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Spotlight: Dillon Sylvester ’18
Sylvester in his student days.

Kristin Livingston

When he fi­rst arrived at Bentley, Dillon Sylvester ’18 wanted to join everything. He looked into plenty of groups but soon became hooked on the Student Alumni Leadership Council (SALC).

“SALC helped me realize that no matter what you’re doing on campus, it’s helped by donors,” he says. “The scholarships I got, the team I was on, the professors I admired were funded by people who didn’t even know me but wanted to pass on their success.”

  

Philanthropy makes you feel good. When you get into the practice of it, no matter the amount, you don’t think twice.

When his classmates paused at making a donation because they were paying for tuition, gas, groceries and other essentials, Sylvester understood. As he worked his way up the SALC executive ladder to become president in his senior year, he helped establish a communications strategy that spoke to those concerns. He asked friends to think about giving back as a habit.

“Philanthropy makes you feel good,” he says. “When you get into the practice of it, no matter the amount, you don’t think twice. You just know that you want to support a cause and people who mean a lot to you.”

That philosophy has made Sylvester one of the university’s youngest True Blue donors: someone who has given back to Bentley for at least the past five years.

He also returns to campus regularly to recruit for his employer, KPMG, where he’s an IT audit and assurance associate. Sylvester secured the job after a summer internship with the company.

            “Bentley offered so much to me — not just a job out of college, but a career I’m invested in,” he says. “The more time you spend here, the more you see the breadth of opportunities open to all students. Each experience gave me a different perspective on life and got me where I am today.”