MY BACKGROUND

I manage key pieces of our enterprise communication strategy, owning the full execution cycle for everything from newsletters and in-app messaging to feature releases and sensitive updates. eMoney has been a different kind of marketing education. Everything runs on a strict cycle with a defined process for every piece of the puzzle, which was a new muscle for me to build. I work cross-functionally with product, content, creative, marketing ops, client implementation, and project management teams, and the coordination required to keep everything moving is no small feat. The attention to detail this role demands is unlike anything I've experienced before. I'm managing communications and product release information for 25 different enterprise firms who are each getting a different version of the same thing, so getting it right every single time isn't optional. One of my favorite wins has been taking the Communication Resource Center newsletter from a 13% open rate to 30% in just three months through A/B testing and AI-driven analysis. At my other jobs, the challenge was repeating a process across many different projects. Here, it's been about improving the process on the same project over and over again.

At JLL, I managed the marketing strategy behind a portfolio of 60 commercial properties across the East Coast, supporting 80+ brokers with everything from signage and email campaigns to broker events and client strategy sessions. The role demanded serious attention to detail and strong organizational skills, as I was constantly juggling multiple projects with conflicting deadlines and pivoting timelines as changes came in. This included everything from building brands from scratch and doing full refreshes of existing materials to coordinating across brokers, ownership, and the creative team on the same project, making sure every stakeholder had the right details at the right time. I worked across the Adobe Creative Suite, led vendor calls, created budgets for broker events, and represented marketing in weekly brokerage team meetings for the regions I supported.

One of my favorite projects from this role was a full website redesign that I actually pitched myself. The existing site looked like it hadn't been touched since 2005, so I asked if I could redo it and was handed nearly full creative control within brand guidelines. I took a navy blue that had been sitting on the edges of our brand palette and made it a primary color, then worked closely with our agency to bring the whole vision to life. I also built a brand and website from scratch for a podcast one of our attorneys launched with a partner at a wealth management firm, handling everything from logo design and color selection to photographer sourcing and location scouting. The branding and site are still in use today, essentially unchanged from what I created in 2023.

This started as my senior year internship and turned into a role I kept coming back to, first part-time after graduation and later as supplemental work while I was getting my MBA. IMG markets some of the most stunning luxury residential properties in New York City, and I got to be pretty hands-on from early on. I assisted on photoshoots for multi-million dollar apartments, edited photos in Photoshop and Lightroom, managed Instagram including content creation, scheduling, and community engagement, and helped maintain the social calendar. I also put together a weekly summary of the Olshan Report for my manager, which kept the team informed on luxury contract activity across Manhattan. It was a great foundation for understanding how storytelling and visuals drive interest in high-value properties.

This is where my leadership foundation was built. I led 22-mile backpacking trips through remote northern Maine with up to 9 girls depending on me and my co-counselors for their safety and the quality of their experience. I was a certified Maine Trip Leader and WAFA certified, and the logistics alone were substantial, from planning menus and portioning food to packing and labeling everything the trip needed before we ever hit the trail. I also once accidentally drove a 15-passenger van 11 miles down an ATV trail, which turned out to be my first real lesson in crisis management, decision-making under pressure, and owning a mistake. I made it out without a scratch, though.

As a head counselor, I was responsible for mentoring junior counselors and teaching them how to lead, not just telling them what to do. I'd had supervisors who hoarded responsibility and left us with nothing to learn from, and I refused to be like that. I delegated intentionally, brought my junior counselors into every part of the process, and gave them real ownership. One of them was brand new to staff that summer, and by the following year she was running her own trips as a head counselor.

I enrolled in BU's Professional Evening MBA program partly because I wasn't being challenged enough at work and partly because I'd always been curious about the business side of things. I had hands-on creative and marketing experience, but I wanted to understand how it all fit into the bigger picture. I finished faster than most, taking three classes per semester while working full time. The program gave me frameworks I was implementing at work the next day, from operations and process thinking to finance concepts I still use to manage my own money.

The highlight was an immersive week in Milan focused on luxury business, where we visited companies like Valentino and Pirelli, heard directly from leaders about their marketing strategies, and worked on a live consulting project for a Milan-based client. I graduated with honors, a 3.6 GPA, and a scholarship for academic excellence. My MBA is the best thing I've ever done for myself, professionally and personally.

At UNH I studied communication with a focus in media studies. The communication program had several areas of focus, and even within my media studies concentration I took coursework across the full spectrum, including deep dives into the nuance of language and conversation at a very granular level. That kind of precision and attention to detail laid the foundation for the way I approached my studies at BU and my work ever since. On the media side, I took several video production courses throughout my time at UNH, including a documentary class where my team interviewed students and parking employees and produced a mini-doc about the notoriously terrible parking situation on campus. Those classes are where I learned Premiere Pro and After Effects, and because I was already self-taught in Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator, the transition to video editing came pretty naturally.