. “I accumulated a lot of credit hours, but not all in the same field.”

She took courses off and on in the 2000s. However, a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease a few years back, combined with some helpful advice from her late brother-in-law, Richard Ellis, a professor at Washburn University, motivated her to concentrate on finishing her degree.

She worked with the Division of Continuing Education to come up with a plan (see related story, Finish what you started, below) to obtain a degree in distributive studies.

Mixed reactions to decision to finish college

Garson says her decision to finish her degree drew a mixed reaction from family and friends. Her family—especially her two daughters—were largely supportive, but she says some friends didn’t understand why it was so important to her, given her age and career success.

Always up for trying something new, Garson recently tried her hand at dog sledding during a recent family trip to the Colorado mountains. Her passenger here is her youngest granddaughter.

“Friends would sometimes ask me to go out to a restaurant for a meal, and sometimes I would have to say, ‘I can’t; I have to study,'” she says. “It was hard for some of them to understand.”

As for her classmates and college professors, Garson says they were very supportive.

“I had wonderful professors,” she says now. “And my fellow students were most encouraging.”

It was important to her that she apply herself to her courses, so she studied hard and earned a 3.686 grade-point average, Garson says, a detail confirmed by the Division of Continuing Education.

“I was going to do my very best; I enjoyed my classes, and I was going to get the most out of them—even if it meant that sometimes I had to make sacrifices,” she says.

Garson will celebrate her 77th birthday in August, but she has no plans to retire—or slow down—any time soon. Still, with the hard work of finishing her degree behind her, she says she plans to devote more time to doing the things she loves—traveling, skiing, horseback riding and enjoying time with her grandkids.

Her advice for anyone else who put their degree on hold: “Don’t give up. Finish it. Decide why it’s important to you, and then apply yourself. I did it for me … and I wanted my grandkids to be proud of me.”

‘Finish What You Started’ helps former students complete their degrees

For former CU Boulder students who are a few credits (or semesters) shy of graduating, the university offers assistance in completing their degree in the form of the “Finish What You Started” program.

“The goal is to help people finish up their degree and then find gainful employment,” says Ann Herrmann, program manager and advisor of the program, which is administered by the Division of Continuing Education.

First launched in 2021, the Finish What You Started Program helps Colorado residents economically affected by the COVID-19 pandemic return to school to earn their degree by Spring 2025, which is the end of the grant period. CU Boulder was awarded a $3.1 million grant in 2022 to help students finish their studies.

Herrmann says Finish What You Started supports students in two key ways: by providing financial assistance and by offering support services throughout their college experience. Eligible students have access to semester-over-semester scholarships starting at $1,500, as well as other possible financial support, depending on individual student need.

Student support services include one-on-one academic advising and coaching, enrollment support, and career advising to help students transition to the workforce, post-graduation, according to Herrmann.

There are a few important caveats relating to who is eligible to participate in the program. Herrmann says participants must be Colorado residents, they can’t have already earned another degree, and they had to be away from higher education for at least two consecutive semesters.

“Additionally, they have to finish by spring 2025, so we do a lot of outreach to students who are more junior and senior level,” Herrmann says. Her department hopes to help as many as 300 students who have not completed college finish their undergraduate degrees by 2025.

A few students in their 40s and 50s are enrolled in the program, as well as several younger students, according to Herrmann. Many are the first members of their families to graduate from college.

The grant funding that CU Boulder received was part of a larger pool of money provided to state colleges by the Colorado Opportunity Scholarship Initiative. COSI funding was made possible by the American Rescue Plan, a $30 billion aid package designed to address the devastation of COVID-19.

Individuals interested in learning more about Finish What You Started can visit the program page or contact a program advisor at fwys@colorado.edu or 303-492-9671.

Rita Garson, now 76, will celebrate her special day at CU Boulder with her sister, adult children and grandchildren, two of whom are also alumni.

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Creative writing alums cultivate conjoined creativity

Anonymous — Thu, 06 Dec 2018 20:04:55 +0000

Creative writing alums cultivate conjoined creativity Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 12/06/2018 - 13:04

Clay Bonnyman Evans

CU Boulder alumni David Gessner and Nina de Gramont have succeeded both as authors and teachers

For a couple of writers who also happen to be a writing couple, David Gessner and Nina de Gramont admit they’ve got it pretty good.

Gessner (MA, Engl’98) is professor and chair of the Department of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and published nine books, including the New York Times bestseller All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West.

De Gramont—who began her master’s degree in the University of Colorado Boulder creative writing program and completed it at UNCW—is an associate professor in the same department and has published eight works of fiction for both young adults and adults, including the novel The Last September.

Nina de Gramont and David Gessner share a moment during "our Boulder days." Photo courtesy of Gramont and Gessner.

“We are lucky to be where we are,” says Gessner.

But the couple, who have also lived on Cape Cod—the subject of Gessner’s highly praised A Wild, Rank Place: One Year on Cape Cod—confess a sneaking desire to return one day to their favorite place.

“Boulder is still our shining city on a hill, despite the real-estate prices,” Gessner says.

But for now, they are content to visit for a month each summer with their teenage daughter, Hadley (“Yes,” de Gramont answers, anticipating a question before it’s asked, she was named primarily in honor of Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley Richardson), where they relish riding their bikes up actual hills.

Gessner and de Gramont met in CU’s creative writing master’s degree program in the 1990s. They acknowledge that the program’s somewhat experimental emphasis didn’t quite match their own, more traditional narrative approaches, but they found their places nonetheless.

“I tend to be a very obedient student, so I started writing things that were really out there. It was helpful for me to have that, actually. When I returned to what came more naturally to me, I had a better grasp of how to use language and how to use form,” says de Gramont, who cites Marilyn Krisl and Suzanne Juhasz as influential faculty members.

Considered something of a curmudgeon by his fellow students, Gessner says he never really plugged into the community. Instead, he focused on his writing, biking and his passion for ultimate Frisbee, the subject of his later book Ultimate Glory: Frisbee, Obsession, and My Wild Youth (Riverhead Books, 2017).

“It was sort of a mismatch for me, very experimental. (Program faculty) tended to turn their noses up at any whiff of narrative,” he says.

Gessner cites Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, Terry Tempest Williams and Philip Roth as early influences: “Abbey was one of my earliest models. I liked the way he could re-create his personality on the page. You can’t wave hands or use voice to create that. It’s an underrated ability.”

He gravitated toward three faculty members whose work focused more on place and nature, writers Reg Saner and Linda Hogan and English professor Marty Bickman. He also reveled in his life in Boulder—and publishing a cheeky comic strip, “The Ballad of Boulder,” in the Boulder Weekly—in the wake of recovery from testicular cancer. Gessner’s early memoir, Under the Devil’s Thumb, explores his new life in the West, what Stegner called, “the geography of hope.”

Abbey was one of my earliest models. I liked the way he could re-create his personality on the page. You can’t wave hands or use voice to create that. It’s an underrated ability.”

“It was about my awakening and coming back to health, having time to write in a stunningly beautiful place, Eldorado Springs,” Gessner says. He knocked the book out in a month and a half, setting a pattern for future writing projects. “I build, build, build, then blast them out.”

With the pending publication of A Wild, Rank Place in 1997, Gessner decided that “it wouldn’t do for a Cape Cod nature writer to be living in Colorado,” and the couple moved to his mother’s empty house on the Cape.

“That was both a romantic time and a crazy-making time. People think Cape Cod is all about Kennedys and rich folk, but in February, it’s more like the Arctic,” Gessner says. “For us, it was a great and fruitful writing period.”

De Gramont sold her first book while living on Cape Cod, the short-story collection Of Cats and Men, winner of the Discovery Award from the New England Booksellers Association. Gessner, meanwhile, was writing Return of the Osprey: A Season of Flight and Wonder, judged a “classic of American nature writing” by the Boston Globe.

Gessner also began commuting two hours to teach in the extension and summer writing programs at his alma mater, Harvard, where he would later create the school’s creative nonfiction writing program. When he was named to a Briggs-Copeland Lectureship at Harvard, the couple moved to Cambridge, taking up residence in the apartment of the late Irish playwright and poet Seamus Heaney and welcoming Hadley to the family.

In 2002, following the success of Return of the Osprey, UNCW invited Gessner to interview for a job in its Creative Writing Department. He got the job, and the couple has lived there ever since.

“We’re always angsting a little bit, ‘Why aren’t we out West? Why aren’t we up North?’” Gessner says. “But we have two really good jobs in the same program. This is where our daughter grew up. And my writing has grown being here—the fact that I’m not writing book after book on ‘I love this place’; I’m not trying to write ‘Walden’ three times in a row about Boulder and Cape Cod.”

De Gramont recently submitted a new novel to her agent, and Gessner is working on a book entwining the stories of Theodore Roosevelt and Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. In 1906, Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act, which gives presidents the authority to create national monuments on federal lands to protect significant natural, cultural or scientific features. Bears Ears has become a political battleground between factions that want to either preserve or exploit natural landscapes

“I spent basically two months out there in Bears Ears this summer to experience it,” says Gessner, who also blogs at Bill and Dave’s Cocktail Hour. “The book will be a history of the Antiquities Act woven together with the biography of a very charismatic—and potentially racist toward Native Americans—president. … I want to bring readers to the subjects through the prism of my own, more limited self, getting to the bigger issues through a human conduit.”

CU Boulder alumni David Gessner and Nina de Gramont have succeeded both as authors and teachers.

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