With fact-checking from Christi Anne Weatherly, data and visualization by Elaine Duong / Zay Ya Min Yin, and Logo by Josephine Reyes.
We’ll go into depth on how we came together remotely to start our own mentorship and professional development program, which now supports 150 students across North America, what you can learn through us, and how it’s personally impacted me and my publicity focused career. I thought this would be the last-first thing I would be doing post-graduation. but now would not have it any other way.
A Little About Me:
I’m a 2020 graduate from the University of Colorado Denver holding a BFA in Film Production. Through my volunteer work with the Star Wars community as a member of the 501st Legion, I discovered my love for social media and public relations. Back in the day, I got to experience what working with Disney and Lucasfilm was like, supporting articles like this and campaigns like this one towards Make-A-Wish raising $150,000 way faster than we expected. Things snowballed from there, allowing me to leverage my life passions for professional opportunity throughout the worlds of film, video games, and audio technology.
I never really understood how “non-traditional” and “non-target’ of a candidate I was. Before COVID-19, I myself even struggled to put into perspective how all my roles and experience to date connected — and there was my answer. I connect. With film, characters and storytelling was a catalyst for me to develop complex relationships and explore myself through them. With social media, I discovered I loved seeing how brands, through data and understanding their audience, are able to influence behavior and connect through that knowledge. Through public relations and advertising, I got to understand how media is so important to the big picture of a brand, and how personal connections influence the success of pitching.
Professionally, after experiencing the rush, challenge, and constant learning involved, I knew publicity, social media and advertising (or all the above), ideally centered around entertainment or tech, was my future. Frankly, I just love working with people.
What Led to Starting Project Snapshot:
I knew I wanted to continue down the agency route into the entertainment industry. I’ve had the best learning experiences on small, fluid teams that have given me the opportunity to wear multiple hats. Supporting industries I carry strong passions to help make the work not really feel like work at all.
In March, before my graduation in May, COVID-19 hit. Internship programs were canceled. Among the hardest hits were the industries I planned to start my career in. Clients froze spending budgets across the board. As a result, internships were canceled. All of the internships I was in the process of interviewing for were lost.
I decided I could make the best use of my time, and did so by starting to learn how to use LinkedIn. In the past, I thought LinkedIn was solely a job board and network for professionals, not the social platform I know it as today. What I didn’t expect was how little I knew about the job search in general.
I was lucky to randomly come across Wonsulting, a professional training and coaching platform dedicated to turning non-target and non-traditional backgrounds into winners. I gained two indirect mentors in the form of Jonathan Javier and Jerry Lee — guys who have gone out of their way to educate students and the rest of the professional community on the reality of what job hunting actually is. Through their sessions, I re-built my confidence and started putting the techniques I had learned to the test. I eventually was challenged to pay it forward and started hosting my own version of “Coffee at a Distance,” inspired by We Are Next, another incredible student resource more specific to those entering my industry.
Through these conversations, I was surprised to find a sense of solace with fellow students who were going through the same emotions: confusion and uncertainty, but also a sense of passion and commitment like I had never experienced. The calls that stood out the most involved students who not only ended with the open thought of working on a project together but also one that would somehow benefit our community — the global student community.
I met Elaine Duong, a junior from CalState Fullerton, who got me thinking about the program and the final push of motivation that I needed. We ended our call with, “why wait? Let’s start something.” A lightbulb popped in my head — why wasn’t there a virtual experiential learning program run by students, for students? I pitched the barebones idea to my network, and the community responded. An excel sheet I created and shared on LinkedIn soon reached 500 names, and even more comments and direct messages from people reaching out to help.
I then reached out to an old friend, Matthew Kriese, to conceptualize the idea and provide a sense of structure using his past experience in organizational management and leadership. An incoming junior at Michigan State, Andrew Chen, reached out to me offering whatever he could by putting his skills in project management and supply chain to the test. A junior at Pepperdine, Ivy Leroux, wanted to flesh out a more in-depth aspect of the program that would make up for lost research opportunities, by allowing students to explore themselves and their career. A sophomore at Western, Maggie Chen, wanted to build out the equivalent to a university-level internship program because of her passions in human resources and recruiting. A sophomore at CUNY Baruch, Naomi Lee, wanted to build out a marketing strategy, combining our two areas of growing skill sets. A one-of-a-kind secondary student, Vivian Tan, wanted to conceptualize a mentorship program allowing her generation to be involved. In a matter of a few days, I had my team. The rest came along in time, through warm introductions and a clear mission, or hired because of their passion and talent.
Meet the founding team (visually):
The Program’s Scope…and Some of Our Impact:
Some things the team has learned on the way:
- Productivity is key.
Due to many of us having a background in remote work and strong student leadership, we were able to quickly streamline our communication to increase productivity. The team’s individual experiences influenced our organizational structure through past leadership and internship roles. Notion supported this success, allowing us to work seamlessly as a team from assignments to be able to organize our timelines broken down into tasks, sprints, and epics.
2. Focus your software.
Rolling into productivity, we discovered early on that the less technology your team used, the better. We decided on Slack for communication, Notion for our all-in-one productivity, and G Suite for file storage, some shared work, as well as for analytics.
3. Transparency is communication.
At any time, our team can see what another department is working on by going to their page on Notion or their folder in the drive. We do have an organizational format with team leads, but that doesn’t restrict anyone from going to another person on the team and asking a question about what’s up.
4. Identify what world problem you are trying to solve…
…and how you are going to solve it. Tina Sula, one of our advisors, has been stressing this to our team since day 1. She has helped us continue to fine-tune our brand, our mission statement, and reflect on why we’re doing this in the first place. This answer may change over time, and that’s OK.
My Personal Take-Aways So Far:
- Just do it.
Since meeting many of our mentees and mentors, who also have big ideas but may not have the confidence, I’ve learned that it’s just best to live by Nike. Sometimes things have to be taken by a leap of faith, and then you’ll find your footing along the way. Elaine also said it best — “Why wait?”
2. Take care of yourself through your hustle.
I have dealt with depression and high anxiety my entire life. It trickled down to caring about it professionally and with that, anyone I work with. It’s OK to take breaks as well as take time off to decompress. In the long run, it will come full circle to your quality of work.
3. Enjoy the ride.
The path you start on might not be the final outcome. Live in the moment, and treasure each connection you make. Josh Chen, our recruiting and strategy advisor, stressed this to me early on when I was worried about how this would reflect on my experience for the future.
“You can’t write your journey when it hasn’t even started yet.”
Special thanks to…
Romain Vaklitabar of Pathos Labs, Banks Benitz of Uncharted and Samuel Kim, E.D. for helping me through your direct/ indirect life mentorship, being the final push I needed to “just do it”
Jonathan Javier and Jerry Lee, for creating Wonsulting. The resources and knowledge they provide at no cost to students, as well as their transparency about their life stories with their struggles all gave us the boost of confidence we needed as individuals.
Fun fact: half of our team found each other through our first Wonsulting webinars.
Remember: you got this.
Andy Rapista at Notion, our all-in-one productivity and organization platform. Andy somehow found us and was the fifth person to ever sign up on our newsletter. Through her work supporting organizations to scale and believing in our capacity to create social impact, we are lucky to be supported by the platform for the future.
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” — Alan Kay
