University Night Helps UA Little Rock Alumni Make Innovative Connections with Students Seeking Careers at Apptegy
While Kennedy Brooks still has two years to go before her graduation from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, she feels it’s never too early to start preparing for life after college.
While attending University Night at Apptegy, the sophomore web design and development major said she has her eye on the Little Rock-based educational technology company as a strong contender for a potential future employer.
“I have been following Apptegy for a while,” Brooks said. “I see that Apptegy is a big technology company in Arkansas, and I want to go into tech, specifically software development.”
Signing up for University Night, which gave UA Little Rock students a chance to connect and learn about careers from UA Little Rock alumni who work at Apptegy, was a “no-brainer” for Kennedy.
UA Little Rock and Apptegy partnered to hold University Night on April 27. The successful event was yet another way that UA Little Rock is contributing to growing the Central Arkansas workforce by being innovative about connecting industry partners with upcoming graduates.
While Apptegy started off with only a handful of school districts in Arkansas, the successful start-up company now works with more than 3,000 school districts across the country. The company has just opened an office in the United Kingdom. Apptegy’s Thrillshare product is a communication platform built for school leaders. Thrillshare allows K-12 administrators to share news, stories, and media from a single platform, which then distributes the content across social media accounts, SMS, voice calls, mobile apps, and websites. Apptegy also offers a number of free resources to superintendents and other school leaders like SchoolCEO, which boasts a printed magazine, videos, and a podcast.
Apptegy’s 19 UA Little Rock alumni were proud to welcome potential new members to the Apptegy family. Katie Edwards, a 2020 graduate of UA Little Rock, works as a human resources generalist on Apptegy’s People Team, and it’s her job to help build a team of great people to work at Apptegy.
“Tech startups are usually something found in New York, so I was immediately interested with Apptegy being in my hometown,” Edwards said. “I started here last November, and I already love it. It’s a welcoming and energetic place to work. Earning my MBA at UA Little Rock was like a restart for me, something new and fresh, and so is working at Apptegy. There aren’t many companies like it.”
After taking a tour of Apptegy, Maria Romero, a senior marketing major at UA Little Rock, was impressed by Apptegy’s employee benefits like weekly catered lunches, a gym, and health and wellness programs.
“I think this event is wonderful,” Romero said. “My biggest takeaway is that Apptegy puts in so much effort to take care of their employees. I’m glad that UA Little Rock has made a bond with Apptegy and wants to help students get into successful careers.”
Josiah Johnson, a December 2021 graduate of UA Little Rock, recalls how he leveraged his experience with an award-winning research project he conducted at UA Little Rock into a position as a data analyst at Apptegy. His research studied the effects of a television show contest, “Small Business Revolution,” on small town crime.
“Apptegy asked if they could talk to me, and I asked if they had any data analyst positions open,” Johnson said. “They didn’t at the time, but a month later they called me back and said we need to invest more in our data team. I used my paper to leverage my experience in economic research to show how I would be an asset to the data team.”
Johnson’s research project, “Main Street Business Initiatives and Crime in Small Towns,” has recently been published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.
Apptegy continues to grow rapidly and is looking to hire UA Little Rock graduates. To learn more about working for Apptegy, see their open positions at apptegy.com/careers.
