Simone Cheatham (Class of 2006)

March 12, 2018

In 2006, when Simone Cheatham graduated from Heritage, she found herself on a long and winding road to her eventual career and current position as an Employee Relations and Employee Engagement Manager at Comcast NBCUniversal in the Chicago area.

She began her journey at the University of Pittsburgh not really knowing what she wanted to study.

"I started as a pre-med student, but made a pretty dramatic shift to journalism and loved it. I realized that I had a true passion for writing and interacting with others. I would've continued in journalism, but the recession hit and there wasn't a lot of opportunity in the field when I was graduating," she says.

Simone decided to go to law school at the University of Illinois as a next step, in order to continue writing and learn a skill set that she could use to help others. While in law school, she discovered that the university had a program for Human Resources and Industrial Relations. She ended up graduating from both programs, taking internships in both the legal and HR fields, and passing the Indiana bar. Afterward, she found that she enjoyed having the human and company connection that HR provided and decided to pursue it rather than law.

Since graduating college, Simone has held multiple positions in multiple locations for Fortune 200 companies. Her positions have focused on a variety of areas including labor & employee relations, talent acquisition & recruitment, performance management, compliance, compensation, payroll and succession planning.