The inaugural RISE Academy cohort held its first group coaching session on Nov. 13. Cindy Goodwin-Sak (middle) is the founding director of the program. (Photos by Derik Holtmann)
The first group coaching session of the inaugural RISE Academy cohort was barely 10 minutes old when the first challenge was issued to the students and mentors seated in Room 002 of Anheuser-Busch Hall on the campus of the University of Missouri–St. Louis.
“This is a safe place,” said Cindy Goodwin-Sak, the program’s founding director, “but we are going to practice getting uncomfortable.”
The students had filled out the CliftonStrengths Assessment prior to the session on Nov. 13, and now they were being asked to boil down those results into, essentially, an elevator-pitch resume and present that to the group. The pitches needed to address four foundational elements:
- A compelling hook
- Who you are
- Experience you have
- Call to action
The students – there are 26 in this cohort, mostly UMSL graduate students but also some undergrads – were not on their own with this challenge, though. One of the key features of the RISE Academy is the experience and advice available from the 24 mentors in the program.
“This room is full of experts,” Goodwin-Sak told the cohort. “I’m just guiding the session. One of the reasons we’re all going to move tables tonight is because I want everybody to be exposed to all the expertise sitting in this room. So, please, ask questions, students.”
The goal of the RISE Academy – a two-semester program that will wrap up next May – is to empower the next generation of business leaders by nurturing confidence, enhancing professional communication skills and learning the tips and tactics necessary to become strong decision-makers who embrace leadership opportunities.
“At the end of this journey, students will have gained skills in leadership and communication and established a professional network of peers and mentors,” College of Business Administration Dean Shu Schiller said. “They will be equipped with the competencies and connections to build a successful career. Our mentors are passionate about student success, and many of them are business alumni. I am grateful for the time, talent and dedication to growing our business students through carefully crafted coaching and development plans.”
Graduate student Anisha Inaganti heard about the program directly from Schiller – she’s on the Dean’s Student Advisory Board – and was excited to sign up.
“Being an international student, it’s really beneficial because we come from a very different working environment back in India,” said Inaganti, who is on track to finish her MBA in May 2025. “These mentors are helping us a lot professionally. This RISE Academy helps us prepare ourselves to work in the business world. My main focus is to improve leadership and communication skills. I feel communication is the key for anything and everything, so I’m looking forward to learning how to communicate professionally.”
A member of the Dean’s Student Advisory Board, Anisha Inaganti (black top) is excited to improve her professional communication skills during the program.
The origins of the RISE Academy can be traced directly to an April trip taken by a group representing UMSL’s Doctor of Business Administration program – Goodwin-Sak, Basia Skudrzyk and Kristen Prince – to Arkansas State University for the Women’s Leadership Conference.
“We thought, ‘Wow, this is an amazing program. We need to do something like this at UMSL,’ ” Goodwin-Sak said. “So we brought the idea back to Dean Schiller, and we put together a three-year plan, with a few tweaks. For example, we wanted it to be an inclusive program, not just for women.”
Goodwin-Sak, who earned both her MBA and DBA from UMSL and is an adjunct professor, has carved out a reputation as a well-known and well-respected consultant in the St. Louis business community, making her uniquely suited to lead the program along with insight and assistance from Skudrzyk and Layne Brown, the internship coordinator for UMSL Business, among others.
“I hope the students take hold of the program and develop their network,” Brown said. “Most internships or full-time roles are found through in-person interactions, and because this program has a group and a one-on-one mentoring structure, it will be amplifying the network they can build before graduation.”
That post-graduation focus is something UMSL students have learned to not only embrace but expect.
“That’s one of the reasons I love the business school, specifically,” said senior accounting major Alex Paubel, another member of the Dean’s Student Advisory Board who is participating in the RISE Academy. “We focus on education, but we also focus on being successful in your career, because that’s why you’re getting an education. It’s not just, ‘Get your degree.’ It’s more like, ‘Get your degree, learn how to be a great worker and learn how to be polished.’ UMSL is all about teaching you all those skills you’re maybe not learning inside of a classroom.”
Alex Paubel (far right) gives her elevator-pitch resume as part of RISE Academy’s first group coaching session.
The RISE schedule features one group coaching session each month. Students fill out a two-question reflection in the days after the session, and they’re asked to schedule a one-on-one session with one of the mentors to dive deeper into that month’s topic.
The theme for the November group session was communicating strengths and professional networking; Liam Darmody, a personal brand strategist with more than 40,000 followers on LinkedIn, spoke to the group via Zoom.
“Liam teaches branding on LinkedIn, and he is just a really cool dude,” Goodwin-Sak said. “He talked about building a brand on LinkedIn, and also how to build connections on LinkedIn with people you don’t know otherwise.”
In December, the session will focus on time and energy management, along with creating and communicating boundaries. In January, the theme is leadership and teamwork; in February, it’s communication and confidence as professional skills; in March, it’s career mapping and goal setting.
“Formal education doesn’t teach a lot of the professional skills that are really in demand in the workforce, so my goal is to supplement their formal education with the professional skills that they’ll need to be truly successful when they leave the program,” Goodwin-Sak said. “One of the ways we do that is by bringing in other professionals who have learned the skills along the way, and then also connecting them with mentors so they can have deeper, one-on-one discussions.”
Although it’s not the primary focus, the program is set up in a way that will help the mentors grow, too. Darmody’s talk about building a LinkedIn network, for example, could be just as valuable for the mentors as the students. Developing better career mapping skills is important at any stage of a career. Getting to interact directly with a group of motivated, ambitious students gives the mentors who work in talent acquisition roles for their companies a chance to learn the things that are important to the next generation of business leaders.
Goodwin-Sak and her group asked the mentors what they’ve found that does and doesn’t work in the mentor-mentee relationship, and they’ve taken those responses and created a list of questions for mentors to use as a jumping-off point for the one-on-one interactions. The mentors aren’t required to stick to that script, of course, but the questions are there to help.
“The challenge when there’s no framework is that you end up putting two people together with no real understanding of what they’re supposed to get out of it,” Goodwin-Sak said. “It might work, and it might not, and it’s up to the student and mentor to figure it out. But if we give them guiderails, they immediately have topics to ask about, and with that framework there’s a much greater probability of success because everyone knows what they’re trying to accomplish.”
This is the first year for the RISE Academy, but everyone involved is excited about the potential for expansion down the road. Schiller, who started as dean of UMSL Business in April, is excited to make the program an important part of the college.
“The RISE Academy delivers unique value to our learners, whether undergraduate or graduate, domestic or international,” she said. “The academy will remain an initiative with high priority in the college’s strategic plan and actions.”
