Elon University alumni offered advice for postgraduate success and shared their experiences since graduating from Elon.
Scott Camp '91
After working for Fastenal, the largest fastener distributor in North America based in Minnesota, for 23 years, Scott Camp ’91 recently decided to embrace his entrepreneurial spirit and start his own company. Camp is the founder and practice leader at Atlas Distribution Services based in Taiwan and mainland China.
Camp entered Elon College with the view of the school as a stepping stone toward getting into the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. But upon arrival, he quickly learned Elon was the place for him.
“Once I got on campus, I was really impressed with the classroom environment and just the whole school,” Camp said. “I fell in love with it, so I never left. It was one of the best decisions I ever made.”
A business administration major with minors in management and marketing, Camp knew he wanted to do something in business. After graduating, he stayed away from the university for a long time because he was traveling, engulfed in his career and raising a family.
He said he was blessed to enter the workforce two weeks after graduating.
“The job market in 1991 was really, really horrible,” Camp said. “I’d been trying to get internships and jobs since my junior year. Graduating in ’91, I graduated and was fortunate enough to find Fastenal.”
With Fastenal, Camp managed the Burlington branch and helped build presence in the South. 23 years later, he decided to leave the company to start his own business.
“I’m finally pursuing some goals of self-employment and creating my own company with my own culture and my own brand,” he said. “It really wrapped up a great career with a great company, left on great terms, and time to move forward. I’m 47 and it was time to move on and do other things.”
He said he wanted a business his three kids could enter into. Outside of work, his main priorities are spending time with family, going to church, and volunteering with a local rotary club.
Preparing for his 25th anniversary after graduating from Elon, Camp now realizes how much of a role Elon played in shaping who he is.
“Many of the teachers and faculty that I got close with believed in me more than I believed in myself,” he said. “I never really realized until later how much of an impact they really had, and how they took an interest in my life and challenged to become better than I thought I could be. That hit me many years later."
Tiffany Atkins L'11
Tiffany Atkins L’11 landed a staff attorney position at the Greensboro branch for Legal Aid of North Carolina — the site she interned at while studying at the Elon University School of Law.
With a focus in public interest law and an active membership in Elon Law’s Black Law Students Association, Atkins has pursued her passion for serving groups in need of legal assistance.
“I represent women in domestic violence cases, and they don’t have a voice for a lot of different reasons,” Atkins said. “It’s very important to me to be able to use my talents to help people who didn’t have access to justice for whatever reason.”
Her advice to students aspiring to follow a similar career path is to volunteer. Atkins said she was willing to take unpaid internships because they eventually led her to the place she wanted to be. Though she would have loved to make a larger salary, she examined her bigger picture goals of helping people receive the legal counsel they need.
“Find a way to help people even if it’s inconvenient for you.” Atkins said.
Though she doesn’t have too much spare time in her line of work, she enjoys spending time with her family whenever she can, writing poems and reading novels.
Chelsea Helms '13
Chelsea Helms ’13 works with Bernstein Global Wealth Management in San Francisco.
A finance major and economics minor, Helms pursued a rigorous course load. Reflecting on her time at Elon, she advises students to reach out to professors and form connections with them.
“I definitely feel like my success in school came from engaging with professors and engaging with the class,” Helms said.
Before working with Bernstein, Helms served as an investment management consultant for FactSet Research Systems, Inc. from July 2013 to April 2015. At Factset, she advised wealth managers, hedge fund managers and traditional asset mangers.
With Bernstein, she acts as the central liaison between the client, advisors, senior management, portfolio managers, traders and wealth planning specialists. She also partners with a team of three financial advisors in managing more than $1.5 billion in assets under management.
“I wanted to try something new and prove to myself that I could make it on my own,” Helms said, explaining the decision behind moving further from her family living on the East Cost.
Helms said she loves working in San Francisco because there is so much to do outside of her work.
“My life is just so much more full out here,” she said. “Every other weekend it’ll either be surfing or hiking or going skiing in Lake Tahoe or going to Napa. There’s all sorts of things to do here, and I feel like I have such a more active lifestyle."
Ashley McCullock '13
Ashlee McCullock ’13 works as a senior analyst on the Audience, Strategy, Insights and Innovation team at the Music Entertainment Group at Viacom.
A proud strategic communication alum, McCullock pursued her passion for conducting research. While attending Elon, she interned at MTV. Having networked and met a lot of people within Viacom during her internship, she was able to leverage her experiences to earn a full-time research position shortly after graduation.
While in college, she was served as station manager of ESTV and became a member of the School of Communications chapter of Lambda Pi Eta.
She recommends students work with student media organizations and become heavily involved if they intent to have an important role in the media industry.
“Take advantage of student media, and become as involved as possible,” McCullock said. “You never know when the people you’re working with in student media are going to be the people out getting jobs in the industry. You’re already going to build a network and get experience that way.”
She also encouraged students studying strategic communications to take courses within the Media Analytics major.
“Arguably all communications majors should have some media analytics in their back pocket,” McCullock said. “People need an understanding of media analytics and how we measure content online because that’s the way the majority of content is viewed and distributed today.”
In her spare time, McCullock enjoys traveling, meeting new people and watching television shows. She said two of her most recent favorite shows are “The Americans” and “Game of Thrones.”