My name is Lydia Rohde. I went to Northwestern University from 2014 to 2018 so I'll just jump right in. I work at Mazda North American operations. I'm a district sales manager. I've been here for about two years. To get where I am today, I would say a lot of help came from my mentors at Northwestern. I was on the women's basketball team there, and they have a program for student athletes called NU for Life and with NU for life you are given the opportunity to meet with mentors, meet with previous athletic alums who are in careers today that I can help you grow your career and teach you how to network. They go as far as to show you what clothes you should wear during an interview, how to prepare for an interview, and just how to connect with people. So through NU for life, I met a former softball athlete who works at Mazda when I was job searching at the end of my senior year. She was connected with me because Mazda was looking for some entry level kids who just graduated so the NU for life connection mentioned my name I got in touch with them, went through a few interviews, went to their headquarters in Chicago, and then they offered me the job a few weeks later. So I started in July of 2018 and it was all owed to my connections at Northwestern. So if I have any advice for you, it would be to use the connections that you have at your at your university. Make sure you're in the career advancement office, meeting with someone, making those networking connections right away.

so the responsibilities and decisions that are handled in my job. So as a district sales manager, I'm in District seven, which is the Detroit area. So I have nine dealerships or eight dealerships now that I oversee a few in the Detroit area, two in Grand Rapids and one in Toledo. So that's kind of my area. I my regular workday looks like pretty much waking up, checking email, checking sales reports, Um, and then I before COVID I would go to one of those dealerships each day. So the grand Rapids dealers I visit once or twice a month. But the others I'd be there pretty much once a week, visiting mostly the sales managers and general managers, meeting with them, going over reports, making sure that their sales, um, seeing how they're still were going. What's working, What's not working, doing some training, whether it be with online Mazda Systems or doing training with their sales salespeople. Sometimes I meet with their service managers but I have a service counterpart, and he does most of the service stuff, so I'm usually doing the sales stuff, um, weekly work hours, so I probably be on my computer from 7 45 till 9, 9 30 depending on which dealership I am visiting that day. Um, cause some are, you know, 45 minutes to an hour away. I have one that's 15 minutes away, and then Grand Rapids, about 2.5 hours. Just depends on where I'm going that day. I use a robber on 10 10 30 on their 32 probably 1 32 sometimes to the year three, depending on how much I want to get done that day. I usually try to stick to three or four main points to go over when I'm there, and I make sure to meet with the general manager just to say hi. Even if have nothing to bring for them that day or her that day, I would check in, say hi. It's always good to maintain those relationships when you're in the dealerships meeting. So yet

some challenges would be. There are some difficult people that you will deal with at any time in life. And maybe one day someone's having a bad day or they just aren't interested in what you're bringing to the table that day. So I would say some of the biggest challenges are trying to get people to listen and implement what I am telling them. For example, if I bring a report to them that shows that there, um sales loyalty has dropped 20% in the past year suddenly been dropping. And I want to bring them some tips on how to improve this sales loyalty. And they don't want to listen. They don't want to do what I'm suggesting. I know that you don't have to do what I'm suggesting, but at that 20% has a huge drop and pretty much they should be looking for any any tips and tricks to help them bring that little to look out. But just people not really taking into account what I'm saying or not wanting to do the work to implement or doing the work for a week and then letting it fall to the wayside. So I think just staying consistent with my communication is important. Just being positive all the time, Even if someone's giving me kind of a negative attitude, I have to, you know, take that deep breath, say you know, maybe they're having a bad day. Maybe something happened at home. You know, so just trying to always be positive, Um, and always be prepared, they might ask questions that you weren't prepared for. And then it makes you look a little bit like, Oh, I wasn't ready for this meeting, you know? So just make sure you are prepared for everything and staying positive.