Biggest Takeaways

• Team Management

  • While previous position holders had oversaw marketing committees with less than three people, I took it upon myself to build a 9-person team with brand new roles, including marketing project managers and and PR directors.

  • Originally comprised of strangers, this team quickly became one of SUSA’s most creative outputs, generating engagement ideas every week.

  • While I learned the intricacies of project management through by building my team, I learned important skills to keep teams highly motivated and determined to succeed (even in an unpaid position).

• Cross-Functional Teamwork

  • By serving on an executive board of 12 different people, I worked with many event planners to execute marketing strategies for their events. By planning and coordinating these 200+ events each semester, I enhanced my organizational abilities while strengthening my communication skills. To maximize the marketing team’s efficiency, we created a 4-month long marketing calendar that expertly coordinated every moving part to ensure team members completed projects significantly earlier than final deadlines.

• Email Marketing Principles

  • Aside from the team management, I personally compiled all Smith undergraduate events and authored 40+ weekly email newsletters. In addition to composing the newsletters, I developed strategies to increase the number of SUSA Weekly recipients by redesigning our guerilla marketing practices.

  • After just a few weeks, we more than doubled our outreach from 600 students to 1400+ subscribers. This increased event attendance and bolstered SUSA’s brand recognition throughout the business school.

  • The students reading this newsletter fell subjects to A|B testing our team conducted to identify top strategies that enhance student engagement. Tracking these analytics helped our team identify opportunities to increase student event attendance even further

• Generating Creative Content

  • By launching the #HumansOfSmith project, Smith students felt more engaged and connected to one another. This bolstered our social media engagement and provided rich content that gathered strong visibility and like counts.

  • In addition, our Instagram page utilized new “Highlights” features to create #FastFactFridays, #MotivationalMondays, and other unique social media campaigns. This profile received high praise and served as a model for professional organizations’ Instagram profiles across the University of Maryland.

• Social Media​

  • I recognized that SUSA did not have any presence on Instagram. As a result, one of my first charges in this role was to launch an Instagram account and fully develop it with engaging campaigns and eye-catching designs.

  • Through the duration of my term, the page gained ~250 followers while maintaining a 6:1 follower-to-following ratio by creating consistent content and arranging strategic partnerships.​

My experience with SUSA further confirmed my love for brand marketing and marketing strategy, yet I know these careers do not exist immediately following college. As a result, I look forward to pursuing multiple careers in social media marketing, design, communications, and more in order to better even out my candidacy.