Meet our Marketing Intern: Lauren Rodolakis

By: Lauren Rodolakis

Growing up, I always knew I had a passion for creativity. My favorite past-times were journaling, filming and editing footage of my family’s vacations, and blogging. By the time I was 16 I had taught myself how to edit HTML on Tumblr so I could customize my blog and had a Twitter account dedicated to the Boston Red Sox that amassed over 2,000 followers in 6 months. When my junior year of high school rolled around, I had decided on communications and public relations as a major because of the emphasis on all things creative.

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I spent my first two years of college taking public relations courses, joining clubs like the Public Relations Student Society of America, and securing my first internship. In the summer going into my junior year, I was given the opportunity to work as a social media intern for a national healthcare staffing agency. I created a full content calendar for each of their social media platforms, built them a blog and an Instagram account, started weekly employee spotlights, monthly office tours, and worked with the in-house graphic designer to create promotional materials for career fairs. This internship was my first look into the world of social media and at the time, I had no idea how instrumental it would be towards my future career.

Although I loved working as a social media intern, I had never worked in a real public relations agency setting so I left to peruse a more traditional PR career. My junior and senior year were spent at a boutique tech PR agency, a world-renowned PR agency doing consumer account work, and a mid-sized integrated agency where I did traditional PR for a consumer electronics brand. At each agency I went to, I kept hoping I would like the next one better. I always blamed my reasons for not loving the internship on the agency culture, the clients, or the tasks I was given. One day, I realized I just don’t love traditional PR. I missed the work I was doing at my social media internship and felt the tasks I was being given did not leave much room for creativity.

With my senior year spring semester approaching, I knew I needed to find a great opportunity that would expand my knowledge in the social media world. Finding my internship at the Wentworth Institute of Technology’s CO-OP + CAREERS department has been the perfect way to end my college career. I was given the ability to be more creative in a work setting than I ever have before and enhance my skills in graphic design, video editing, and social content creation.

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My experience at Wentworth was also instrumental in helping me land my job for after graduation. In May, I will start my career as a Social Media Community Manager at Reviewed, a USA Today company where I will focus on building engagement with our followers across our social channels. My career path has certainly not been linear, but I learned a lot. Through my internships, I was able to pinpoint what I truly love to do and what I am passionate about and now, I am lucky enough to be able to make a career out of those passions.

Thank you for dedicating your semester to our marketing team, Lauren! Follow all of Lauren’s updates on her website: https://www.laurenrodolakis.com/.

By Lauren Rodolakis