The next time you read your receipt at Target, there’s a good chance Lilly Lu ’25 had something to do with it. The Macalester grad just completed Target’s Technology Leadership Program, an opportunity that allows budding engineers to explore different teams around the company before receiving a permanent placement. While working with Target’s in-store checkout team, one of Lu’s recent projects was to update receipt language to meet legal compliance standards and also update systems to aid with the penny elimination transition.
“Working through all of these different projects and teams, it makes you realize just how much technology is behind even the simplest parts of shopping,” Lu said. “It’s been a great learning opportunity, and a fantastic first step outside Mac.”
Lu is one of hundreds of Macalester graduates from the Class of 2025 who are leveraging their time on campus to launch meaningful careers. Within six months of commencement, 92 percent of Macalester’s most recent graduating class was already employed, enrolled in graduate school, interning, or on fellowship.
Fanning out across the globe, Scots have accepted private sector positions at companies like 3M, The Toro Company, and the Utah Jazz. They are serving in government and nonprofit roles at the Smithsonian, Berkeley Repertory Theater, and the Federal Reserve Bank. And many others are pursuing graduate degrees in everything from law and medicine to politics and engineering.
We spoke with four members of the Class of 2025 about where they landed, and the unique Macalester connections that helped propel them into dream roles.
Learning on the job
Based in the Twin Cities, Lu has been placed with Target’s Delivery and Automated Routing Technologies team, which focuses on developing systems to route and complete online orders. It’s a brand new challenge and notably different from the Taxes and Fees team where she first interned at Target the summer before her senior year.
“I didn’t have a financial background, but so many teams at Target still rely on technology to do what they do,” Lu said. “The opportunity to get that experience working as an engineer before leaving Mac was key.”
Nearly three in four Macalester grads complete an internship or a mentored-research project before finishing their degree. And often, as it happened with Lu, those high-impact learning experiences can lead to a full-time job offer. However, the computer science and Chinese double major points to another opportunity at Mac that also prepared her for life post-graduation: studying away in Taiwan, where she spent time immersed in the local language and culture.
“When you go to a different country, you have to be proactive and figure things out on your own,” Lu said. “It’s really similar to post-grad. You’re suddenly off on your own and you’ve got to figure out what to do next.”
The bigger picture
Ryan Connor ’25 delivered the Class of 2025 commencement address. His message last May: once you find your way out into the world, don’t forget to bring others with you.
“I told everyone, ‘Don’t just leave and forget about everybody else,’” Connor said. “I wanted my classmates to see the bigger picture, go back into their communities, help lift others up, and get other people to see that big picture, too.”
It’s a philosophy he’s been living out himself. The political science and German double major is currently a Fulbright scholar in Germany teaching English to high school-aged students. Connor credits German professor Britt Abel for pushing him toward opportunities he might have otherwise passed up—including the Fulbright itself and a chance to study away in Germany during his junior year at Mac.
“Britt really helped with getting me to take a lot of the opportunities that I wasn’t going to go for throughout my second half of college,” Connor said.
Distinctly aware of the support he’s received, Connor is preparing for a career of service and giving back. After his time in Germany wraps up, he’s lined up a teaching fellowship back home in South Carolina. He’s also studying for the LSAT, with law school and a career in educational policy on the horizon.
“The education system in the US has some big problems,” Connor said. “Helping build better pathways and programs—that’s where I want to go.”
Embracing the unexpected
Sid Layesa ’25 came to Macalester from the Philippines as a Davis United World Colleges Scholar planning to become a scientist. A biology and economics double major, he expected a straightforward path towards graduate school and scientific research—until he took a trip to New York.
“I signed up because I had never been to New York City,” Layesa said. “Investment banking just never was a thing where I’m from, so I didn’t know what this world was all about.”
The MacExplore NYC trip, organized by Career Exploration and economics professor Joyce Minor, connected Mac students with alumni working in banking and finance. For Layesa, meeting fellow Scots in the private sector reframed his post-grad plans.
“I realized that I don’t have to become a scientist to do what I enjoy doing, which is science and learning things,” he said. “I can be an investment banker and work with founders of the biotech companies who are at the forefront of innovation.”
Now a full-time analyst at Baird, an international financial services firm, Layesa works with biotech companies looking to raise capital from institutional investors. He met his future boss, Kotryna Smith ’16, a Macalester alum and vice president of investment banking at Baird, when she returned to campus to speak with economics students. After that event, Layesa decided to apply for an internship on Smith’s team at Baird and spent the summer there before his senior year.
“The beauty of the Macalester alumni network is just how committed a lot of people are to giving back and paying it forward,” Layesa said. “I would encourage current Mac students to start reaching out to alums. A lot of times, we are more than willing to help.”
History meets place
Like nearly 60 percent of Macalester grads, Catherine Driver ’25 participated in a study away program—and their trip to Colombia ended up shaping their future. For Catherine Driver ’25, studying away in Colombia shaped their path forward.
Driver, a geography major, spent time in a largely Black community founded by people who had escaped enslavement, staying with a host family and immersing themselves in the town’s history. “Through research I was able to dive into the complexities of this place, to look at how they had escaped some forms of imperialism, but how others had sustained,” Driver said.
Curiosity about how history shapes place now forms the basis for their work as an intern in the Local Planning Assistance Department at the Metropolitan Council in St. Paul. Over the last year, Driver has helped launch a new 2050 planning handbook and is spearheading a project to map more than a thousand comprehensive plan amendments.
Driver’s path to a geography major built naturally while at Macalester. An introductory course with professor Eric Carter—which included research into local businesses around campus—got them hooked. Work with professor Holly Barcus, who specializes in migration, deepened their focus and connection to their own family history.
“My father’s parents migrated from Georgia and South Carolina to New Jersey,” Driver said. “It’s been interesting to trace that path, a common experience for a lot of Black Americans who moved to the Northeast or the Midwest.”
Now at the Met Council, they work to understand how thousands of Minnesotans come together, forming the community they call home.
“To have an impact on the place you live, that’s really my goal,” Driver said. “That’s what planning can do and what I hope to accomplish wherever I go.”