Career & Design Specialist

Join our community and experience Emerson College! The Career & Life Design Specialist reports to the Associate Director, Career & Life Design partnering with students and alumni through transformational coaching practices and life design frameworks to support exploration, decision-making, and the development of meaningful career pathways. The Career & Life Design Specialist serves as a generalist, providing accessible, high-impact coaching through 1:1 and group formats.

Coaches are aligned with one or more Career Communities (e.g., Arts & Creative Industries, Business & Entrepreneurship, Public Impact, STEM & Innovation), developing deeper industry awareness and building relationships with faculty, alumni, and employer partners within those areas.

In partnership with faculty, the Career & Life Design Specialist contributes to the integration of life design and career development concepts into courses, helping students connect academic work with future pathways in ways that are relevant, reflective, and actionable. This ensures broad student access to coaching while fostering community-based expertise, academic connection, and industry alignment.

Provide high-impact 1:1 and small-group coaching on topics including career exploration and identity development, job search strategy, application material development, interview preparation, and navigating early-career challenges and decision-making. Maintain a student-centered, strengths-based, and inclusive coaching approach that supports a wide range of student experiences and goals. Serve as a primary coaching liaison for assigned Career Communities. Develop and maintain working knowledge of industry trends, roles, and entry pathways relevant to the community.

Partner with faculty and academic departments to align coaching with disciplinary pathways and student interests. Contribute to community-specific programming, including panels, workshops, and alumni engagement events. Partner with faculty to support the integration of life design and career development concepts into courses, workshops, and co-curricular experiences. Deliver guest sessions, embedded workshops, and short modules that connect academic learning with career exploration and professional skill development.

Collaborate with faculty to introduce concepts such as career exploration and meaning-making, reflection and narrative development, prototyping and iterative career decision-making, and translating academic work into professional skills and experiences. Contribute to the development of scalable classroom resources, toolkits, and assignments that faculty may adapt within their courses. Design and deliver workshops aligned with the institution’s Life Design framework. Contribute to developmentally sequenced programming across the undergraduate, graduate, and alumni experience.

Integrate reflection, experiential learning preparation, and career readiness competencies into group programming. Work closely with Experiential Education colleagues to connect coaching conversations with internships, research, creative work, and applied learning. Coordinate referrals and warm handoffs to employer relations, alumni engagement, and campus partners. Contribute to shared language and consistency across coaching, experiential education, and employer engagement. Track coaching interactions and engagement in relevant systems and use data and student feedback to refine coaching approaches and programming over time.

Contribute to assessment efforts related to student engagement, learning, and post-graduate outcomes.

Qualifications are deemed required or preferred and represent what is needed to effectively perform job. Bachelor’s degree in Higher…