Meet the Team: Sarah Fendrich
The longest United States government shut down in history took place from December 22nd, 2018 to January 25th, 2019. It was during this time that Assistant Director of career coaches, Sarah Fendrich, had a moment to pause from her federal government duties to truly think about where she was being led. Sarah had been working for the government for 15 years as a program manager for the prevention of smuggling radioactive materials internationally.
She and her husband had moved to Lynchburg to be more involved in ministry for students in 2014, which means that at that time, she was having to commute from Lynchburg to DC on a weekly basis. They had been housing students as a part of their ministry, but Sarah knew that God was pushing her to do more. During the government shutdown, Sarah realized that being a government career coach at Liberty University was the perfect mix of where she wanted to be and what best fit her skill set.
Sarah Fendrich began her work as a career coach in 2019, and then moved into the assistant directing role in 2020. Sarah was highly motivated for this role because it offered her the opportunity to stay involved while also being able to work with all the career coaches and receive a more “global look.” Sarah also says she loves her role because she’s a huge “big picture” thinker.
Sarah loved her role as just a career coach for the school of government, but she knew that there was more that she could do for career services as a whole. In 2013, the Career Center went through a lot of changes, and at the time, Sarah says there was no strategy to help Career Services grow. Sarah’s previous role of working with so many different countries and using a bureaucratic process to make things happen prepared her for this process but on a Liberty University level.
“Strategy brings us to a place where we can achieve goals, sustainability, and move forward,” Sarah says. “But we don’t want to move forward too fast because then, we get burnt out. My question is always, ‘How can we do our work better?’”
Sarah’s Advice to Students
Sarah says students can work better by utilizing their time well. Students too often believe that if they just get a degree, they can land the job of their dreams. It’s important for students to work their way to their goals in small increments.
At the career center, Sarah says they are working on new workshops, but one must ask themselves how to efficiently get to that point before jumping in blindly to any goal. Her strategy for collaborating with others is to always be aware of what all career coaches and leadership are doing, not to compete with, but to be consistently helping in any way that she can. Overall, the purpose, Sarah says, is to have a servant’s mindset, constantly working together to achieve goals.
Ultimately, Sarah says her faith completely shapes her mindset towards how to lead her team. She is inspired by the holy spirit in that, as believers, we need to remove ourselves so that the Holy Spirit can have its way within our lives.
“It’s all about me focusing on God and his love, his grace, and his leadership so that that is what comes out of me,” Sarah says. “I don’t have that. So it’s me getting out of the way.”
One of her greatest joys is being able to see the success of students every day at the Career Center. She loves hearing the stories from coaches about student getting in to top accounting firms, medical schools and achieving their dreams.
Sarah’s advice to seniors who are about to graduate? Be flexible if you don’t know exactly where you want to go. When Sarah first graduated from college, she took a job below her education level, but she did it because, “It gave me the exposure to get where I wanted to go from there.” She says to get out of God’s way and to not be discouraged.
