Finding my own room2learn
By Coco Yang
Teacher, astronaut, doctor, lawyer, pilot. As a kid, these were just a few things I wanted to do growing up. When I started choosing classes for high school, I found my passion for learning languages and cultures, which led me to Cornell University’s Hotel School, where I’m now a proud graduate of. For me, the Hotel School was all about human connections and the desire to create memorable experiences for others. It was this desire that brought me to room2learn, almost two years ago.
I’m Coco, the Marketing Associate at room2learn. Chances are, you’ve already seen my work. Read our weekly blog posts or browsed through our Instagram page? I help curate many of these with the help of the room2learn team and guest bloggers.
My role at room2learn has definitely evolved since I started interning with the team in October 2016. When I first joined team, my role as the marketing intern mainly involved working on two areas: social media platforms and the blog. Facebook was primary channel for room2learn and my goal was to grow its following as well as expand on other platforms such as Instagram. With the blog, Jane and other members of the team had previously wrote a few pieces here and there, but we wanted to formalize a content base by producing more high-quality, research-based content on a weekly basis.
Being a full-time student at Cornell simultaneously meant that most of my involvement has been remote. This meant appear.in-ing for weekly team meetings, updating social media platforms every other day, and coordinating blog posts with various contributors. Although I was held accountable to deadlines and was learning a lot about the impact of space on students’ learning through online research, I knew I was not getting the full room2learn experience. Summer of 2017, I decided to spend a month in Boston to join the team at Harvard’s Innovation Lab.
Working at the i-lab for just that month was one of the best decisions I ever made. Though I had been emailing and video-chatting with folks for over six months, it felt like meeting new people when I got there! It was exciting to work side-by-side with everyone at our room2learn island. Occasionally, I would take advantage of the varied seating and work on the sofas or in the individual pods. It was the perfect setting for writing about flexible seating for more productivity and creativity!
Working at the i-lab also meant a foot into other sides of the business. I worked on additional marketing outreach projects, including attending and organizing events. For the blog, Michelle (our Marketing Manager) and I created the July Redesign Series, a series of blogs that curated classroom redesign methods in preparation for the new school year. Because of room2learn’s strong network at the i-lab and within Boston, we decided to host a public film screening and discussion of Most Likely to Succeed, a documentary about project-based learning at High Tech High.
Since joining the room2learn family in 2016, I have had such a rewarding experience working with and learning from passionate educators and designers. In fact, working at room2learn helped me refine my career goals and I’m excited to share that this fall, I will be starting a Masters program at University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. There, I hope to bring my lessons learned on school design and entrepreneurship into my studies, and continue along my journey of bringing innovation into education.
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Coco Yang is a content creator interested in merging education in physical and digital spaces. At room2learn, she manages digital marketing through social media and blogs. She brings marketing experience from the hospitality sector, where she worked at Waldorf Astoria and the Four Seasons Hotel. Coco studied hospitality management at Cornell University.
