Yeah, well, thank you for having me here today s o. I actually went through my undergrad program at James Madison University in Virginia back in 2008. And so that coincided with the time where the great recession happened. And so I graduated into a market that was very tight on the availability of jobs, and my undergraduate background was in video editing. And so I was lucky enough to the land an internship straight out of college at an ad agency on DSO. I worked as an intern for about three months, unpaid before they hired me on as a freelancer for another couple months and then eventually I gained full time employment at that same ad agency. And so I was lucky enough to be able to work in video editing. But after a couple of years, I had kind of the desire to grow further in my career, and I didn't necessarily want to do full time video editing my entire life. So I ended up going back to graduate school at the University of Virginia, and I studied Higher Education Administration. So I went through that program, and as part of the program, we were required to dio certain hours of internships and external ships throughout the program and during the summer. And so I had the opportunity to work in the undergraduate office of admissions as well as with their student, help your group, doing mentoring with the undergraduate students. And so that really opened the door to a career in admissions marketing, which was a really great blend of my previous career. Um, since within the ad agency, I was doing a lot of marketing at the time and because times were changing and a lot of companies were utilizing social media a lot more. That gave me the opportunity to grow and learn with those skills as they were becoming more and more commonplace in the market. And so I ended up getting my first job out of graduate school at the Darden School of Business, working with MBA graduate students on recruiting them through the Office of Admissions. And that's kind of where I ended up today, just growing within that career path in higher education, admissions

yes. So the thing you need to remember about working in higher education, especially within a marketing communications role, is it's very different from institution to institution. So in my particular role as associate director of enrollment marketing, I actually sit within the office of undergraduate admissions. And my main responsibility is to recruit our incoming class of first years and transfer students. So my main roles are really focusing in on email, communication and recruitment as well as lead generation. So working with different, um, Third party services, as well as our S A T and A C T partners to identify the best value leads for student recruitment. And then I also focus on working within the pipeline. And so once we have applicants, um, really focusing on yield strategies and working with our admission counseling team, as well as our Central Marketing Communications office to develop content and strategies to recruit students throughout the first year and transfer pipeline as far as my weekly work hours or like um, it's a standard 9 to 5 job Monday through Friday. But of course, that varies throughout the year. Um, before co vid, we definitely had our on campus events. And so it was definitely a all hands on deck situation where all of our admissions office wanted to be available for students during scholarship weekends, as well as admitted student events, which took place in the evenings and on weekends as well. Um, nowadays, because we are online, a lot of our webinars dio, um, center around student hours when they're available. So, of course, we don't want to host events while they are in school and in class. So a lot of our events are during the evening times, and so we'll take turns throughout the year. Thio take on some of that responsibility, so for the most part, it's a very stable 40 hour a week job. Summers air a little bit slower, but of course, depending on the time of year, you might have to work extra hours

so working in marketing, especially within higher education, is definitely ah, very challenging roles sometimes because it varies from role to role. If you talk to certain companies, they're really more focused on the marketing analytics side, whereas other companies might define marketing as more of a communications job. So writing and video editing and creating content. And so my current role is really a blend of the two. I do focus on a lot of strategic initiatives, but I am also really in charge of creating the content and then doing some of the data analyst. So those are a very wide variety of skills, and depending on the office that you work for, you might have several people who specializes in analytics and in contact creation and in social media who are able to do all those different things as a team. But with my specific role right now in our university, I'm the only person within the undergraduate admissions office that does all these things. However, I do have the ability to work with our Central Marketing and Communications Office as well as outside vendors, to accomplish all the things that we need to, but that also takes a lot of project management skills as well. So I would say Thio, any students or young professionals who are looking at marketing roles within higher education really try to define your skill set and define where you want your strengths to be. Because there are roles available that really focus in on the analytics or really focused in on the creative content management part. Or you can choose toe, have a role that's a little bit more broad and management focus, kind of like what I have to dio.