Long before I was a coach, I was a connector.

After earning degrees from Harvard College, Harvard Business School, and the Harvard Kennedy School, I built a career in relationship-driven roles like business development and venture capital. This included leadership positions at startups like Kozmo.com (an icon of the dot-com boom!) and bigger companies like Virgin Group and AOL, before moving into the ultimate connector career — executive search.

For the last 15 years, I have worked closely with CEOs, heads of HR, and investors to place senior executives and understand how hiring decisions are really made.

Today, I use that experience and network to help college students and recent grads build the relationships and confidence they need to launch their careers.

I’ve been a connector my whole life. In college, I did this instinctively by introducing classmates, then it became colleagues, mentors, and other friends. It was never something I thought of as work. It gave me pleasure, and it came naturally.

While I had been an executive search consultant for 13 years at the time, 2 years ago job searches literally hit home. When my own kids and their friends started looking for white-collar summer internships and careers after graduation, I saw a broken job search system.

However, I taught my kids how to target companies, find their alumni contacts, get informational interviews, and get referrals. They began to get traction. What had been silence turned into some interviews and offers.

After that, I dug into the challenges and opportunities facing the college demographic as a whole. Only 16% of college students who actually visited their career services office found the experience very helpful. That’s not surprising given that, on average there is only one career service professional for every 2,263 students. The data overwhelmingly confirmed what I saw firsthand. Fewer entry-level roles and increased AI screening tools have made the job market dramatically harder for new grads. Only 0.2% of cold applications now lead to an offer.  That is the reality students face. When they apply cold without a connection, they are almost always competing against someone who has one.

My work is about changing that equation.  Referrals cut through the noise. I help students become the candidate with the inside track, the name that comes up when someone asks, “Do you know anyone?”

I’ve decided to use the network I’ve spent decades building — and the skills I’ve honed placing senior executives — to help the group that most needs it. Young professionals at the start of their careers deserve access to the same coaching and insider advantage that has always existed at the top. This includes connecting the next generation of leaders to the current generation — the executives and decision-makers who will be retiring in the next decade, and who are eager to help talented young people rise.