Meet Mike Lowe

Meet Mike Lowe, Class of 1998. As the director of Alumni Support Services, Mike is responsible for developing and maintaining programming that helps Alumni during all stages and facets of life. The programming includes career services, continuing education, coaching and mentorship, medical facilitation, legacy programs/memorial services, and spouse support. 

Mike also serves as the executive director of the Service Academy Career Conference (SACC).

Q: What is SACC and how does SACC benefit our alumni?

Lowe: The service academy career conference really is made up of all five service academies. It's a career conference that's currently held four times a year and we bring companies in from all over the world to meet with a pool of our talented candidates. One of the great things that all the companies love about the service academy career conference is they know the talent that they're getting, they know the quality of candidates that's coming there regardless of whether someone has just spent three to five years in the military, or they spent 15 to 20 they know the quality of the candidate that they're going to get at that career conference.

Q: SACC will be celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2024. Tell us some of the success stories and how it's had an impact on the alumni community?

Lowe: Right now, we're at 96 service academy career conferences in 30 years and that's knowing that for a long time they only had one career conference a year in the early days. Over 7,000 companies have attended these career conferences since it's coming to fruition and almost 40,000 alumni across all five service Academy. I think some of the best stories are talking to some of our more successful alumni and finding out that they got their first civilian job after serving in the military at the service academy career conference and even then, seeing them come back when they own their own companies and do hiring at the service academy career conference.

Q: How does SACC help the Enterprise fill its mission to help alumni throughout their life's journey?

Lowe: When you think about career programs, we want to have career programs that start from the day that an academy alum graduates and goes all the way through until they're retiring. I think the service academy career conference does a really good job of fulfilling that first part of that journey. It's excellent for those lieutenants, lieutenant commanders that are getting out and really looking to enter the workforce for the first time. SACC has an array of opportunities from companies like Deloitte to Amazon to all kinds of high-tech companies that are out there - alternative energy like NextEra Energy that are hiring our engineers to go out and do great things for the world.

Q: Looking into 2024, what are some new offerings and programs for SACC?

Lowe: One of the things that we're really looking to do in 2024 is to get our SACC participants better prepared for the events. One of the things we often hear especially from those first-time participants is “how do we make the best out of this two-day experience?” So one of the things that we're working with is MOAA (Military Officer Association of America), they're doing a webinar for us on how to best present resumes. We're working with a company called Hiration, which is an AI generated resume and interviewing tool to help our candidates in 2024 prepare for this.