SLU-Madrid Class of 2023 Graduates Now Work or Study in 12 Countries
03/20/2024
Recent career services data shows 86% of respondents report to be working or pursuing graduate studies.
Class of 2023 students work or study in seven countries — Ecuador, England, Georgia, Hong Kong, South Africa, Spain and the United States.
Graduates now call 14 U.S. states home, those being California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.
Those who have landed jobs in the U.S. now live in Denver; Houston; Los Angeles; Memphis, Tennessee; Milwaukee; New York; Philadelphia; Seattle and Washington, D.C.
Cities abroad where recent graduates work include Hong Kong, Johannesburg, London and Madrid.
José Antonio Jijón (Economics, '23) worked as an electronic-trading product summer analyst at Bloomberg in London in 2023. He landed a full-time position there as a fixed-income product analyst in January 2024 — immediately following graduation in December 2023.
A now-turned-Londoner working at a multinational company, Jijón said the transition from SLU-Madrid's small campus to a big corporation was easy because of one commonality: diversity.
"I feel like SLU really prepared me for this, particularly. Bloomberg is a very diverse place and so is SLU," Jijón said. "So, I feel like it's a really good match in that aspect. I'm used to talking to people from a variety of different countries, different backgrounds — people who are very different from me."
When referring to his current coworkers, he also said that he learned "how to relate to them even though it may appear that you don't have anything in common. We all do. We're all human at the end of the day."
"I think that's a big plus coming from SLU-Madrid. My biggest takeaway would be diversity, and that's what the world is now and where it's heading — more and more diverse."
Other SLU-Madrid graduates now intern or work at companies like Amadeus, Deloitte, E.STOTT Luxury Womenswear, FedEx, IE University, Johnson Controls, The New York Immigration Coalition, PepsiCo and the YMCA. The most prominent fields of work among the class of 2023 are non-profits, education and retail, in that order.
After graduation, Natalie Alper (International Studies, '23) started as a part-time community engagement fellow and became a full-time civic engagement associate at The New York Immigration Coalition in February 2024.
"I have been lucky enough to find a position in which I use the skills I learned in my international studies degree every single day, from speaking Spanish, Arabic and French to collaborating on solutions to immigration issues such as the housing crisis or access to education," Alper said.
"I am also a member of Politics4Her, a youth-led feminist platform founded by another SLU-Madrid alumni, Yasmina Benslimane," Alper said. "I was honored to represent the organization at the UN's Commission on the Status of Women this year and speak about the amazing work we do on a gender and migration panel."
Two graduates have gone on to start their own businesses. There is a graduate volunteering in Ecuador with a non-profit organization focused on sustainable development.
Students now enrolled in graduate school are studying at universities such as Northwestern University and the University of San Diego.