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Emily Jones ’16, Business

Through NVU, Promotions at Work and a Big Career Accomplishment

Emily Jones

For most of the time Emily Jones ’16 was a business student at NVU, she worked as a teller at a local bank. Her NVU education helped her get two promotions, the first to head teller as a result of her internship as a senior. Then shortly after she graduated, she took a position at another bank as sales and service supervisor.

Her biggest career achievement so far is “getting to where I am. Being a manager is my proudest accomplishment,” says Emily, of Lyndonville, now branch manager at TD Bank in St. Johnsbury. Her duties range from opening personal and business accounts for customers to coaching her employees.

Faculty Helped Her to Continue Working While Enrolled at NVU

Some of the most valuable parts of her time at NVU were “the real-life experience I got and the connections I was able to make,” she says. She also benefited from the flexibility and support of her professors, who “set me up to be able to work while going to school.”

By working nearly full time while she was in college, Emily could apply what she learned at NVU in her job and discuss work challenges with her business professors. “I could connect work and school hand in hand,” says Emily, who pursued business concentrations in management, accounting, and marketing at NVU.

She Built Career and Life Skills in Her Business Classes

In her NVU classes, Emily gained broad business knowledge and learned practical skills, including sales and marketing strategies and how to write professional emails, create a resume, interview for a job, use Excel, and develop a household budget.

She also had to make a presentation to other business students for each class. “Getting the opportunity to speak in front of 20 or 30 students is a huge benefit going into a job,” Emily says. That experience strengthened her communication skills and prepared her for the presentations she makes and conference calls she leads in her work now.

Connections She Made at NVU Have Been Valuable

The relationships Emily developed with Business and Economics Department chair Jim Black and other faculty helped her succeed at NVU — and have been beneficial since she graduated.

At Professor Black’s invitation, Emily recently joined an advisory board of NVU business faculty, alumni, and local employers that discusses workplace trends and appropriate courses to offer. The board “helps NVU make sure that what’s being taught in classes is up to date…and what students are learning is relevant to what’s needed in real life,” Emily says. “Because I went to that small, tight-knit school, I have all these connections on the board now.”

She gives back to NVU, too, by discussing banking with Professor Black’s students each semester.

A highlight of Emily’s work is educating customers about fraud and easy ways to do their banking. “I like the people and the relationships I build,” she says. “I also really like budgeting and financing and excel at that…That’s why being a manager is a good place for me to be in my career now because I get the best of both worlds.”