How to succeed in business...

By Sam Worley

Washington is nothing if not a networking town, which Ahmed Eltally knew even before he moved to the East Coast, looking to kick-start a career in international diplomacy. He had a vivid idea of how things might go: “Getting my suit and tie, going to think tank events, bumping into congresspeople in the street, drinking coffee at Starbucks.” Then 27 years old, Eltally had recently completed a graduate degree in conflict resolution at Portland State University in Oregon and settled in New Jersey while he looked for work. He soon found a job in his field at an organization based in D.C. And he was ready to make some connections.

Just one hitch: It was the beginning of 2020.

Rather than spending those crucial first months rubbing elbows with senior diplomats at D.C. coffeehouses, he found himself working alone from afar at home in New Jersey, wary of the lethal respiratory virus spreading around the world. “The word ‘quarantine’ was not in my dictionary, since English is not my first language,” says Eltally, who was born and raised in Egypt. He quickly learned what it meant.

He eventually relocated to Washington, D.C., that fall, though his job was still remote. Seeking ways to connect, Eltally looked online for young-professional groups in his new city — and found Rotary. He was familiar with the organization — in Portland, Eltally had been nominated for a Rotary Peace Fellowship — but it wasn’t until moving to Washington that he joined a Rotaract club, in 2021. Even as the club navigated pandemic challenges, it offered Eltally the kinds of social connection he was after. It also wound up playing a critical role in his professional life, allowing opportunities for networking and mentorship that he was missing by not working full time in an office.

“D.C. is a transient city. It’s very hard to sustain and build relationships, to find authentic connection and someone who cares about your professional development and wants to share their journey,” he says. “Rotary fills such a space in a way that feels both local and global.”

Even as more workers return to offices, other shocks to the economy and the labor market — from layoffs across industries to a global trade war — are throwing up new obstacles to professional development and career advancement. Research has found hybrid work alone has come at a cost to younger workers who might enjoy — even insist upon — the flexibility but are missing out on the essentials of early career development: mentorship, regular feedback, and training.

“In very small to big ways, we really have missed out on some incredible relationship-building opportunities, and the people who are going to suffer from it the most are the younger employees, without question,” says Allison McWilliams, assistant vice president for mentoring and alumni personal and career development at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. “We know that people who are well-mentored, they have greater role clarity. They have a better understanding of what it is they’re supposed to do, day in and day out. They have higher rates of promotion. They are more satisfied with the work that they’re doing and with their organizations.” The lack of those opportunities poses challenges for those beginning their careers, McWilliams says: “They’re desperate for this. They know that they need it and they will leave an organization when they’re not being given it.”

Community organizations like Rotary can fill the gap, offering members the kinds of networking, mentorship, and leadership development they may be missing at work or while searching for a job. “Rotary is a great example, or professional organizations, or other local civic organizations,” says McWilliams, whose grandfather was a Rotary district governor. “I tell people all the time: This doesn’t have to just come from work. There are a lot of places where you can seek this out.”

Professional growth opportunities

Though best known for service, Rotary was created in 1905 in Chicago to bring together business professionals from all fields to exchange ideas, build networks, and form friendships. Rotary International’s general secretary, John Hewko, has called the organization the “original LinkedIn.”

Today, many members, younger ones in particular, join first and foremost for networking, leadership, and career development opportunities. Those include everything from club leadership roles and opportunities to become better at public speaking and project management to finding mentors and making career connections locally or around the globe. For building specific skills, Rotary offers members a library of online courses ranging from conflict resolution and peacebuilding to grant management and fundraising.

Eltally, who became president of his D.C. Rotaract club, is one person who’s been able to take advantage of Rotary in this way. He has become director of education for the Ascension Rotaract Network that includes Rotary zones from a large area, and in 2023, he helped organize a Rotaract event on “career paths in the American foreign service,” co-sponsored with Young Professionals in Foreign Policy. Eltally knew the types of panelists he wanted: senior diplomats across government agencies, the kinds of people that young employees would be fortunate to run into in, say, the State Department cafeteria. The challenge was finding them outside the leafy confines of Foggy Bottom, the D.C. cultural and diplomatic district.

Eltally had an idea: He tapped into a database called DACdb, which stands for District and Club Database, that allows users to search Rotary members by location and occupation. There, he made contact with Rotarians who were leaders at government departments and invited them to join the conversation. Organizing the event was a skill-building exercise in itself.

The name of the event, Beyond Cocktails and Cigars, pointed to a new way of doing business and, in this case, of asking questions, seeking feedback, and advancing careers. And maybe that’s a good thing. Not everyone is into cocktails and cigars, anyhow.

Benefits of mentorship

Marilyn Nevy Cruz was in a similar position as Eltally nearly a decade earlier — completely unfamiliar with Washington, D.C., when she moved from California in 2012 to pursue a career. “I had no family or friends. I knew no one,” says Nevy Cruz, today a federal public defender who works on death penalty cases. “So I googled ‘community service organizations,’ and that’s where Rotaract popped up.” Like Eltally, she rose through the ranks, becoming president of her Rotaract club and, later, president of the Rotary Club of Washington, D.C.

Going from Rotaract to Rotary, Nevy Cruz has served as a bridge between generations. She became a mentor to Eltally and others, but only after receiving generous mentorship herself from a president of the D.C. club. “She really took me, as the Rotaract president, under her wing, and started to build that mentorship — informal, because it wasn’t forced,” Nevy Cruz recalls. “It was very natural.”

The two didn’t just talk about Rotary business. They became real friends, meeting for drinks or coffee, helping Nevy Cruz navigate professional life. “At the time, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to law school,” she remembers. “It was reviewing my statement of purpose, reviewing my speech performance, if I had a presentation at work. D.C. is such a small but important city in the country, and everybody is trying to move up to the next position.” She laughs. “So, how to navigate that — that was really important, especially not being from here.”

Mentorship is “such a critical piece of what Rotarians have to offer,” says Elizabeth Moody, a nonprofit consultant, Rotaractor, and former Rotary Scholar. But sometimes, Moody thinks, Rotary clubs put too much pressure on themselves to develop formal mentorship programs or match people by interests. In her D.C. Rotaract club, “we’ve generally tended to keep mentorship fairly informal, and it’s worked well.”

Sometimes the right mentor relationship can have clear professional results. That was the case for Cinderella Ndlovu, a member of the Rotary Club of Matopos, Zimbabwe. The founder of an environmental nonprofit, she traveled to the U.S. with the 2024 class of the Mandela Washington Fellowship, a leadership program for young people from Africa. In one of her classes, she listened intently as a clean energy expert talked about a solar workforce development project for military veterans in Ukraine. The guest speaker, Pat Courtney-Strong, turned out to be a Rotary member. “Pat’s project showed how, through Rotary, one can actually make an impact in a different part of the world,” Ndlovu says. “It’s something I really admire.” Ndlovu introduced herself after class, and since then Courtney-Strong has coached Ndlovu on grant writing, fundraising strategies, and project team engagement.

In addition to those hands-on skills, mentors can impart soft skills that are just as valuable. “Rotary has been great for me in terms of practicing public speaking, developing as a leader, developing as a communicator,” Moody notes. “It’s definitely built my résumé with a lot of different skills that have helped my professional career.”

There is such a hunger for the kinds of mentorship Rotary can offer, says Nevy Cruz, who’s built a profile as an expert on the topic. She says she’s “inundated” — in a good way, she adds — with requests. Her approach is to let the mentee lead. “It’s whatever the mentee needs at the time, from looking over a college application or a postgraduate application to dealing with financial troubles or a transition to a new job,” she says. This spring, she and Moody, another of her mentees, were preparing a breakout session for the Rotary International Convention in June in Calgary. The theme: effective mentorship strategies.

Worthwhile connections

For many members, that little Rotary lapel pin alone opens doors, to business partnerships, new clients, and jobs. Steve Amara knows all about this. He has been connected to Rotary most of his life, starting as a student participating in Interact in his native Cameroon and then as a Rotaractor working and studying overseas. But it wasn’t until after he returned to Africa in 2015 that he realized what an accelerator Rotary could be to his business career. “Rotary is, I dare say, the cornerstone of my personal and professional life,” he says in an interview via video call, wearing his trademark suit and tie — and Rotary pin.

Now based in Senegal, Amara has spent the past 10 years leading organizations in education and digital innovation across West Africa, each time leaning on his Rotary connections to get established and to understand the cultural nuances crucial to making deals in different places. “Every time, my first investors, my lawyer, and my banker were all Rotarians,” he says with a laugh.

He arrived in Senegal’s capital in 2019 to take over as CEO at expat-dakar.com, a classifieds platform that had stalled on its growth path to topping $1 million in annual revenue. His Rotary connections, including the owners of large hotel chains, car dealerships, and more, allowed him to lure big corporate deals needed to grow the platform.

For Amara what makes Rotary such a valuable business network is what he calls the “strong presumption of shared values” in potential partners and clients. Chief among those values, he says, is the desire to come together to do good. “There is nothing else. It’s not because we come from the same tribe, or because we work in the same field, or because we practice the same faith,” he says. “It’s just the pleasure to be with each other as people who want to do good.”

That’s why, within his Rotary club, Dakar Millénium, Amara knows he can rely on a group of elders he calls his “fantastic five.” “When I have issues, I know I can call them,” he says. “I’m in a safe space. They are always going to tell me the right thing to do.”

Half a world away, in Malaysia, another longtime Rotarian is opening doors for younger professionals. Leslie Salehuddin, now semiretired, started a boutique recruitment agency in the 1990s to help companies large and small find job candidates. While scanning résumés, he’d often deliver an additional recruitment pitch: nudging people with an obvious passion for community service to consider joining Rotary.

With his decades of experience building careers, Salehuddin, a member of the Rotary Club of Gombak, Kuala Lumpur, puts on career development seminars, including for participants in Rotary Youth Leadership Awards camps. He notes how young people’s goals have changed over time, including wanting to work for themselves or to work online. “While we were looking for 9-to-5 jobs, nowadays kids want to start a coffee business or to start this or that,” he says. “They’re very inquisitive. They’re very resourceful.”

Exploring new paths

These days, Rotary members in Washington, D.C., are leaning on their networks more than ever amid the large-scale downsizing of the federal government workforce. The upheaval has left legions of civil servants without jobs and narrowed options for graduates hoping to enter public service.

"I've never seen a situation where so many folks approaching graduation, especially in the public or international service field, are so unsure of where the opportunities will be for jobs," says Mike McCabe, until recently a regional director for the Peace Corps for Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. As a political appointee under the Biden administration, McCabe resigned as the new president came into office. It’s customary for political appointees to leave their jobs in such fashion, but he’s never seen such widespread departures.

McCabe is president of the Rotary Club of Washington Global, which includes many people who work in international development. To help laid-off workers find a place to land, the club helped organize an April event at George Washington University, where people could connect free of charge with career coaches, practice giving one-minute pitches promoting previous successes, and simply get to know one another. “While Rotarians cannot reopen government agencies, they can certainly offer friendship, skill-building opportunities, career tools, networking, community support, and hope during these challenging times,” says the club’s 2024-25 president, Rose Cardarelli. Within days of the event, 21 of the attendees joined the club.

The club’s members are practiced at such events because they’ve already been doing this kind of work, as Rotary members, for years. Last year the club launched a mentorship program for young people interested in careers in the field of international development.

The club created a webpage with bios of potential mentors and spread the word through career offices at universities that those experts were available for consultation in topics like peacebuilding, climate finance, and humanitarian assistance. “We followed what the strength of our club members was, which was international development, and the joint desire of us to do mentoring of young professionals,” McCabe says. Interested mentees can get in touch if they want to chat — mostly for one-time conversations, though some longer relationships develop.

“Global issues are not going away,” McCabe says. “The question is, How do we support those who are passionate about doing good in the world to get connected to jobs where they could do it?” For instance, he’s been helping a student at George Mason University who is planning a campus conference on fighting human trafficking and might like to find a career in the field — still eminently possible, despite the challenges. “People are like, all right, I understood the pathways before. How have the pathways shifted now?” McCabe says. “A lot of it comes back to what Rotary can be good at, which is teaching entrepreneurial thinking in meeting community needs, globally or locally.”

Ahmed Eltally, who today manages projects on international security, peacebuilding, and other areas for a State Department contractor, is also casting a concerned eye toward the future. But his own experience shows that flexibility and resilience are necessary preconditions for change.

He’s reinvented himself before, after all. Eltally’s first career, in Egypt and the Gulf region, was in civil engineering. After people challenged authoritarian governments in the region in the early 2010s with the Arab Spring uprisings, he decided he wanted to “understand how conflicts work,” so he went back to school to study conflict resolution.

“I always tell people, I used to build bridges of concrete,” Eltally says. “Now I build bridges of peace and understanding.” And as a connected Rotary member, he’s ready to help others find their way to the right path for them, whether the bridge they’re crossing is real or metaphorical.

This story originally appeared in the August 2025 issue of Rotary magazine.

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