In the second semester of my junior year at Notre Dame, I thought I had my post-graduation path figured out. I was studying aerospace engineering and when I imagined life after college, I imagined I’d be working with flying machines; it just seemed like the natural progression. Or so I thought.
When I replay the moments from that time until now, I’m still not exactly sure how I ended up where I am. After my junior year, I interned at Lockheed Martin in Texas working on the F-35 jet program. Lockheed Martin employs thousands of people and I was on a team of about 300 people. Truthfully, I felt like a cog in a machine. I lacked any input in the decision-making process for projects and was expected to just be someone who executed on a procedure that was handed to me from above. This wasn’t what I was looking for, especially not right out of college when I still had so much more to learn about working and life. I wanted a work environment where I would be given meaningful responsibility, counted on to make decisions for myself and those I worked with, and where there wouldn’t simply be one answer to the questions posed to me.
That desire is what led me to Orr. After one year at my host company, Lev+, I can say that I have experienced various challenges that require me to think in new and creative ways. In addition, I’ve been able to both be a project leader at my job and make critical decisions for my clients. Lev’s goal is to empower marketers to do their jobs to the best of their abilities. Whether that’s building out workflows to engage customers or creating targeted content for a user based on their preferences and demographic, my ultimate goal is to allow my clients to do their best work. Coming from a non-marketing background this can sometimes be difficult for me. I’m not sure how best to design the welcome email to your brand or the order of communication with a customer for the best engagement results. But my engineering background has helped me provide technical insights into their data that they can use to provide more specific content to a customer and then create the necessary logic to filter users to the correct content. Every day brings a new set of issues from my clients that require my attention, and it’s my responsibility to work with the whole team at Lev to help our customers overcome those challenges.
It’s those experiences and the people that make me love going into work. When I started, I had no experience in the role I would be performing. However, everyone at Lev took part in teaching me what I would need to know; from working with Marketing Cloud to consulting with clients. As I learned, I was able to be proactive and help lead my coworkers on some of those projects. Everyone I work with has been helpful and responsive when I have asked to take on more responsibility. And although each day at work is different, the people around me have been the constant. My coworkers are always there to answer my questions when there’s something I need, and they are also there to support me when I’m leading a call with a client on the work we have done for them. My day-to-day schedule consists of me having to build out technical solutions for clients and help them make important decisions for their companies. My company supports me wholeheartedly in this role and they have placed tremendous trust in me for which I am very grateful. I did not expect to be part of Orr or Lev, but I love being part of both groups. Orr has been a place that has allowed me to grow both professionally and socially. This experience has placed me at a company where I can have a real impact on the culture of my company. In addition, I am able to have that same impact in Orr with my fellow fellows. Orr has been a place where I continue to grow, seek new challenges, and reach for opportunities that excite me.
