Ian Strauss

Halloran sits in her office at her side table.

High school life can often feel challenging as students take risks and adapt to many changes. Among the inner workings of WA’s counseling department, counselor Karen Halloran makes sure that students are given opportunities to face these challenges. By organizing scholarships, orchestrating career exploration breakfasts, and being present as a supportive student counselor, Halloran helps WA students navigate the next steps of their lives. Now it is her turn to enter a new phase of her life as she retires from WA after 13 years.

At WA, Halloran has coordinated 153 currently available scholarships for seniors, and organized almost 50 speakers for the Career Breakfast just this year. However, Halloran has also worked a variety of jobs in her life prior to the multiple responsibilities she has taken on as a counselor.

Halloran grew up in Syracuse, New York, and attended the Rochester Institute of Technology for college. While she was there, she met her future husband and graduated with a degree in hotel management. Halloran then moved to Texas and worked for Marriott before moving back north to Chicago. There, she got engaged to her now-husband of 35 years, while she worked at a Hyatt Hotel.

“I worked for the Hyatt in Chicago for a year, but that’s 50 hours a week with nights, weekends, and holidays, all the time, and very low pay. Even so, I love the hospitality industry,” Halloran said.

After leaving Hyatt, Halloran worked selling insurance, moved to New Hampshire, then left insurance to sell office supplies. Soon after, Halloran entered one of the biggest challenges life can throw at a person: parenthood.

She stayed at home to take care of her kids before going back to work as a director for the lifestyle magazine Southern Living. Around that time, Halloran’s friend, and then-counselor, Dean of Students Betsy Murphy, offered her a position as an intern at the WA counseling department. They met through the PMC, a more than 100 mile biking fundraiser for fighting cancer, which both Murphy and Halloran’s husband were participating in.

“Halloran was there with a couple of the wives serving us lunch when we made our 100 mile trek,” Murphy said. “And so I sat on the beach and talked with her, and she told me what she did for a living and that she was thinking about getting into school counseling. And I said ‘You know what? I just took a course, and I have a voucher at Rivier if you want to take one. I’ll give you the $500 voucher. Go take a course and see if you’re interested’. And that’s how it started, on a beach.”

So Halloran ended up getting her masters at Rivier in order to be a counselor.

“I went and I signed up to take a class that I didn’t need any prerequisites for. It was called Abnormal Psychology, and I loved it,” Halloran said. “At that time, Southern Living was going out of business, and I wasn’t earning trips anymore. It was time for the next thing anyway, and I got my master’s.”

Having worked all the jobs she did in all the places she did, Halloran was able to learn more about herself in the process of frequently moving around.

“I realized I like every day to be different. I like to be in charge of my schedule, and all of those jobs do that, and all of those jobs talk to the public in some way or do some type of customer service,” Halloran said.

A large portion of Halloran’s job as a counselor is servicing students and communicating with organizations or individuals. Every scholarship has selection boards who communicate with Halloran to provide relevant information on the opportunity to students, and registrations have to then be presented back to the scholarship selectors. For the Career Breakfast, Halloran has to reach out to individuals in each of the fields students might be interested in, to ask them to present their experiences in that field.

Now, after 13 years as a counselor and a lifetime of changes, Halloran has parting advice for the students at WA.

“Experience new experiences, because this is the perfect time in your life,” Halloran said. “You don’t have any ties, you don’t have any major responsibilities, […] So I would say, go for it […] just step outside your comfort zone a little bit […] Don’t let the fear of failure get in the way.”

Halloran has learned not to be afraid of failure after years of experience. She recalls one specific moment where she almost didn’t take a job because of a fear of rejection.

“I remember when I was going to become a consultant for Southern Living […] and my husband said, ‘Go for it. You’ve got nothing to lose.’ And I thought to myself, ‘Yeah, the only thing I have to lose is, “what if I fail?”‘” Halloran said. “And you have to get over that. You have to go for it. It doesn’t matter what other people think, you have to do what you have to do, what you want to do, for yourself.”

Halloran has learned from all the risks she took over the years, and the people that stood by her through it all. Halloran plans to spend her retirement going on river boat cruises, seeing Europe, and playing lots and lots of golf.