International Perspectives on Career Services was a panel discussion hosted by GC Summit representatives Cherise Basslian, Stephen Boyd, Suzanne Helbig and Mark Presnell at the Careers Service Forum 2024.
Cherise has over 18 years of experience in employability services, with expertise in change management, innovation, and partnership building. In her current role as Director of Careers and Student Enterprise at the University of East London, she provides strategic leadership to deliver a cross-institutional approach to embedding careers in the curriculum and driving meaningful industry engagement. Cherise has spearheaded a number of major transformation projects, successfully embedding an institutional ‘Graduate Employability Framework’, expanding services to the academic schools, and creating bespoke careers content for the curriculum. Previously, Cherise spent a decade in the ‘welfare to work’ sector, where she successfully designed and delivered employment programs for the Department for Work and Pensions.
Stephen is Director of Careers & Employability at the Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK. He has extensive strategic leadership experience having worked in HE careers sector for over 20 years. During that time, he has been fortunate to work with some amazing colleagues and had the privilege to lead some fantastic teams and, as such, been involved in some major innovations and developments in the careers and employability space. Areas of interest are widespread covering all aspects of our work but his current focus includes organisational culture; diversifying talent into careers work; managing change within teams and services; and measuring impact of careers work. The Careers Service at Manchester Met has recently received national and international recognition for its pioneering careers work, picking up a number of awards in 2023 including Best Student Program at the Global Careers Services Summit in London. A keen writer, speaker, and researcher of all aspects of employability, his doctoral thesis was entitled “Expectation, Interaction And Transition: A Study Of University Careers Fairs” (a subsequent article on this research was published in the NICEC Journal. In his spare time Stephen is currently writing (very slowly) a crime fiction novel and is an avid follower of Manchester City Football (Soccer) Club.
Suzanne Helbig is the Associate Vice Provost at the Division of Career Pathways at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), a top ten public US university that is proud to be designated both a Hispanic Serving Institution and an Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Institution. Suzanne arrived at UCI with 15 years of experience in career services, including over 10 years at UC Berkeley.
In addition to serving as Programme Chair for the 2023 Global Career Services Summit, Suzanne also served as Programme Co-Chair for Summits in 2022 and 2021 (online), 2020 (set for Singapore) and 2018 (Newcastle, UK). She has been invited to speak at conferences in England, Ireland, Japan, and China.
Suzanne has served on the Board of Directors for both the Mountain Pacific Association of Colleges and Employers and the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). Her NACE involvement includes co-chairing numerous committees; presenting at NACE’s inaugural Executive Leadership Symposium; joining the faculty of NACE’s Management Leadership Institute; delivering numerous annual conference presentations; and authoring articles. Suzanne holds a Master of Arts in Higher Education from the University of Arizona.
Mark possesses over 20 years of experience in career services including his current role as Executive Director of Northwestern Career Advancement (NCA). Prior to Northwestern, Mark has worked at Johns Hopkins University, The University of Rochester, The University of Virginia School of Architecture, and The University of Kansas. He received his Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from the University of Kansas. Like many undergraduates, he changed his major as an undergraduate from Aeronautical Engineering to Psychology at Purdue University. He has previously presented at both national and regional conferences on a variety of topics including recruiting consortia, use of social media in the job search, and teaching networking and other non-traditional job search strategies to undergraduates.
Currently, Mark supervises a staff of over 20 professionals who implement a broad range of career services to undergraduate and graduate students. Through school-based counseling and advising, NCA focuses on providing personalized career services across students’ four years at Northwestern. Additionally, NCA proactively develops robust partnerships with employers, parents, and alumni to educate and recruit Northwestern students.
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