Eckerd College Career Mentor Program leads young alumna to dream job at FBI

“I was excited and a little nervous,” she admits. “But it helped that Patrick and his wife put together a list of apartments to look at in the Portland area.

“Patrick has been incredibly helpful,” she adds. “When he was away from work for a week, he made a point of asking people I work with to make sure I was doing okay. And he introduced me to a really good group of people, who are now my good friends.”

“Some people at work have jokingly called me her work dad,” adds Patrick, who has two teenagers of his own. Both of his parents and an aunt graduated from Florida Presbyterian College in 1971 before its name was changed to Eckerd College. In fact, he probably wouldn’t exist if his parents hadn’t met at the College and been convinced by one of their own mentors that they would make a good match. “I couldn’t be happier to welcome the next generation of Eckerd alumni to the Bureau,” he says.

So now Alexis is an operations support technician for the Bureau. “It’s a good way to figure out how the office works as a whole,” she explains. “It’s a great position.”

And it’s not difficult, she adds, to see herself as a mentor someday. “I can absolutely see myself doing that down the road,” she says. “I was a training coordinator with EC-ERT [Eckerd College Emergency Response Team], and I really enjoy helping people.”

Gumprecht says she encourages graduating seniors to stay in touch with their mentors, as Alexis did. “Patrick shared many updates with me throughout 2023 and 2024,” Gumprecht says, “but the best one I received was the message this past February that not only did Alexis get hired by the FBI, but she was placed at the same site as Patrick.”