By: Ayanté Williams

Nundi Hall-Travis is a 2019 Belmont graduate who majored in Communication Studies with a minor in Social Justice. In a recent interview, she shared about her transition from college to her professional career.

Nundi is currently based in Nashville, Tennessee and works at Dollar General as the Corporate Human Resources Representative. She created her job title. She said, “I showed off my strengths, told them the things I did and did not want to do. I made my job description and presented it to them, and they agreed with it.”

In her professional role, Nundi s the first-stop point-of-contact for new hires. Every semester, Nundi hosts a virtual college symposium for college students and recent graduates to get an insight into what life is like at Dollar General.

Before her academic journey in college, she wasn’t too sure what she wanted to study in college. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I was first looking at colleges. I knew I was very social; I like to talk to people, and I wanted to help people. So I knew that Communication was the degree that I could obtain that was combination of the things I enjoyed doing.”

During her time at Belmont, Nundi was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority and the Black Student Association. She studied abroad multiple times and spent time in Switzerland, Italy, Spain, London, and France.

“I never thought that once I graduated Belmont that I was going to work in HR. I believe that HR finds you. If you are interested in HR then you should find what department in HR to intern in…like benefits, recruiting, generalist, human organization development, diversity and inclusion.”

Nundi had one internship at the Career and Professional Development office at Belmont, which helped her along her professional career. Reviewing resumes and cover letters and conducting mock interviews are some of her intern responsibilities that she carried over to her current role. Now, she is the main recruiter for a multi-million dollar company for the internship program.

Some of the classes that she found very useful to this day are Argumentation and Debate, Corporate Training and Development, Communication Tools, and Interpersonal Communication.

“These classes make you think differently from your co-workers and the things that we find simple give you a leg up because not everyone has the privilege of the information that is given in these classes.”

The last question that I asked Nundi was what advice she would give to her past self that will help others.

Nundi stated, “You’re going to be okay. It’s okay to push yourself for deadlines and things but holding yourself to life goals that are out of your control on a time basis, it’s not fair to yourself. So, forgive yourself.”