Based at the UPMC Hamot hospital, I support and execute community events and initiatives in Erie and surrounding hospitals.

My role as an Event Coordinator is to support and manage all aspects of the major fundraising events for the Barber National Institute. Some of my responsibilities include ensuring the preparation and execution of events are carried out properly, developing promotional materials, maintaining healthy vendor and donor relationships, recruiting and scheduling of volunteers, and spreading the overall awareness of the Barber National Institute within the community. The four major events that I oversee are the Barber Beast on the Bay, Barber Christmas Ball, Jay & Mona Kang Art Show and Sale, and Shillelagh Golf Tournament.

As a digital marketing intern at weCreate, I was part of a team that helped local businesses achieve their personal business goals through digital marketing. Most of our clients start by building their websites from the talented team of web developers and graphic designers then is passed along to our team of digital marketing experts. My role as an intern was mostly focused on search engine optimization (SEO). The purpose of SEO is to create new opportunities for our clients through search engines like Google and Bing. I utilized SEO tactics to assist our clients with company marketability. We tracked our monthly additions with several analytics and research platforms to validate our ongoing efforts to our clients.My job was heavily research-based, writing intensive, and forced me to think outside the box. Some of the skills I gained from my near year-long experience at weCreate include my ability to recognize market trends and act on them appropriately, write website content and blog posts to target specific audiences, and learned to exercise and expand my thinking in a lateral fashion.

My internship at Make-A-Wish introduced me to the world of non-profit work and gave me a deep appreciation for the power of helping others. As an intern, I worked in the Erie, PA office which is part of the Greater Pennsylvania and West Virginia territory. I assisted in upcoming fundraisers by creating promotional material unique to the event, contacting donors and volunteers to participate, and ensuring all printed materials were prepared properly. In addition to direct fundraisers, I also assisted in several mailing campaigns targeted to new and recurring donors to increase donations in the Erie and surrounding counties. Aside from the fundraising and marketing side of my internship, I also played part in the "behind the scenes" work of putting a wish together for a child. This included preparing trip itineraries, processing referral intakes in our project management system, booking trip reservations, processing in-kind forms for donated items, updating trip budgets, and (my personal favorite) writing a story for each of our wish children to encapsulate their special experience.

As a server, I have learned to be patient and detail-oriented while prioritizing customers needs. I do my best to ease the work load of my coworkers by managing my time efficiently. I promote the specials for the season and encourage guests to join our benefit program, Sunny Club.

I worked as a student market analyst throughout a semester-long project for SPRINT Corporation conducted at Penn State Behrend. The purpose of this project was to conduct primary and secondary research to determine the preferences and buying behaviors of the millennial demographic. With the data collected, each group came up with their own guerrilla marketing promotional plan to drive more millennial traffic to SPRINT stores in the Western Pennsylvania and Ohio regions. My group conducted several types of primary research to get the most accurate data from our subjects. These primary research tactics included a focus group, product demonstration, personal interviews, and a secret shopper visit. We decided to create a viral marketing campaign based around the new (at the time) face of SPRINT, Paul. After presenting our plan to the Penn State Behrend marketing faculty and six SPRINT executives, our team placed second among eight groups.