Odille Parker started her job on the events team for the Alumni Association in May 2022, which means she’d barely been here a month when We Are Weekend, the biggest Alumni Association event of the year, brought hundreds back to campus. “They had me everywhere,” she says of that blur of a weekend filled with tours, an ice cream social, and other celebratory events.

The Ohio native and Hope College graduate fell in love with event planning when she interned in the events department at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. (Her father raised her to be a huge Philly and Penn State sports fan.) This year Parker is taking the lead on We Are Weekend, which she says is a well-oiled machine that still “takes literally the entire Alumni Association to execute.” The introvert prefers to remain behind the scenes—“I like to plan something well and then see people enjoying it”—but her hard work will be visible to anyone who attends We Are Weekend in June.