Episode 54: How to get a speaking gig at your college

Last Wednesday I spent 1.5 hours sharing career advice with The University of Texas at Austin (UT) Economics majors as part the alumni outreach program.

I was pleasantly surprised at the depth and quality of the questions. I did a 15-min overview of my background and then ~45 min of the students doing rapid fire Q&A.

One student was a data scientist and wanted advice on the tools to help clean/organize data to run better analytics on. One student educated the room about why DeepSeek was a pivotal shift in the AI model competition (you don’t need billions of dollars to compete). One student wanted to start a newsletter to educate Latinx population on how to invest in stocks.

My takeaway was a) the leaders of tomorrow give me A LOT of confidence b) spending time with hungry students gives me a ton of energy. I am going to carve out more time intentionally for these conversations going forward.

Initially, I was thinking I needed to “make it” and someone from the alumni relations team would reach out to me to speak. Then, I realized I’d rather make it happen on my own timeline. Here’s what you can do:

Reach out to your old professors

My major was in Economics and a minor in Business & Public Policy. The minor courses were the ones I enjoyed the most and also had the best relationship with professors.

My first time speaking on campus after graduation was a guest lecture for a marketing course. I couldn’t get into the class, so I got permission to audit the class and regularly attended office hours. Here’s the note I sent:

Few things I was thinking about when writing the email:

• Paragraph 1 - reminder on our last chat / how we know each other (no one should have to guess)

• Paragraph 2 - example of how I am already helping (coincidence that one of his students reached out to me on Linkedin)

• Paragraph 3 - looked up the classes he taught and suggested which I’d be a good fit for and why

Looking back I should have called out the parts of the syllabus my background aligns with; I highlighted the relevant parts but could have made it more obvious.

He responded in a few hours. It was late semester so naturally slots were already full but I got slotted for the Spring shortly after.

Reach out to old bosses / mentors

As part of the Economics Alumni program, the Dept. Head sends out a yearly recap of milestones and progress. One of the milestones was starting a “career prep course for Econ Students” where they invite alumni to share their experiences post-grad.

Here’s my response back:

We connected post-Christmas break on campus a few times. He got me connected with the career center who funny enough was run by my old boss from my time at the Admissions Office.

The conversation started in 2023 and I was invited to speak in 2024. I pushed it to 2025 since I got connected to Professor Gabbi in 2024.

Since I had email intros from the Dept. Chair, all the individuals were willing to brainstorm and give me a menu of options of ways to give back. I knew I wanted to do some kind of speaking engagement, but I wanted to remain open to other opportunities based on what was most helpful.

For example the department was doing 1-1 matching programs, inviting new employers for a startup focused career fair, and of course asking for donations.

Reach out to student organizations

If you don't have any connections with professors or mentors, the next best option is student organizations. My background in product marketing best aligned with marketing organizations. My angle was educating students about product marketing as a potential path within the marketing discipline.

Most student organizations are listed on the college site with contacts listed. I reached out to a few marketing organizations on LinkedIn offering my time to speak should that align with the organization’s priorities. I had great responses.

Here’s an example:

Yash ended up connecting with me two orgs that he was a member of and one that he started himself. He also shared my info with his friends / network which led to more 1-1 calls. One of them was Sarah (referenced above) who was in Professor Gabbi’s class.

One of my goals has always been to run a course at my alma mater focused on non-business background students focused on entrepreneurship. I want the course to be experiential / skills based to help students learn the playbook I wish I had when I was in school.

I didn’t have connections, money, or the grades, so if I wanted success I had to get very creative and absolutely hustle every day. It was exhausting and many days seemed like I would never get out of it. It’s the community of people I met though - mentors, friends, confidants, that helped me get through it. I’m lucky in that though, so I want to create a space for others to have the same resources without getting lucky.

Coming back to campus an an ad hoc basis to guest lecture is step 1 in realizing that vision which I can officially check off.

As always, feedback is a gift and I welcome any/all feedback on this episode. See ya next week!

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