Ole Career Launcher Student Success Profile: Kristian Noll ’21
The skills that a liberal arts degree helps Oles develop can take them far in life. The Piper Center’s new Ole Career Launcher is designed to accelerate that trajectory. In this profile, Kristian Noll ’21 shares his experience with the Ole Career Launcher’s International Affairs Careers track.
With a father who worked in the Foreign Service, Kristian Noll ’21 grew up overseas and has long had an eye on a career in international affairs. He majored in political science and Norwegian, further preparing himself for a role in the field.
And last fall, he participated in the International Affairs track within the Ole Career Launcher, which he describes as a meaningful addition to his portfolio of experiences and classwork. He says the sessions helped him see a much wider range of opportunities than he had considered in the past. “There’s the Department of State,” he says. “But there’s much more than that: the Department of the Interior, Department of Energy, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations,” he says, ticking off just a few of the options he hadn’t before considered.
He adds that having an Ole, Claire Campbell ’01, offering career advice made a meaningful difference to him. “It’s easy to see people from Georgetown, Harvard, or Princeton in some of these roles and think, ‘Well, maybe you can get those because you went to school in those places. But what about St. Olaf?’ Having someone from St. Olaf
who has worked in all of these places was a confidence booster.”
It’s easy to see people from Georgetown, Harvard, or Princeton in some of these roles and think, ‘Well, maybe you can get those because you went to school in those places. But what about St. Olaf?’ Having someone from St. Olaf who has worked in all of these places was a confidence booster.Kristian Noll ’21
This spring Noll received the German International Parliament Stipendium, a highly competitive and prestigious international award that took him to Berlin for a five-month program at the Bundestag. The purpose of the program is to immerse participants in the decision-making of the parliamentary process. It provided yet another invaluable experience for Noll.
“St. Olaf has been a fantastic place for me to develop my interests,” he says.