“What do you want to do when you grow up?”

It’s a question students are asked repeatedly upon entering the education system. The difficulty for educational institutions is shaping students' coursework to not only prepare them for a future job, but to let them explore different fields and find their passion—their life’s work.

For Brian Rosiek ’16, knowing his passion was never an issue. He was a double-major at Nazareth with legal studies and political science. Finding a job that allowed him to pursue those passions, however, was daunting. The idea of being a lawyer or lobbyist held little appeal for Rosiek; he wanted to do something different. For help in narrowing his career focus and finding an internship, he turned to the College’s Center for Life’s Work, which combines the offices of Career Services, Internships, and the Center for Civic Engagement.

“As a liberal arts student with a double major and a minor, I had a wealth of interests, but struggled to focus on one thing in particular.” Rosiek credits his position as a summer intern at the Mohawk Global Logistics Buffalo office in 2014 to the hard work and experience of Emily Carpenter, director of the center.

“Emily was unbelievably helpful with aligning my interests into a specific career goal.”  The Center for Life’s Work offers assistance to students with everything from polishing résumés and cover letters to providing contact with professionals in a diverse group of career fields. The center put Rosiek in touch with Jeffrey Parker '89, vice president of operations for Mohawk Global, a global logistics company.

What does a logistics company do? Rosiek describes it as “a travel agent for freight.” Basically, companies tell Mohawk Global where their product is and where they want it shipped to. For Rosiek, this meant becoming intimately familiar with customs compliance, international trade, endless regulations, and foreign policy—subjects he had studied extensively through his Nazareth coursework.

His internship grew from largely clerical grunt work at the beginning of the summer to a part-time job in the Rochester office during his senior year. As an associate import coordinator, Rosiek was contributing to the company’s daily operations. He loved that current events and politics impacted the workplace every day, and that he had found an industry that was entirely foreign to him. To put it in his words, “The best part about my internship was finally finding a rewarding professional industry that encompassed my academic interests while exposing me to new and exciting concepts.”

Rosiek worked with Carpenter throughout his senior year, applying to numerous logistics and freight-forwarding companies. After three interviews and a three-month on-boarding process, he accepted a position as an air import agent at Expeditors International, a Fortune 500 global logistics company that has more than 300 locations on six continents.

The Center for Life’s Work and Carpenter’s mentorship were “instrumental in my transition from the academic to the professional world,” concludes Rosiek.

Oliver Janzen ’18 is a legal studies and communication and media double-major at Nazareth.