Victory Ime is Finding Happiness and Success at Oracle

His senior year was a season of change. At the beginning of the year, he realized he wanted to change the direction of his career trajectory. Victory was an Exercise Science major at Emory & Henry, headed to the E&H School of Health Sciences. “I was very invested in the plan…until I kind of wasn’t.” In the end, he decided to complete the major, but wanted to think about a new plan for his life’s work.

By the end of his senior year, there was a worldwide pandemic that affected absolutely everything. “With the pandemic you’ve got to adapt and change, and that’s something that was definitely easier said than done.” He tells of practicing how to do job interviews via Zoom. “I’d record myself and figure out what to do differently. I never noticed I fidgeted so much!”

He decided to take a gap year after undergrad, and this was very much counterintuitive to his usual patterns. His parents are Nigerian immigrants, and his family is very focused on school and a solid career plan. So they were a little uncertain about this gap year. “They thought it was very American of me!”

But he stuck to his plan. “I doubted myself…but I had to remember my ‘why.’ I was taking a chance on myself. I didn’t want to look like a failure, but I realized that it was ok to fail…it was ok to have a bad interview. I learned things from each of those experiences.”

During the gap year he worked with E&H’s van Vlissingen Career Center, he practiced his interviewing skills, and he considered how to leverage his connections, experiences, and new-found information. “I also prayed and manifested with a vision board because it helped me visualize where I wanted to be during my transition time.”

And he noticed certain terms kept coming up over and over. “I kept hearing words like ‘recruitment’ and ‘sales’ and ‘customer relations.’ And I learned at Emory & Henry how much I love connecting to people.” Victory says the Bonner program was pivotal for him, and he especially loved being a representative to the Bonner program’s big annual conference in Danville, Kentucky. That’s where he saw the power of connections at work. “I loved being in that collaborative space and meeting different kinds of people – and I knew then that this was the kind of work I’d love to do.”

Victory is now a Business Development Consultant for Oracle, the second largest software company in the world. He has moved to Austin, Texas, and he is making personal and professional connections in a new community. And he is thriving.

His best advice for students coming along behind him? “Let your dreams be big. Advocate for yourself. And reach out to people you know and admire and ask them how they got where they are. I think that’s one thing the pandemic helped: with everyone in a virtual space I feel like there has been more intentionality about reaching out to help people.”

You’ll enjoy hearing Victory share his story on the Duck Pond Wall podcast, or listen live to the show weekly on WEHC 90.7 FM.