This week I spoke with Lisa Manley, 1991 and 1993 UVA grad who’s now the Director of Corporate Relations at Darden School of Business.

The Rundown:

• COLD OPEN: Double Hoo → Alumni Affairs → Consulting, Communications, & Sustainability → Darden

• TURNING POINT: How to lead different age cohorts

• STEAL THIS: What someone’s first job can tell you

• INDUSTRY INSIDER: There’s more to consulting than meets the eye

• IF I WERE YOU: Optimize your relationships from day one

COLD OPEN

How Did You Get Your Start?

I've had a couple of pivots in my career.

I’m the first woman in my family to go to college so UVA was just eye-opening. I chose international relations because I was curious about how the world works and how cultures come together beyond Virginia and the U.S.

At the end of my four years, I talked to people I worked with in the admissions office about how I can get a job like theirs because I wasn’t ready to leave UVA. They said I could get a higher education administration master’s at the UVA School of Education and Human Development. So that was the first little chapter of my career.

Then I worked for colleges and universities like Georgetown as their Director of Law Alumni Affairs but I got an itch to see what was happening in the world outside of what I was doing.

So I went to a consulting firm and got exposed to other areas of consulting through my colleagues who were doing really cool things with big corporations. I said to my boss, I'd love to work on one of the corporate accounts and he gave me the Coca-Cola account, which at the time was a tiny little thing. But we grew it to be the firm's largest account.

Over the course of seven years as a consultant for Coca-Cola, we slowly but surely convinced them that they needed a sustainability strategy to deal with issues like packaging waste, labor concerns, and water stress. So I got recruited into Coke to help launch their first sustainability strategy.

I've spent 25 years working in corporate sustainability, helping big companies like Coca-Cola and Mars and a number of others put themselves on the map as companies that care about social and environmental issues.

And today, I thought I was going to retire but then realized about nine months into retirement that I wasn't really ready to be retired.

I got a connection into Darden through somebody that I worked with way back when at Coca-Cola, so now, I am helping Darden build relationships with companies for student career opportunities, for faculty research, and I'm always eager to help students and faculty dig into sustainability.

TURNING POINT

What’s A Challenge You Faced Early On?

I was coming straight out of grad school into my first few roles and was given team management responsibilities. In many cases, the team members I was given were two or three times older than I was. It was challenging to earn their respect but I talked to a lot of people about how to manage different age cohorts.

I found that the most important things were to be really clear with your expectations, be super consistent in the way you engage, and try to have some fun. Those management approaches allowed us to build teams of people who cared about the work and about each other.

STEAL THIS

What’s A Question You Love To Be Asked (Or Asking)?

I love to be asked “What are you reading?” It’s an easy way to start a conversation. It’s always fun to share with somebody a reading list or favorite book. And it tells you a lot about the person you’re talking to. It opens up all kinds of opportunities to further a conversation.

The question I like to ask other people is “What was your first job?”. You might learn a little about how that person came up, what their approach to work is, and their work ethic. My first job was when I was 15, selling shoes at a mall. It tells you that I wanted to go to work early and that I’m not super precious about the things I will do.

INDUSTRY INSIDER

What Do People Misunderstand About Consulting?

I don’t know if it’s a misconception, but one thing that’s a tremendous benefit in consulting is you get exposed to different companies, different functions within those companies, and a wide swath of business challenges and opportunities.

It’s also a place where somebody like me who’s curious, who wants to be exposed to new things, can say, "put me into something different.” It’s a great place to learn, to try new things, to build business acumen.

IF I WERE YOU

Do You Have Any Advice For Students?

I think the most important thing at any phase in your career, particularly when you’re starting out, is to cherish your relationships and use them to help open doors. If I look back at my career, I think every opportunity has been facilitated to some degree by a connection I’ve made, had, or sought.

When you look at the world of work today, particularly in the world of AI, every job is getting hundreds, if not thousands of applications. You can optimize the words in your resume but more importantly, optimize the relationships you have.

So, if you're interested in applying for a role in whatever company, the first thing you should do is try to map out all the connection points that you've got to that company and try to leverage those connections one by one.