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Mentor Spotlight: Sarah (Stremme) Lacy

Drury University > Drury Alumni Connections Program > Mentor Spotlight: Sarah (Stremme) Lacy

Sarah (Stremme) Lacy

Senior Director, Marketing & Communications at Intouch Group in Overland
Kansas City, Kansas
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Create Your Own Journey

I had a rather unconventional start to my career following graduation. Like many young graduates, I had the piece of paper that said, ‘I’m ready,’ but a mindset that wasn’t quite sure what I was ‘ready’ for. After getting the chance to study abroad and blessed with the opportunity to travel to South Africa during my internship with Edward Jones and the SIFE team (now Enactus), I was bitten by the travel bug and the symptoms were intense. Although I held a BBA in Marketing and not education, I was accepted to teach English for a year in Ulsan, South Korea. I spent a year teaching more than 700 public elementary school students and loved almost every minute of it! Nothing will teach you more about the world or yourself like moving to a country you know nothing about and a culture so different from your own. Following my contractual teaching year, I spent seven weeks backpacking S.E. Asia because I felt if I didn’t do it now, then when would I do it? Probably never.

I returned home and landed an amazing job with a marketing agency thanks to a serendipitous meeting at a Drury Alumni Holiday party where I met the most amazing mentor and my current boss, Wendy Blackburn. However, I felt like I had unfinished business when it came to traveling and I just wasn’t ready to settle quite yet. I struggled internally with the thought of leaving my job. After all, I had already taken a roundabout way to get here, would it really be smart to leave it?! Well, I did. After 18 months of working at Intouch Solutions, I once again returned to Korea to teach. This time, I was in a rural fishing town called Pohang. After yet another year of teaching, I concluded my stint with an eight-week backpacking tour of Europe. Something I had always dreamed of, but didn’t think I would ever have the time to do.

Luckily, I ended up returning to my job at Intouch where to my surprise, felt like I picked up right where I left off. Teaching and traveling abroad in no way set my career back, and if anything, only increased my employable equity. A career set back was my greatest fear in this whole journey and to think that I could have missed out on over two years of living abroad and experiencing the cultures of 28 countries because of fear!

Moral of my story: there is no conventional path anymore. Do what you want, create your own journey, and take risks. The more unique your experiences are the more valuable you can become to potential employers and the more you can grow as a person. 

Don’t forget to enjoy your time at Drury. It goes way too fast!