FOX 8 segment on top careers and job growth features Elon

The report by Bob Buckley looked ahead at what careers may be in high demand 10 years down the road.

A recent report by WGHP FOX 8 about what careers might be in demand in the coming years featured Tom Brinkley, executive director of Elon’s Student Professional Development Center, and an Elon alum.

Tom Brinkley, executive director of the Student Professional Development Center

Reporter Bob Buckley produced the piece, which was a follow-up to a piece Buckley did in 2004  looking at jobs expected to be in demand in 2020 that featured Ryan Markel ’05. Markel, a senior at Elon at the time, told Buckley then that he was planning to go into computer science.

For the piece, Buckley caught up with Markel, who is now a chief technology officer working on web applications, big data migrations and analytics. “Throughout the 14 years, I’ve strived to keep up with all the fads and trends in the tech industry,” Markel told Buckley by email. “I was the first person in the company to get one of the Amazon Web Service’s top certifications.”

Buckley also sat down with Brinkley to look ahead again into the future to speculate about careers that could be in demand in 2030.

“Health care fields will be big, we know that,” Brinkley said. “So, physician’s assistants, physical therapist, nurses, we see a large demand on the horizons for these fields. Financial advisor is a big one. We’re seeing more interest in the financial management field. It’s estimated that the number of financial advisors is going up by 50 percent.”

Watch the entire segment here.