Radford Alumnus Teams Up With Career Services to Promote Global Career Awareness

Like many Radford alumni, Nathan Taylor '04 wanted to find a way to give back to his alma mater. He recently traveled across the globe to do it.

Teaming up with Ellen Taylor, RU’s director of Career Services, to make videos promoting global career awareness, Taylor has found a way to share his knowledge with the Radford community while living in China.

“Sometimes it’s hard to be an active alumnus when you live on the other side of the world,” said Taylor, “so when opportunities like this come up, I do everything I can to help.”

The videos—which cover a variety of topics and each run between 30 seconds and a minute—are meant to “help students build the confidence they need to live and work in a global society,” explained Ellen Taylor.

In one video, Nathan Taylor tells how his RU experience helped him capitalize on global career ventures; in another, he shares about his study-abroad experience as a Zylphia Shu-En Kirk Scholar in China and the challenges he faced overcoming the language barrier.

According to Ellen Taylor, the videos align well with Provost Minner’s focus on high-impact learning experiences and are intended to encourage students to get outside their comfort zones to learn a wide range of lessons—from new languages to new life skills.

Nathan Taylor, she said, is a "prime example" of an alumnus who has done that.

Taylor, who grew up in Radford before attending the university, said he was issued his first passport for the Kirk Scholar study-abroad program as an undergraduate at RU.

He now lives in Nanjing with his wife and two-year-old son, working as a green innovation designer and pursuing a master’s degree in architecture and urban planning at Nanjing University.