Chris­tine Aboud and Jer­ad Lumi­na are speak­ing at SAP Sap­phire & ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence, May 11 – 13, 2026, in Orlando.

As SAP con­tin­ues to roll out new fea­tures and encour­age enter­pris­es to adopt arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, orga­ni­za­tions are strug­gling to keep up — and find the staff with the nec­es­sary skills to stay ahead of the competition. 

Accord­ing to the ASUG 2026 Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer Research, 35% of respon­dents indi­cat­ed that they have orga­ni­za­tion­al chal­lenges around keep­ing up with the pace of tech­nol­o­gy changes — up from 29% in 2025. Anoth­er 59% of com­pa­nies indi­cat­ed that their most impor­tant skill is SAP S/4HANA exper­tise, and 36% said AI and ML are at the top of their list. 

Numer­ous edu­ca­tors at both the col­le­giate and learn­ing acad­e­my lev­els are train­ing the incom­ing cohort of SAP pro­fes­sion­als, and their schools are part of SAP Uni­ver­si­ty Alliances. These edu­ca­tors and their stu­dents also have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be ASUG mem­bers and part of ASUG Cam­pus Con­nect, which pro­vides events and pro­gram­ming to build mean­ing­ful con­nec­tions and expand knowl­edge of SAP. 

At SAP Sap­phire and ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence May 11 – 13, an ASUG Cam­pus Con­nect pan­el will fea­ture Chris­tine Aboud, CEO of St. Michaels Learn­ing Acad­e­my and SAP Vet­er­ans to Work; Jer­ad Lumi­na, Direc­tor of SAP Uni­ver­si­ty Com­pe­tence Cen­ter (UCC) Lubar Col­lege of Busi­ness at UW-Mil­wau­kee; and Car­olyn Szczurek, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Lead at ASUG, to dis­cuss the influ­ence that ASUG Cam­pus Con­nect can have on a career — and be of assis­tance for enter­pris­es seek­ing trained talent. 

Local Con­nec­tions

ASUG Cam­pus Con­nect events often coin­cide with ASUG chap­ter meet­ings, which take place through­out the year at the 39 ASUG chap­ters across the U.S. and Canada. 

Stu­dents involved in ASUG Cam­pus Con­nect have oppor­tu­ni­ties to vol­un­teer with the chap­ters, such as help­ing with reg­is­tra­tion and set­ting up the tech need­ed to run pre­sen­ta­tions, so they can list this vol­un­teer expe­ri­ence on their resumes; it’s always good to show involve­ment with an orga­ni­za­tion that’s relat­ed to their career, Aboud said. Often­times, lunch is pro­vid­ed dur­ing the meet­ing, pro­vid­ing a great avenue to net­work with oth­er local SAP professionals. 

Lumi­na has brought stu­dents to chap­ter meet­ings, allow­ing them to gain more per­spec­tive on the things they’ve learned in the class­room, espe­cial­ly hear­ing about the issues that local com­pa­nies are fac­ing. ​“It just kind of reminds them and kind of pre­pares them,” he explained. ​“OK, this is what I saw in class. How am I con­nect­ed to what’s actu­al­ly hap­pened in the real world?”

He point­ed to Chap­ter Chair Ron Gilson, a long­time ASUG Vol­un­teer and for­mer board mem­ber, who often shouts out stu­dents in front of the chap­ter audi­ence, let­ting oth­er atten­dees know to approach and help guide the learn­ers. ​“That’s been ben­e­fi­cial, just hav­ing an enthu­si­as­tic chap­ter chair,” Lumi­na said. 

Lumi­na also often has sourced guest lec­tur­ers for his class­es from chap­ter meet­ings, allow­ing addi­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties for his stu­dents to con­nect to SAP pro­fes­sion­als who are hir­ing tal­ent like them. ​“I’ve seen a lot of suc­cess out of hav­ing guest lec­tur­ers who I’ve met out of ASUG,” he said, adding that as stu­dents land roles quick­ly, it builds up his pro­gram and boosts the university’s enroll­ment num­bers, too. 

Piv­otal Tran­si­tion to Career 

Expo­sure through ASUG is a step­ping stone for col­lege stu­dents and vet­er­ans who are tran­si­tion­ing into the work­place and cor­po­rate America. 

Earl Bell, a for­mer Army Sergeant First Class and now instruc­tor at SMLA, shared that in his expe­ri­ence, ASUG Cam­pus Con­nect has been a wel­com­ing place to learn from and net­work with the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion. As vet­er­ans tran­si­tion out of ser­vice and into the civil­ian work­force, Cam­pus Con­nect is an impor­tant resource to those who seek a career with SAP tech­nol­o­gy. ​“It stream­lines them into the com­mu­ni­ty and resources of employ­ers that are look­ing to men­tor and pull them into their com­pa­nies,” he said. 

“It real­ly is con­nect­ing them to what a future in SAP as a career looks like,” Aboud added. As stu­dents — both vet­er­ans and civil­ians — look at a sea of peo­ple at a chap­ter meet­ing, they see both a diver­si­ty of peo­ple and indus­tries. Every­one is rep­re­sent­ing dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies and using SAP in dif­fer­ent ways, and it gives stu­dents a snip­pet of what their future might look like, while rein­forc­ing that they made a good deci­sion in choos­ing all these SAP class­es, Aboud said with a laugh. 

And at every mock inter­view at chap­ter meet­ings, she has seen at least one or two suc­cess­ful job place­ments. There’s always a star stu­dent present, who starts their career at this first inter­view they use as prac­tice. The rest who are present often are still encour­aged to apply with their mock inter­view­er, or they’re con­nect­ed with anoth­er com­pa­ny that is hiring. 

Con­nec­tions at Conferences

At the upcom­ing SAP Sap­phire and ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence, Aboud and Lumi­na will speak on a pan­el about their expe­ri­ence with ASUG Cam­pus Con­nect and every­thing it has to offer both com­pa­nies seek­ing tal­ent and stu­dents seek­ing employment. 

Lumi­na shared that at a past event, he wasn’t expect­ing to find more uni­ver­si­ties to join SAP Uni­ver­si­ty Alliances or ASUG Cam­pus Con­nect, but there was a pro­fes­sor in the audi­ence who expressed inter­est in get­ting the word out and con­tin­u­ing to build on the exist­ing network. 

At this year’s ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence, Lumi­na is excit­ed to fur­ther that aware­ness of the ASUG Cam­pus Con­nect pro­gram — and help con­nect stu­dents to jobs. 

Aboud is hope­ful for and eager­ly antic­i­pat­ing the con­ver­sa­tions and con­nec­tions that will come from those who attend the ses­sion, and she is moti­vat­ed to con­tin­ue to pro­vide con­nec­tions between stu­dents and enterprises.

Espe­cial­ly now with the polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment, tal­ent is more home­grown than years past, and ​“peo­ple are look­ing for where they can find the next wave of SAP tal­ent and they don’t know,” Aboud said. ​“They just don’t know.” ASUG Cam­pus Con­nect can help.