Malakia Silcott named assistant director, career advisor at Career Center

The Career Center recently hired Malakia Silcott as the new assistant director and career advisor to fill the vacancy left by Nicole Anderson, who is now associate director of alumni career services. Previously, Silcott worked at several different colleges including Brandeis University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and most recently Bunker Hill Community College.  

According to Director of Career Development Donna Esposito, Silcott’s role with the Career Center will involve working with first-year and sophomore students and helping facilitate the Career Center’s relationship with various clubs and student organizations around campus.

“Malakia’s focus will be general career advising," Esposito said. "She is going to be seeing students across all majors, [career interests and class years], as well as doing some programming around early engagement, meaning helping the Career Center continue to engage first-years and sophomores."

Gregory Victory, executive director of the Career Center, said Silcott has lived up to these expectations the Career Center looks for in its employees, namely a focus on first-generation and low-income students, as well as diversity.

“She has a great sense of humor, which adds to the positive and fun atmosphere that we try to strike on a daily balance. She does a lot to help continue to make sure that the Career Center is a welcoming place,” Victory told the Daily in an email.

Esposito clarified that the Career Center's focus on first-years and sophomores is not new, and that such engagement has been a growing trend over the past several years.

“The earlier that you engage students in terms of the resources, the services and the ... career development [process], the more time they are going to have to take advantage of opportunities and to build their skills and competencies for preparing for life after Tufts,” Esposito said.

Silcott said she will be organizing a conference in the upcoming year for sophomores to address these needs. Esposito added that the Career Center is looking to shift how it works with students, to make services more accessible and to boost awareness about opportunities the Career Center offers.

“We’ve always done work with both first-years and sophomores, but this year we decided to take a different approach and offer a series of programs that were open to both, so that a first-year student or a sophomore could select which programs they want to focus on,” Esposito said. “We also want to do more outreach to student clubs and organizations. It’s a way to market our services and be more present on campus.”

Silcott expressed excitement about being a part of the Tufts community and learning from her Career Center colleagues, alumni and students as well.

“I feel like there are a lot of intelligent people doing some great things and I would like to be a part of that,” she said.

Silcott explained that she wants to help students make connections and strategize. Additionally, she is interested in working with students entering underrepresented fields or fields into which they are the first in their family to enter.

“I like the networking -- getting students to understand or open up to the big world out there, and making those connections a little bit smaller," Silcott said. "I look forward to connecting people to real life careers and the people who are doing those careers.”

Both Victory and Esposito agreed that Silcott has many qualities and experiences to contribute to the Tufts community.

“Malakia has hit the ground running, absorbing as much as she can about Tufts and our students, and jumping in with both feet to provide advising and coaching," Victory said.