About
Tomás Rivera-Ortiz has served as Director of Career Services at AB since 2017. He is responsible for the AB Career Center, the AB internship program (currently placing approximately 220 AB students in paid and unpaid internships per year), the AB Handshake job-platform partnership, the AB Career Closet (a free professional-clothing program for AB students), and the AB Alumni Mentorship Network (in partnership with Sarah Coleman's advancement office).
A native of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Rivera-Ortiz holds an M.A. in Counseling from Lehigh University (2012) and a B.A. (cum laude) in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez (2010). He is a Nationally Certified Counselor (NCC) and a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in West Virginia.
Before AB he spent five years in Lockheed Martin's Human Resources function (initially in college recruiting, then in employee development), then two years as a counselor at the WVU College of Engineering. He came to AB because — as he tells it — "a small university where every student is a face is the only place I have ever wanted to work, and it took me thirty-five years to find it."
Education
- 2012M.A., Counseling — Lehigh University. CACREP-accredited program.
- 2010B.A., Industrial-Organizational Psychology (cum laude) — University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez.
- —Certifications: NCC, LPC (WV), Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach, MBTI Master Practitioner.
Teaching
Rivera-Ortiz teaches one career-development course and co-teaches the AB Senior Capstone Career Lab.
- AB 210Career Development & Vocational DiscernmentA two-credit elective open to sophomores and juniors. Includes a Strengths assessment, a draft résumé, a mock interview, and a one-on-one with a career counselor.
- AB 410Senior Capstone: Career LabA required senior capstone for all AB undergraduates, structured as a year-long job-search and life-after-AB lab. Each senior leaves with a résumé, three networked contacts in their field, and a written six-month post-grad plan.
Practice & Programs
Rivera-Ortiz's identity is the practice of career counseling at a small rural university — a discipline he calls "making sure every student is somebody's phone call." He has built the AB Career Center from a 1.5-person operation (2017) to a 4-person operation (2025) and has expanded internship placements from 80 to 220 per year.
He is a member of the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), the WV College Career Centers Association (Past President), and the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) Career Services Special Interest Group.
Selected Publications & Presentations
- 2024"The Small-Town Career Center." NACE Journal.
- 2023"Every Student Is Somebody's Phone Call." The Chronicle of Higher Education, October.
- 2025Plenary, NACE Annual Conference, "Rural and First-Gen Career Services After the Pandemic."
Honors & Service
- 2024WV College Career Centers Association Past President.
- 2023AB Staff Award for Excellence in Service.
- 2021NACE Career Services Innovator of the Year.
- 2017Lehigh University Counseling Department Outstanding Alumnus.
A career center at a small rural university is not the same job as a career center at Penn or Cornell. At Cornell, the students already know how the world works. My job at AB is to make sure that every single one of our students learns the same thing — before they graduate, while there is still time.— Tomás Rivera-Ortiz, M.A.
Beyond the Classroom
Rivera-Ortiz lives in Philippi with his husband Daniel (a Spanish-language interpreter for the WV courts) and their cat. He is a Sunday-morning regular at the Café del Sol on Main Street (a Puerto Rican breakfast spot run by a friend), a serious salsa dancer, and the volunteer Spanish-language tutor at the Barbour County Adult Learning Center.
He is a competitive amateur photographer (his AB campus photo series hung in the Pickett Library Gallery in spring 2024), an avid hiker, and a contributor to the AB Alumni newsletter on first-job stories.