About My Placement

The Business-Higher Education Forum is the nation’s oldest membership organization of Fortune 500 CEOs, college and university presidents, and other leaders dedicated to the creation of a highly skilled workforce.  BHEF facilitates strategic engagement between business and higher education institutions to improve alignment between higher education and workforce needs in emerging fields. 

Through its National Higher Education and Workforce Initiative (HEWI), BHEF has developed market intelligence and labor analyses, mapped skill competencies, and convened educational and corporate partners. The BHEF model of strategic business engagement with higher education moves relationship development from transactional to strategic partnerships. 

Three notable examples of the transformational projects BHEF has helped to shape include a new academic minor in data analytics at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa in partnership with the Principal Financial Group, the ACES, Advanced Cybersecurity Experience for Students, Program at the University of Maryland with support from Northrop Grumman, and an academic minor in media engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology with support from NBC Universal.

In only my third week here, I’m still learning about all the good work and where my contributions will be. 

Marianna Savoca, PhD., Director of the Career Center at Stony Brook University–State University of New York, is a Faculty Fellow this semester at the Business-Higher Education Forum.