By DEREK REDD

WEST LIBERTY — Amanda Welsch is a millennial.

“And proud of it,” she said.

Yet she admits one thing about her generation — it’s resistant to engagement. Hard to engage, hard to contact, hard to get to pick up a phone. She also admits that, when offered the job as director of alumni affairs at West Liberty University, she hesitated.

She ultimately accepted, though, and has been at work ever since establishing and building connections between WLU and its alumni.

Through her job, she realized many of the connections she needed to build came from her generation of students at the university.

“Surprisingly, none of my college friends, spanning from undergrad in 2013 to an MBA in 2018, had been in contact with our alma mater,” she said. “My husband is 15 years older than me and an alumnus of West Liberty and he had the same reaction. It became clear that alumni from the past 25 years were largely disconnected, which I saw as a personal challenge.”

She took on the challenge by initiating efforts to reconnect. She established social media platforms, helped establish multiple alumni chapters and affinities and expanded West Liberty’s overall alumni network. The key, Welsch said, was patience.

“I am still building,” she said.

And she’s still evolving in her job at West Liberty. It’s something she has learned in this role and other jobs before this — change is constant. The need to pivot comes more often than she’d like, but there’s no getting away from it. Recently, Welsch said she lost more than half the staff she had leaned on to make events successful.

“I am an office of one,” she said. “It isn’t easy, my days are long, but I had to pivot to make it work. However, I’ve learned to put in the same effort whether I have a team of 10 or just myself. Things get done that way.”

Living in the Ohio Valley, Welsch said she has seen a growth in women in leadership positions that has made her confident in the impact women continue to make in the region and hopeful that growth will continue.

Those women not only support each other in leadership roles, she said, but they also rally for their entire community.

“I’m immensely grateful for the incredible network of women in this area and they are the bright spots,” she said. “It’s no secret that the Ohio Valley loves to support multiple causes. From fundraisers, volunteer opportunities, seats on boards, galas, and more — there’s no shortage of helping hands. Again, in my opinion I’ve noticed women gradually emerging as prominent figures in the Ohio Valley and though that might be a bold statement, I say that because I see it.”