HDFS Alumni Stories

Michaela stayed undecided as long as Ohio State would let her, then chose HDFS because she liked helping and learning about people. After about two years in sales, she talked herself into law school. She started in family law, a natural fit for a human-development background, but the empathy followed her home so she shifted into contract law.

"You don't have to see the whole path to start walking it."

As a nontraditional student working full-time, Bianca moved through a hospital, a nursing home, a therapuetic elementary school, WIC and teaching nutrition at Ohio State. An associate's in nutrition felt too narrow. HDFS let her combine that background with a broader human-development lens. Today, she runs a food pantry and diaper bank and connects families to services like JFS and WIC. 

"Take what makes you happy and find the piece that binds it together."

Victoria came to college already drawn to occupational therapy and went looking for the major that fit that goal. Health sciences felt too tied to the medical model, but HDFS gave her the personal-environment-occupation lens that OT actually runs on. On her clinical placements, she says, those undergraduate skills keep resurfacing. 

"HDFS gave me the OT mindset before I ever started OT school."

Jared didn't set out for HR. His first job grew straight out of his campus work. For four years his student job had hum hiring and developing staff at campus satellite facilities. He asked his boss whether HR was something he could do; that nudge led to his first internship and job at Battelle, running the internship program end to end.

"There's nothing like giving someone their first job."

Not every HDFS path leads to a clinic or a classroom. Tess's leads to a rowing dock. She graduated with a double major in HDFS and Sport Industry, earned a master's in Sport Management at Ohio State, and now coaches at UCF. Coaching, she's found, is human-development work. She reads where athletes come from and what motivates them, and handles the human moments with a warm reminder rather than a reprimand.

Marina turned an early love of working with children into a career built around protecting them, starting in behavioral health intake before moving into research. The spark came as an undergraduate, in a practicum with Dr. Wilkinson on Urban GEMS, a gardening program that helps children heal from trauma. She says she learned more from the kids than they learned from her. That conviction, that early intervention matters, now shapes her research.

Bailey began college believing helping people meant counseling. When graduate school didn't fit her life after graduation, she took a job in admissions and recruitment, then kept saying yes. One yes at a time led her to advancement, where connecting with people of all ages turned out to be its own kind of helping. Her realization: helping people doesn't only happen in medicine or social work.

Devin treats one undergraduate course, research methods, like a toolkit he never put down. Two ideas stuck, the gap between the fear of crime and the actual risk of crime, and social judgment theory, the idea that people are moved more by voices close to them than distant ones. As he puts it, you can be shouting and still not be heard by someone standing right behind you. For Devin, the theory is everyday equipment for community work.

Before HDFS, Nathan served in the Marines, and that instinct to serve has carried into his current work. He handles the first 45 to 60 days of a case, deciding whether it moves to ongoing services and making sure families are connected to resources. He took the job to reach kids early. His path is a reminder that HDFS welcomes students who arrive from very different starting points.

Brian supports young people in a residential setting, focusing on the close, steady, everyday work of helping kids feel safe. He values that the job keeps teaching him. Ravenwood is a continuing-education provider, and he recently completed a two-day ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training) course. He would want to remind students, you don't need a clinical title to help people. The skills you build travel with you.

Tara graduated with a double major in HDFS and Spanish and went straight from commencement into a dual master's. What surprised her is how much HDFS prepared her. She applies courses like 4370 and 5200 daily, in class and in a field internship with families. Her advice is refreshingly concrete: keep your coursework. She finds herself going back to old papers and notes, pulling theories into the work she does now.