5 Questions With: Boston Questrom’s Leadership Team

Career Services: 5 Questions With Monica Parker-James, Associate Dean of the Feld Center for Career & Alumni Engagement

Monica Parker-James is the Associate Dean of the Feld Center for Career & Alumni Engagement at Questrom. She leads efforts across career services, industry partnerships, career operations, and alumni engagement. She has more than 30 years of experience in education and organizational leadership, and she’s focused much of her career on improving the student experience, building impactful programs, and helping organizations plan and grow.

Before joining Questrom, Parker-James held leadership positions at Boston University, Harvard University, and the Museum of Science in Boston. She earned her Doctor of Education in Organizational Leadership from Northeastern University. She is also a three-time Boston University graduate, holding a BS and MS in Mass Communication as well as a graduate certificate in Fundraising Management.

P&Q: What do graduates say from student and alumni surveys gave them the biggest return?

Parker-James: Students and alumni consistently point to the personalized, human elements of the Questrom experience as providing the greatest return. They value having career advisors, faculty, alumni, and industry professionals who understand their goals, challenge their thinking, and help them navigate important decisions. That individualized guidance gives students greater clarity, confidence, and intentionality in how they approach their careers.

The alumni data show that this value is durable. Five years after graduation, 87% of both Full-Time MBA and Part-Time MBA alumni were satisfied with their educational experience. 87-95% of alumni reported that their degree helped them to gain skills in critical thinking, communication, teamwork, negotiation, and decision-making. These are some of the skills that employers say they need most from business graduates. At ten years, 75% of Full-Time MBA alumni and 84% of Part-Time MBA alumni had reached middle or senior management, while 87% and 95%, respectively, were satisfied with their careers. For our graduates, the return is not limited to their first post-MBA role; it is reflected in sustained advancement and long-term career satisfaction.

Recent surveys show that perceptions of career support are strengthening across both MBA populations, reinforcing what we hear qualitatively: students value career support that is personalized, practical, and sustained throughout their Questrom experience.

P&Q: How does your school help students identify, pursue, and land the right career opportunities in today’s ever-changing job market?

Parker-James: Questrom begins by helping students identify where their strengths, experience, interests, and values intersect with market demand. Career advisors use that foundation to help each student develop a focused strategy, including target functions, industries, organizations, skill gaps, networking priorities, and recruiting timelines. The objective is not simply to find an available job, but to help students make an informed and intentional career decision.

Our approach is holistic, involving faculty, staff, alumni, and robust programming that starts before the students even set foot on campus with a required summer Career Management course and Industry Summer Camps. Because the job market is constantly shifting, we don’t rely on static offerings. Our programming and tools are regularly updated to address shifting job market conditions, insights and reporting, ensuring students have the most accurate and timely information as they move through their career journeys and refine their goals.

Students receive individualized support throughout the search from positioning and relationship-building to interviewing, offer evaluation, and negotiation. Questrom’s distinctive ExecConnect program adds another level of expertise by connecting students with former C-suite executives and experienced industry professionals who provide sector-specific guidance, targeted networking support, and specialized interview preparation.

We also believe career readiness is enhanced by practical application. Through experiential learning opportunities including case competitions, company treks, action learning courses, and the Questrom Consulting Lab, students gain real-world, hands-on experience by working directly with employers on real problems.

Because our faculty, staff, and alumni operate as an interconnected network, students are consistently guided toward opportunities and supported throughout their journey, ensuring engagement stays high and no one slips through the cracks between declaring a major and landing a career.

That early focus on career fit carries forward: five years after graduation, 81% of FTMBA alumni and 75% of PTMBA alumni said their position was related to their career goal; at ten years, those figures increased to 85% and 81%, respectively.

P&Q: What do employers say they need from MBA or business graduates now? How does that differ from a few years ago?

Parker-James: Employers continue to prioritize problem-solving, strategic thinking, communication, collaboration, and leadership. What has changed is the expectation that graduates combine those capabilities with fluency in data, AI, and emerging technology. Technical skills that once differentiated a candidate are increasingly expected; the differentiator now is the ability to use technology with sound judgment and solid analytical skills, frame the right business problem, and influence people through change.

Employers also want evidence that graduates can operate in real organizational environments. Questrom’s focus on experiential learning enables students to solve current business challenges for real clients. Students must navigate ambiguity, analyze the problem, manage stakeholders, and present actionable recommendations to company leaders, demonstrating the integrated technical, strategic, and interpersonal capabilities employers now seek. Alumni outcomes suggest that these capabilities endure beyond graduation. Five years after completing the program, 87% to 95% of FTMBA alumni and 87% to 91% of PTMBA alumni said their degree helped them develop skills including critical thinking, communication, teamwork, negotiation, and decision-making.

P&Q: How does career services get involved once students arrive/declare: What types of tutoring, tech tools and other support do they receive from the outset? In a nutshell, what does the school do to ensure that students don’t fall through the cracks and are successful?

Parker-James: Candidates begin to interact with our career services center during their application process. Career coaches, industry relations managers, and our Exec Connect career consultants participate in the admissions process, attending events and meeting 1:1 with applicants.

Career readiness becomes an integral part of a student’s Questrom experience as soon as they are admitted and commit to the program. All full-time MBA students complete a required pre-matriculation summer curriculum that is offered through virtual live, synchronous sessions led by our MBA coaching team. This course is also offered to our part-time MBA students who opt in. The course covers career exploration, professional positioning, networking, and recruiting readiness. Once students arrive on campus, the career management course continues throughout their first year through in-person classes led by our career coaching team.

During “Launch,” which is our orientation week, students interact heavily with the career services center. Every student completes a Clifton Strengths assessment and attends an associated class with a certified Clifton Strengths coach. Students participate in company treks accompanied by faculty and industry relations managers, and participate in teamwork and leadership sessions.

As the academic year starts, every student is assigned a dedicated career advisor who works closely with the student’s academic advisor, ensuring that academic decisions and career goals reinforce one another. Students may schedule unlimited 1:1 virtual or in-person appointments with their career coach throughout their time at Questrom.

Each career advisor manages a comprehensive student-progress system that captures career targets, stage of preparation, recent engagement, and the faculty or staff member with whom the student most recently met. This shared visibility allows advisors to coordinate support, recognize when progress has stalled, and conduct proactive outreach. Students do not have to reach a crisis or know exactly whom to ask before Questrom faculty and staff intervene.

Students also receive access to tutoring, workshops, interview preparation, Handshake, AI-enabled resume and interview tools, and labor-market information from the outset. Every student has access to various support platforms, including Interstride, VMock, and CaseCoach for Case Interview prep, among others.

We also host a program that enables student organization leaders to apply for funding for events that have demonstrated career value. We award tens of thousands of dollars to student organizations each year. These events bring in alumni and industry professionals and also provide robust opportunities for students to build leadership, project management, event management, and relationship development skills.

Our early investment in career support is showing measurable progress: the career-course rating among continuing full-time MBA students increased from 2.63 in 2024 to 3.44 in 2026, the largest two-year improvement among the measures included in the survey.

P&Q: Alongside alumni, how does career services connect students with employers? What types of programs support outreach to employers?

Parker-James: Questrom’s career office includes both a dedicated Industry Relations team and a dedicated Alumni Engagement team.

Our Industry Engagement Team is comprised of 10 industry relations managers (IRMs) led by an Executive Director. Each IRM covers a particular industry sector or function: health sector, technology, start-ups, consulting, finance, CPG/retail, quantitative finance, business analytics. These IRMs manage our relationships with employer partners, organize all on-campus recruiting activity, work with industry partners to create treks and other experiential learning opportunities, and do business development to engage new companies. Questrom manages relationships with more than 900 employers and partnered with 100 companies for action learning last academic year.

Distinct from Boston University’s broader alumni-relations unit, Questrom also has a dedicated career-based alumni team that creates structured ways for alumni to contribute directly to current students’ professional development. Through mentorship, alumni councils, networking events, classroom and club engagement, and industry-focused programming, alumni serve as advisors, connectors, speakers, hiring managers, and advocates within their organizations.

Together, these teams create a robust industry and alumni support network for Questrom students.

Next page: A Q&A with Catherine Fazio, Associate Dean of Residential MBA Programs

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