Supporting students and their global pursuits doesn’t necessarily mean having to fund international travel, navigating ever-changing health restrictions or finding places for them to work and live abroad.

With enough collaboration, helping these future leaders leverage their global competencies for successful careers can be done virtually — and meaningfully.

Participants from across the U.S. took part in the U.S. Future Leaders Career Readiness Seminar, a virtual event hosted by Fisher’s Office of Global Business and the Tim and Kathleen Keenan Center for Entrepreneurship at Ohio State. The seminar was sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program.

The Gilman Program provides over 3,000 scholarships each year to outstanding American undergraduate students who, due to financial constraints, might not otherwise study abroad. Since the Program began in 2001, more than 30,000 Gilman scholars from all U.S. states and territories have studied in nearly 150 countries.

The event brought together 33 alumni of the Gilman program and introduced them to career possibilities as presented by leaders at Fisher, Ohio State and the central Ohio community. The one-day session highlighted the technology and entrepreneurship resources available at the university, as well as the area’s vast network of connections within the start-up community.

“I learned more about how to be more professional and concise in networking,” one student shared. “I learned how quickly you can put together a business action plan and the wonderful technology that is out there that will help better our communities.”

The seminar provided attendees with a holistic look at professional paths with topics that included:

• An introduction to entrepreneurship, led by Ray Jones, executive-in-residence at Ohio State’s Corporate Engagement Office
• Group activities designed to foster creative thinking and business idea generation
• A discussion on technology trends in business, led by Cheryl Turnbull, executive director of the Keenan Center, that featured Arnab Nandi, founder of financial technology company Mobikit; Isil Erel, finance professor and academic director of the Risk Institute at Ohio State; and Gary Ross, founder and CEO of Med-Compliance IQ, a health care company
• Career action planning, led by Rachel Kaschner, assistant director of engineering services at Ohio State, that featured Julia Beckner, talent and career services consultant at Ohio State
• Purba Majumder, president and co-founder of Cybervation; and Eric Wang, director of machine intelligence for Turnitin.

“It was an honor to host one of this year’s U.S. Future Leaders Career Readiness Seminar at Ohio State,” said Joyce Steffan, executive director of Fisher’s Office of Global Business. “During a time when student opportunities to go global are so limited, being able to deliver a meaningful, career-shaping program for those who have experienced the value of gaining global perspective was special.”

“Our connections with the Keenan Center and the university’s technology and entrepreneurship-focused units demonstrate clearly why Ohio State is a leader in creating the ideas and technologies that are, and will continue to shape our world.”