Klaudia Fisheku has closed the metaphorical loop just six years after earning the first of her three Florida Gulf Coast University degrees.

As a senior in computer information systems, she started her internship in 2018 with Arthrex, the global medical device corporation headquartered in nearby Naples. Upon graduating in 2019, Fisheku immediately joined the company’s information technology applications architecture team. While working full time, she returned to FGCU to earn a master’s in information systems and analytics in 2021 and an MBA in 2022.

Now a senior business analyst in Arthrex’s IT department, she’s come full circle by also serving as a liaison between the company and her alma mater and as a role model for current students.

“The reason I am where I am today in my career is because of FGCU. I loved the family environment while I was there and the college experience,” Fisheku said. “When I was pursuing my degrees at FGCU, I received a lot of scholarships, I received a lot of mentorships, and I received a lot of professional advice. I found that to be very valuable because that’s how I discovered my career path.

“Now is my time to contribute back to the community by helping the next generation of college students discover their career path.”

Pursuing two passions

Joining Arthrex, which designs and manufactures orthopedic devices, allowed Fisheku to combine two longstanding interests: technology and healthcare.

“Technology really intrigues me because it’s changing so quickly. There is never a dull moment within technology. Also, in high school, I was involved in the Medical Academy as well as a computer programming elective. I knew I liked the two of them. I just didn’t know which path I was going to take,” she said. “At Arthrex, I could combine both my passion for the medical field and my passion for technology because that’s exactly what we do here.”

In her position, Fisheku maintains a systems portfolio, which she has developed over the last seven years at Arthrex. Using applications as the central core of the repository, she works with various IT and business stakeholders to keep the portfolio current with information regarding the application’s ownership, integrations to other systems, technical infrastructure the application operates on and business processes it supports. She also serves as a liaison between business and IT through her role in various global implementations.

“I’m also currently involved with many other different initiatives at a global level. Arthrex is an international organization, so for projects of any size, we are working with team members all across the globe,” she said.

Public speaking experience

A native of Albania, Fisheku didn’t speak English when she moved to Naples 21 years ago. Yet by the time she enrolled at FGCU, she achieved Honors College status and numerous awards. She was named Southwest Florida Regional Technology Partnership’s SWFL Technology Student of 2019, Lutgert College of Business Student of the Year in 2021, an FGCU Alumni Association Soaring Eagle in 2024 and the 2024 Rising Star from the Albanian American Organization of SWFL.

Fisheku credits FGCU with setting her up for success in her career through coursework in her computer information systems classes and helping her secure that senior-year internship with Arthrex. Besides the technology-related “hard skills” gained at FGCU, she also described public speaking and presentation classes as instrumental to help prepare students for the professional world.

“The most beneficial classes that helped me prepare for my career were the technical lab courses, along with public speaking curriculums. Throughout my internship, I was doing a lot of presentation work and presenting in front of my leadership team,” Fisheku said.

“In my current position, about 60-70% of my day is in meetings. In order to get a project done, we’re always working in teams and constantly meeting and communicating with each other,” she said. “Of all the courses I had taken at FGCU, I found the public speaking classes to be one of the most valuable that I would recommend to students.”

Staying connected with FGCU

That’s precisely what Fisheku is doing now as an alum who remains engaged with the university. She serves as a member of Arthrex’s IT Recruiting Committee and regularly visits campus for career fairs, classroom lecture presentations and Arthrex Day — a networking event connecting current students with company representatives. The company has about 100 interns across the organization every summer, with the majority being from FGCU, Fisheku said.

She also recently began serving as a mentor to Lutgert College students, helping them develop their resumes and elevator pitches and practice for job interviews. She also discusses career aspirations, goal setting and the value of interpersonal skills, inviting them to Arthrex and checking in with them even after the official mentorship period concludes.

The continuing involvement of alumni like Fisheku is critical to the college, according to its dean, Christopher Westley. Fisheku has even been a featured alum in advertising and marketing campaigns for the college and university.

“Klaudia’s values and work ethic make her a super role model for current students,” Westley said. “This is one of the reasons I love seeing her on campus interacting with our business students. Her career path after leaving Lutgert tells current graduates that their expectations for a better future are legitimate and justify the sacrifices made to attain it.

“Also, while we want our graduates to have full and productive careers wherever they want, Klaudia reminds us that this is especially possible in Southwest Florida, which wasn’t always the case in the years before there was an FGCU,” he said.