12/01/2025

Celebrating Creative Resilience in Career Development

By Delasia Rice and Emily Gomez

Creative Resilience: Integrating Dynamic Solutions in Career Development, is the theme selected for the 2026 NCDA Global Career Development Conference. Due to the pressures of layoffs, rapid AI integration, and global crises, people are experiencing heightened career uncertainty, which requires career practitioners to adapt to their clients’ ever-evolving needs. It is essential for career practitioners to learn, prioritize and implement innovative strategies to best address current challenges.

NCDA, a trusted leader in professional standards, aims to inspire and empower those in the field of career development by focusing the 2026 conference on creativity and resilience. When people think of creativity, minds often turn to artists in dance, music, and performance. While our medium is different, we as career practitioners are artists in our own right. We are the designers and creators of solutions, crafting pathways to support our clients and performing innovative techniques to drive change.

How are we showcasing creativity as career practitioners? In this article, we will highlight two of last year’s NCDA Award winners who give us a glimpse of how we all can begin to experiment and refine the way we think about the services we provide as career professionals.

Recognizing Exemplary Practices

The 2025 Exemplary Career Center Award was given to the Boerigter Center for Calling and Career at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. The Boerigter Center has focused on developing and implementing multiple innovative initiatives related to career discernment, preparation, and pursuit. This includes hiring a staff member with videography and social media experience and producing short-formed career education videos to scale knowledge that would originally take significant staff time within 1:1 advising appointments. Boerigter also worked to embed career development into the curriculum through curated presentations for first year students that are now mandatory for all first year seminars and providing course enhancement stipends. Way to go Boerigter Center for being an exemplary career center that implements creative solutions.

Dr. Kevin Glavin is the 2025 Merit Award recipient and provides another example of career practitioners showcasing creative solutions through his groundbreaking use of AI in the Career Construction Interview process. By designing a bot capable of asking expert-level narrative questions, capturing clients’ language, and generating unbiased summaries, he has expanded access to high-quality career support in an innovative, equitable way. This important work showcases how AI can enhance and not replace the counselor role which in turn allows practitioners to focus on deeper meaning.

Following the examples of past award winners, career development practitioners and educators can offer creative solutions that achieve greater resilience in clients. A list of NCDA award winners over the past ten years is now posted on the website. This new web page is organized by year and award name. As usual, the current year’s winners are shared in the NCDA Career Developments magazine fall issue for members, including a brief description and photos from the NCDA conference award winners’ reception.

Nominations Open Now

Are you or someone you know putting creativity to practice as a career practitioner? Nominate an NCDA member now!

NCDA and the Awards Committee invite you to submit a nomination for a 2026 award. Nominations are due January 31, 2026 at midnight EST. Follow the instructions and complete the online nomination form. Do note that all NCDA Awards are open to every member – a winner could be a colleague in your department, a fellow volunteer, a collaborator on research, a magazine co-author - or any member you know! Please start the process early as the nomination form, two references, and supporting documents are all due at the same time in one submission. Although self-nomination is possible, please keep in mind that every nomination packet requires a nominator and two references. If you self-nominate, you have one less person speaking on your behalf. To ease the nomination process, we invite you to review our Sample Packets for Individual and Group Nominations. Questions may be addressed to the Award Committee Co-Chair, Delasia Rice, drice13@fordham.edu.

Please note that all nominators and nominees for the following awards are required to be NCDA members, except for the Legislative Award:

• Diversity Initiative
• Eminent Career (requires a separate nomination process)
• Exemplary Career Center (2 Awards): (1) Education, Government & Business; (2) Non-Profit or Community Organizations
• Graduate Student Research
• International Practitioner of the Year
• Legislative (local, state, and national legislators are eligible nominees)
• Merit
• NCDA Fellow
• Outstanding Career Practitioner
• Service to International Students

(Note, State CDA Awards uses a separate nomination process; state leaders should watch their email for instructions.)

Honoring Creative Members

NCDA President, Dirk Matthews, described the conference theme by saying, “In the face of rapid change across the workforce, career professionals must apply creativity to design effective interventions, support diverse populations, and reimagine traditional practices. Creativity also fuels resilience, helping us adapt, grow, and thrive amid challenges” (NCDA, 2025, para. 3). Inspired by this message, all NCDA members can take action to recognize and honor the work of fellow members in order to empower the career development profession of the future.

Reference

NCDA. (2025). 2026 NCDA global career development conference - theme and invitation. https://www.ncda.org/aws/NCDA/pt/sd/news_article/606248/_PARENT/conference_layout_details/false  

Delasia Rice <drice13@fordham.edu> and Emily Gomez <egomez@hireheroesusa.org> serve as Co Chairs of the Award Committee. Delasia Rice currently works as the Graduate School Specialist at Fordham University and Emily Gomez works as the Employee Experience Manager at Hire Heroes USA.