The Center For Career Excellence hosted Voices of Excellence, bringing five BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) alumni to campus on September 28. As alumni panelists, Tahiré Edirisinghe ’04, Dr. Steve Peraza ’06, E-Ben Grisby ’99, Lexi Williams ’14, and Autumn Rolack ’17 shared their experiences after SLU and provided insights into their career journey.
CCE collaborated with Laurentians for Equality & Diversity for this event. President of LEED, Michael Agyekum ’26 made an opening speech suggesting all participants connect with “the alumni who were in their place not too long ago.” Another executive board member of LEED, Mariama Konateh ’27, moderated the panel by directing questions to alumni speakers about their career journey.
Edirisinghe is the Director of Customer Service at Innoveo, a software development company in New Jersey.
She responded to the question of what advice she would give to her younger self at college, saying “If I went back to college now, I would suggest myself not to be shy, take new opportunities, and keep talking to people at the career center.”
Another alumni speaker, Williams, works at Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment as the director of diversity and impact. She highlighted that everyone fails after college in the business world and encouraged everyone to be open to taking risks. “You will fail after college, so fail forward,” she said. According to Williams, many businesses in United States want to hire people of color: “I see beautiful brown and black faces here; they are looking for you,” she said, motivating students of color to be confident about applying to jobs and internships.