>> You know, for my degree, it was BS here in marketing and then I thought a lot
about do I go back and get a master's or an MBA but to me, it was really world life experience
and so working for different companies, working for different people throughout the industry,
that to me is where I really felt was the right place for me to get more of my education,
if you will, and I'm still working on it.
When I think about my career path and what I did when I started here at Penn State,
I interviewed on campus and had great opportunities to interview with a lot
of companies and I took a path that I would have never expected.
My first job was with Dow Chemical and as a marketing major here,
I couldn't spell a chemical name, I didn't know what the chemicals do.
Yes, I took some chemistry classes but I certainly wasn't, you know,
probably prepared for that but it was a wonderful place to start.
It gave me a great foundation in both sales and marketing.
They had a great training program and really allowed us to kind of flip flop
between those disciplines and work with some really fantastic clients.
But where I learned negotiation and management of people and the marketing skills
so that really led me to my next job which when I moved to publishing so even though I was sales
and marketing in the chemical industry, I was able to jump over to publishing and work
for two different companies within that and really work not only in marketing and sales
but really kind of creative and pulling those ideas together for brands and kind of developing
where I am now 'cause after that, I went to work for Nineteen Entertainment,
which most people are familiar with, American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance,
where I led branded entertainment for those brands and that was kind of, for me,
you would have never expected coming from Dow Chemical and an interview here at Penn State
to get there but it really made a ton of sense when you thought about the skills
and the experience I had to be able to start working with entertainment properties.
It was all again about working with those brands, planning those events, having, you know,
the creative ideas to pull it all together and then I moved to the advertising agency side
where I'm able to now help consult brands to better interact with entertainment properties.