Category Archives: Advertising/PR/Marketing

Christina Bott ’13, Fleishman-Hillard

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I was filled with excite­ment as I walked up to the Fleishman-Hillard offices in Atlanta, Geor­gia, a small stepping-stone from my home­town, New York City. As one of the top pub­lic rela­tions firms in the world, I knew that I absolutely could not miss out on an oppor­tu­nity like this and so I found myself fly­ing down south the night before the intern­ship. As I walked the two blocks from my hotel to the office cen­ter, I was shocked by the eighty-four weather-a tem­per­a­ture this New Yorker hadn’t expe­ri­enced since sum­mer! I entered the build­ing and was imme­di­ately redeemed with cold air-conditioning, “the mark of a true south­ern build­ing” I was told by fel­low intern Matthew Shack­elford ’15. Matthew and I met almost simul­ta­ne­ously at the front desk where we greeted by a friendly sec­re­tary and then our host, McCall Butler.

McCall But­ler ‘97, an alum of Prince­ton and later Dart­mouth, was the per­fect men­tor for us. She con­nected with Matthew on her con­nec­tion to Atlanta, where she was born and raised, and to me based on her expe­ri­ence work­ing in New York City. We spent just over an hour talk­ing with her about her back­ground and then her work with her main client AT&T. McCall had a very inter­est­ing his­tory, hav­ing started in gov­ern­ment con­sult­ing right of col­lege, and then work­ing at America’s Promise, a non-profit in DC, before going to busi­ness school. She then attended The Tuck School of Busi­ness at Dart­mouth where she met her future pro­fes­sor, men­tor and employer Paul Argenti. Argenti, an expert in cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, has writ­ten many books about the field of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, most notably Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (fifth edi­tion, Irwin/McGraw-Hill, 2009) and Dig­i­tal Strate­gies for Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (McGraw-Hill, 2009). McCall had a chance to work with Argenti and Fleish­man Pres­i­dent and Senior Part­ner  Peter Ver­ren­gia dur­ing her time at Dart­mouth and then went on to work at Fleishman-Hillard. She has worked at Fleish­man for seven and a half years, work­ing for six years with AT&T. She cur­rently holds the posi­tion of Senior Vice Pres­i­dent and Part­ner and works with her team on merg­ers, quar­terly earn­ings, the AT&T proxy state­ment, sup­port for the annual meet­ing and the annual report.

McCall then explained to us how we were going to struc­ture our day:

9–10:15 — Intro­du­tion with McCall
10:15–10:30 — Short cof­fee break
10:30–11:30 — Meet­ing with Michael Ares & Tammy Gon­za­lez
11:30–12 — Break and time to ask McCall more ques­tions
12–1:30 — Con­fer­ence Call with AT&T Team includ­ing Larry Solomon
1:30–2:30 — Lunch 2:30–3– Con­fer­ence Call with Larry Solomon
3–3:30 — Meet­ing with Chad Cor­ley
3:30–4 — Dis­cus­sion with Chad Cor­ley, Matthew Browher and Andrew Groom
4–5 — Con­fer­ence Call with AT&T Team

In our first meet­ing, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent Michael Ares explained his work with a global man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pany. He sum­ma­rized his role in say­ing that he essen­tially helps “pull in the resources to get what they need.” Given that I have inter­est in inter­na­tional pub­lic rela­tions, I found what he had to say about his clients’ global mar­kets in Brazil, North Amer­i­can and Europe very inter­est­ing. Tammy Gon­za­lez worked mainly with a man­u­fac­turer of indus­trial clean­ing prod­ucts and told us about how she was drawn into the field of Investor Rela­tions. She also gave us two arti­cles, one pub­lished in USA Today about a global phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pany and another in the Wall Street Jour­nal about the  new energy efforts by a gov­ern­men­tal agency . She explained how PR com­pa­nies often pitch the essen­tial mes­sage of arti­cles to news­pa­pers in order to pro­mote their clients. Matthew and I were sur­prised to learn how many news­pa­pers get their sto­ries in this way and thus how much pub­lic rela­tions has an effect on world per­cep­tions and the mod­ern consumer.

The con­fer­ence call with the AT&T team was a very infor­ma­tive phone call and Matthew and I were even able to par­tic­i­pate in a very small way. Matthew and I were asked about what sorts of social media net­works we use includ­ing Pin­ter­est and Insta­gram and so we were able to see the impor­tance of knowl­edge of pop­u­lar cul­ture and social media in the PR world.

For lunch, McCall took us out to a Mex­i­can restau­rant where I was able to have my first south­ern sweet tea-delicious! We talked more about AT&T and its mes­sage and McCall’s expe­ri­ence at Prince­ton. We learned that she is a very active alum and will be cel­e­brat­ing her 15th reunion this year. She told us about her expe­ri­ence as an art his­tory major and also that she was pres­i­dent of her eat­ing club, Clois­ter, which I am also a mem­ber of. It was very excit­ing to get to make a con­nec­tion to McCall on a per­sonal level and I loved my quesadilla. 

McCall’s next phone call was short and dis­cussed much of what we had talked about before but in more detail. Next we met with Chad Cor­ley. Chad gave us more of a sense of what Fleishman-Hillard does since McCall works more with AT&T. Chad explained about Fleishman’s prac­tice groups and the details of his sec­tor: the con­sumer group. His group mainly works on how to encour­age con­sumers to use a cer­tain prod­uct whether via social media or other means. He talked about his work in business-to busi­ness PR ver­sus business-to-consumer PR as well. Then Matthew Browher and Andrew Groom entered the room and we dis­cussed their role in Dig­i­tal Media and more about how social media has affected PR. Besides get­ting to know McCall, this was prob­a­bly my favorite part of the day as it gave a really com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of PR and how it has changed global markets.

McCall’s last phone call included more work with AT&T and by that point, Matthew and I felt very involved in the process. After­wards we took some pic­tures at the office and wrapped up with McCall. It was all in all, a really award­ing expe­ri­ence and a fan­tas­tic trip. Matthew and I were really able to see how dif­fer­ent sec­tors of pub­lic rela­tions work and what tech­niques each group uses. We could not have asked for a bet­ter host in McCall and she gave me a deeper appre­ci­a­tion of what it means to be a tiger. Not only do I hope to be in this field one day, but I also aspire to be just as involved as a Prince­ton alum as she is.

Matthew Shackelford ’15, Fleishman-Hillard

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For my Princetern­ship with Fleishman-Hillard in Atlanta, Geor­gia, I had the priv­i­lege of shad­ow­ing Ms. McCall But­ler ‘97 a Senior Vice Pres­i­dent and Part­ner at Fleishman-Hillard who leads finan­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the firm’s AT&T Inc. account. She began my action-packed day by explain­ing how she came to work at Fleishman-Hillard through her early con­sult­ing work at Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers, her MBA from the Tuck School of Busi­ness at Dart­mouth, and finally, her land­ing at Fleishman-Hillard as a part of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Con­sult­ing World­wide divi­sion, a voca­tional route that she her­self described as “slightly cir­cuitous.” Then, she talked about her work with AT&T, specif­i­cally the company’s finan­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and how, while the advent of the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing age and social media had altered the medi­ums through which com­pa­nies com­mu­ni­cate, the basic prin­ci­ples of any pub­lic rela­tions and/or brand man­age­ment remain the same: hon­esty and con­cise­ness. Though the tone of dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions was slightly more con­ver­sa­tional, peo­ple always val­ued clar­ity and integrity in pub­lic rela­tions above all else.

Next, Mr. Aeres and Ms. Gon­za­lez talked about their work with com­pa­nies, such as two com­mer­cial mate­ri­als pro­duc­ers based in Atlanta. They dis­cussed the wide vari­ety of work that Fleishman-Hillard does for its clients, includ­ing the restruc­tur­ing of inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions, analy­sis of busi­ness pro­pos­als, and investor rela­tions. More­over, they dis­cussed the strengths that Fleishman-Hillard has in its vast net­work of offices all over the world that spe­cial­ize in the var­i­ous types of work that the firm does for its clients. One of the many keys to Fleishman-Hillard’s suc­cess in the pub­lic rela­tions indus­try is the coop­er­a­tion that occurs within the firm to give the client the best pos­si­ble prod­uct and experience.

After­wards, Ms. But­ler had a con­fer­ence call with Mr. Solomon, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent — Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions for AT&T, and his lead­er­ship team. Dur­ing this call, the group dis­cussed the company’s focus on the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Among other things, recog­ni­tion for AT&T’s com­mit­ment to deliver a supe­rior cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is one task that Ms. But­ler and her team pur­sue each and every day.

Ms. McCall But­ler, Matt, and fel­low Princetern Christina

We also met with Mr. Cor­ley, a team mem­ber in Fleishman-Hillard Atlanta’s Con­sumer Group, and Mr. Browher and Mr. Groom, who lead dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions ini­tia­tives for the Fleishman-Hillard Atlanta office. The group dis­cussed the need for cred­i­bil­ity when it comes to pro­mot­ing a busi­ness and the impor­tance of design­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions to a company’s tar­get audi­ence and ulti­mate com­mu­ni­ca­tions goal.

Accord­ing to Mr. Cor­ley, pub­lic rela­tions are much more con­vinc­ing and effi­cient if the infor­ma­tion and argu­ment for a par­tic­u­lar com­pany or prod­uct comes from a third-party source rather than an adver­tise­ment. Thus, Fleishman-Hillard works to pro­mote its clients to, for instance, tech­nol­ogy blog writ­ers or news­pa­per jour­nal­ists by giv­ing these third par­ties oppor­tu­ni­ties to expe­ri­ence clients’ prod­uct or ser­vices. As a result, Fleishman-Hillard can deliver more mean­ing­ful and cred­i­ble cov­er­age for its clients and their prod­ucts. Mr. Browher dis­cussed the need to deter­mine the tar­get audi­ence and use that infor­ma­tion to cre­ate a more effec­tive pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign for that tar­get audi­ence. This allows clients to effi­ciently mar­ket to their con­sumers, even if they are on a tight budget.

This Princetern­ship was an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence for all that it taught me about the world of mar­ket­ing and pub­lic, finan­cial, and investor rela­tions and for all of the bril­liant and moti­vated indi­vid­u­als that I had the honor of meet­ing dur­ing my expe­ri­ence. Every­one was extremely wel­com­ing and gra­cious to me, and I was very pleased at the fact that they all were will­ing to spend their time to edu­cate me. I would like to thank Mr. Aeres, Ms. Gon­za­lez, Mr. Solomon, Mr. Cor­ley, Mr. Browher, and Mr. Groom for tak­ing time out of their busy sched­ules to speak with me. Most impor­tantly, I would like to thank Ms. McCall But­ler for offer­ing to host this amaz­ing Princetern­ship and being such a won­der­ful men­tor dur­ing this won­der­ful oppor­tu­nity. This Princetern­ship was truly one-of-a-kind.

Jane Pritchard ’15, BlissPR

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My Princetern­ship expe­ri­ence with Bliss PR was cer­tainly a mem­o­rable one. Not only did I learn a con­sid­er­able amount about the PR indus­try, but I also gained impor­tant insight regard­ing my own aca­d­e­mic path.

I started my day at 9 am at Bliss.  I was given a quick tour of the office where I became acquainted with the var­i­ous employ­ees.  Every­body was imme­di­ately wel­com­ing and friendly.  My first activ­ity was meet­ing with my intern­ship coor­di­na­tor, Glori Perez.  She started out by describ­ing her func­tion at the PR firm, which per­tains specif­i­cally to the finan­cial ser­vices arm of the com­pany.  PR turned out to be very dif­fer­ent than what I thought it was.  Although they are very sim­i­lar indus­tries, I def­i­nitely had my lines blurred between mar­ket­ing, adver­tis­ing, and pub­lic rela­tions.  PR as it related to finan­cial ser­vices com­pa­nies like one of Glori’s biggest clients, a large life insur­ance com­pany, was some­thing I entirely mis­un­der­stood before she helped clear up my con­fu­sion.  PR is not just about con­stantly mak­ing the com­pany look good and releas­ing pos­i­tive state­ments about their work.   I gath­ered that it was more about mak­ing your com­pany look like it is an expert in its field.  Glori took me through the dif­fer­ent steps nec­es­sary for the research she does for her clients.  Bliss employ­ees are con­stantly read­ing any bit of news they can find that per­tains to their clients. 

Once I had a bet­ter hold on the type of work they do at Bliss, I met with employ­ees from every divi­sion of the com­pany: Finan­cial ser­vices, health care, social media, pro­fes­sional ser­vices, and their jour­nal­ist con­sul­tant, Toddi Gut­ner.  Each rep­re­sen­ta­tive from his or her respec­tive depart­ment was enthu­si­as­tic and infor­ma­tive.  They filled me in on their day-to-day sched­ules as well as their per­sonal career choices that led them to work­ing in the PR indus­try.  The range and diver­sity of col­lege majors and pre­vi­ous employ­ers was extremely impres­sive.  Before this expe­ri­ence, I had the notion that col­lege majors lead peo­ple on tracks and limit the type of work that they can do.  The employ­ees at Bliss proved to me that I should major in what­ever I find most inter­est­ing, because I will likely end up doing some­thing that devi­ates from the plan.

I went in to this pro­gram think­ing that in order to be in busi­ness or law (two of my pos­si­ble career paths)  I would need a degree related to finance, eco­nom­ics, pol­i­tics, or some­thing that would give me expe­ri­ence directly related to these fields.  Now, I think I am going to pur­sue cre­ative writ­ing, because it’s some­thing I have always wanted to do.  I don’t know what sort of career I will end up hav­ing, but I only have four years in col­lege, so I think I will spend them study­ing what makes me the happiest.

As John Bliss told me, the most impor­tant skill you need for any job com­ing out of col­lege is know­ing how to write.  He seemed to believe that after this skill, any­thing is within reach.  I will for­ever be grate­ful for his kind­ness and gen­eros­ity towards myself for let­ting me come in to Bliss PR for a day.  I cer­tainly learned a great deal about PR and formed some new opin­ions about my own future career and how I will get there.  Over­all, I had a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence and I rec­om­mend it to everyone.

Felicia Ng ’15, Wunderman

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My Princetern­ship was a one-day expe­ri­ence dur­ing Inter­ces­sion with Mr. Tom Mag­nus ‘77 at Wun­der­man, the world’s largest global mar­ket­ing ser­vices net­work, in New York City. Hav­ing no back­ground expe­ri­ence with ad agency func­tions at all; I walked into the build­ing at 8:45 am as a clue­less, excited lit­tle kid enter­ing a big new world.  The moment that I stepped off the ele­va­tor, Mr. Mag­nus was there to greet me with a huge smile and a warm wel­come.  He showed me his office and gave me a quick tour of Wun­der­man, which spans over about 5 floors, while intro­duc­ing me to a num­ber of his col­leagues on the way.

At 9 am, Mr. Mag­nus had a short meet­ing, which he allowed me to sit in on, and from this, I got a strong sense of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion and coor­di­na­tion that is vital between mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als.  After­wards, at 10 am, Mr. Mag­nus gave Rachel (my fel­low Princetern) and me an assign­ment to com­plete while he was away at a meet­ing with a client. He gave us a list of the names, titles, and floor loca­tions of sev­eral of his col­leagues in var­i­ous depart­ments at Wun­der­man and encour­aged us to speak with them to learn about the dif­fer­ent func­tions at an ad agency. This was the most excit­ing and edu­ca­tional part of the day for me.  We were basi­cally given com­plete free­dom to explore any part of Wun­der­man, and I poked my head into almost every person’s office or cubi­cle.  At first I felt a bit shy and intru­sive, but I quickly learned that the peo­ple at Wun­der­man are very friendly and will­ing to share their expe­ri­ences or offer advice.  I spoke with account man­agers, strate­gic plan­ners, project man­agers, cre­ative admins, art direc­tors, flash ani­ma­tors, and even a direc­tor at the Madi­son Group Graph­ics Cen­ter, which is essen­tially Wunderman’s stu­dio or pro­duc­tion hub.  Each per­son gave a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on their role within the ad agency and how their var­i­ous career paths led them to where they are now, but over­all, I got the feel­ing that work at an ad agency is very fast-paced and demand­ing.  Many of the work­ers that I talked to expressed that what excites them the most about their job is the fact that no day is the same for them – there is always some­thing new, and clients are con­stantly com­ing to them with new projects or prob­lems to be solved, so it never gets boring.

Besides under­stand­ing the actual work at an ad agency, as a visual artist, I was also espe­cially inter­ested in get­ting a feel for how a cre­ative envi­ron­ment is fos­tered within a pro­fes­sional set­ting.  I was very excited to observe that almost every wall and cor­ner around the Wun­der­man office was a tes­ta­ment to the cre­ative ener­gies of the peo­ple who work there.  The prod­ucts they designed are dis­played on every floor, vibrantly-colored walls greet you at every turn, giant chalk­boards and marker­boards lit­er­ally present a blank slate for the gen­er­a­tion of new ideas, cubi­cles are fully adorned with bright images and other inspi­ra­tional works of art, and there are even bean bag chairs and a ping-pong table.  Being able to explore Wun­der­man in per­son gave me a sense of what a cre­ative office envi­ron­ment is like – it’s a great bal­ance between for­mal and fun.

Tom Mag­nus and Felicia

At noon, Rachel and I recon­vened with Mr. Mag­nus in his office, and he gen­er­ously bought lunch for all of us. As we ate, we lis­tened in on a con­fer­ence call, and after­wards, we shared with him our morn­ing find­ings.  He also explained to us in more detail how the tech­no­log­i­cal advances in the dig­i­tal age are chang­ing the ways in which mar­ket­ing researchers and strate­gists are tar­get­ing their audi­ences today as well as how Wun­der­man works with its clients, par­tic­u­larly one of their old­est and largest ones – Citi.  We had the oppor­tu­nity to ask him any ques­tions that we had about the net­work or the adver­tis­ing field in gen­eral, and he allowed us to take a look at sev­eral pub­li­ca­tions on Wunderman’s global mar­ket­ing strate­gies as well as tips on how to land an adver­tis­ing job.

At 3 pm, Mr. Mag­nus set up a meet­ing for us with Toni Iacono, a Direc­tor in the Human Resources Depart­ment, who spoke to us about sum­mer intern­ship oppor­tu­ni­ties that Wun­der­man offers to col­lege stu­dents.  She answered any ques­tions we had and even gave us copies of text­books that are part of the intern­ship cur­ricu­lum.  The rest of the day con­sisted of more inter­nal meet­ings with Mr. Mag­nus, from which I con­sis­tently observed the impor­tance of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and coop­er­a­tion in the pro­fes­sion – between indi­vid­u­als within the same depart­ment, between dif­fer­ent depart­ments at Wun­der­man, between Wun­der­man and its clients.  Every­one artic­u­lated their ideas and opin­ions very clearly, and it was obvi­ous that they worked on every project as a team.

His respon­si­bil­i­ties and meet­ings were many, but through­out the entire day, Mr. Mag­nus was very keen on allow­ing Rachel and I to gain as com­pre­hen­sive of an under­stand­ing as pos­si­ble of a day in the life of an ad agency worker and made sure that we got every­thing that we wanted to learn out of the expe­ri­ence.  Thanks to him and all of his incred­i­bly open and friendly col­leagues in every depart­ment, I walked out of Wun­der­man at 5 pm with a much bet­ter under­stand­ing of how an ad agency works, what it feels like to work in one, and even some new insight into mar­ket­ing strate­gies.  If any­one is inter­ested in learn­ing more about a career in the marketing/advertising field, I highly rec­om­mend this Princeternship.

Joseph Laseter ’15, Digitas Health

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Tues­day, Jan­u­ary 10, 2012

The cries of my host’s two-year-old son for more break­fast served as my alarm clock for Day 1 of my Princetern­ship. Priscilla Lo Atkins ’97, Vice President/Director of Media at Dig­i­tas Health, and her hus­band Joshua Atkins ‘96, Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Anes­the­si­ol­ogy and Crit­i­cal Care at the Hos­pi­tal of the Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia, were kind enough to let me stay over at their house dur­ing my Princetern­ship in Philadel­phia, Penn­syl­va­nia. As Mrs. Lo Atkins drove her son to day­care I spent the time get­ting dressed and prepar­ing for the day’s excit­ing events at Dig­i­tas Health. Dig­i­tas Health works with the worlds lead­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal, bio­science, and med­ical device com­pa­nies to help their brands develop mean­ing­ful and valu­able con­nec­tions with health­care con­sumers and pro­fes­sion­als alike. I was per­son­ally curi­ous to see how these seem­ingly very dif­fer­ent fields, adver­tis­ing and med­i­cine, com­bined to pro­duce some­thing mean­ing­ful and some­thing that we can’t live without.

When Mrs. Lo Atkins came back from drop­ping off her son, she handed me a cou­ple of tokens for bus fare and we were off to work. We crossed the his­tor­i­cal cob­ble­stone streets and waited about a minute until the bus arrived. On our way to work my host pointed out the his­tor­i­cal build­ings around her neigh­bor­hood, Soci­ety Hill. A lit­tle closer to the office build­ing, she pointed out Inde­pen­dence Hall, where the con­sti­tu­tion was signed, and of course the Lib­erty Bell! After grab­bing some quick break­fast at a local eatery Mrs. Lo Atkins showed me City Hall, one of old­est munic­i­pal build­ings still in oper­a­tion. After­wards, we entered the Wana­maker Build­ing, which is now home to Macy’s, and trav­eled to the floor that houses Dig­i­tas Health. Right away I was shocked by how open the space was, how friendly every­one was, and how over­dressed I was. Notic­ing my shock, Mrs. Lo Atkins explained her dis­may when she went to inter­view with a suc­cess­ful invest­ment bank­ing com­pany at the end of her senior year. Their offices were just too strict and homo­ge­neous, she explained that this was one of rea­sons she fell in love with adver­tis­ing; it was just so open and welcoming.

After fin­ish­ing break­fast in the Café area, Mrs. Lo Atkins’s coworker, Jeanette, offered to give me a tour of the Dig­i­tas Health offices in its entirety while my host com­pleted a client call. Jeanette made a point to show me the beau­ti­ful con­fer­ence rooms, each named after parks in Philadel­phia, the relax­ing atmos­phere, and her favorite parts of the office. After­wards she took me to her desk and went through a pre­sen­ta­tion she pre­pared for me explain­ing a lit­tle bit more about what Dig­i­tas Health did and why she loved work­ing here. Jeanette explained that her cur­rent job is to work with a new dia­betes II drug. Her job in media is to work with her client to buy space on the inter­net to bet­ter adver­tise med­ica­tions and work with the other depart­ments at Dig­i­tas like Mar­ket­ing and Cre­ativ­ity to ensure that con­sumers and physi­cians bet­ter con­nect with their client’s drug. I was floored. I had absolutely no idea that this process I see every­day on the internet/television involved so much. I loved how metic­u­lous and dynamic this indus­try I knew lit­tle about yes­ter­day really was.

Joseph and Mr. and Mrs. Atkins

After Jeanette’s tour she took me to a meet­ing space and let me sit in on a meet­ing with her coworker Patti, who was busy debrief­ing her team on the year-end report that they were to present that afternoon.They gave me a copy of the pre­sen­ta­tion and year-end fig­ures, broke down every­thing to me, and actu­ally wanted me to ask ques­tions and com­ment on the ten­ta­tive plans. After the meet­ing I headed back to Mrs. Lo Atkins’s office, where she was busy answer­ing emails and read­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal arti­cles to make sure she stayed abreast of the times. She answered all of my ques­tions and let me know that we would be going out with a part­ner of theirs to dis­cuss the unveil­ing of a new mobile appli­ca­tion that would greatly ben­e­fit one of their client’s. We ate lunch at a Sushi Bar named Raw with the hilar­i­ous Drew, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive for their part­ner. He actu­ally seemed inter­ested in the work­ers in the Media depart­ment, which shocked me, it wasn’t just about busi­ness. This cul­ture is def­i­nitely very pos­i­tive,. Later, we met with a poten­tial part­ner where they dis­cussed a poten­tial new plat­form that could increase the pres­ence of their client’s drug. After­wards, I met with Dr. Wayne, Vice Pres­i­dent and Direc­tor of Sci­ence & Med­i­cine. We talked for almost 2 hours! He was so awe­some. He let me in on some secrets to make the most out of my time at Prince­ton and stressed the impor­tance of doing things not because they make money, but because I like them. Next, I met with Bren­dan Gal­lagher, SVP Emerg­ing Tech­nol­ogy & Chan­nels, and I was inter­ested in his career path from actor to adver­tis­ing exec­u­tive. It goes to show you that you never now what you’ll end up doing in life…but what­ever it is you have to make sure you love it.

After a taxi­cab ride home we waited for Mr. Atkins and their friends to arrive for a din­ner party. While I was play­ing “Thomas the Train” with their young son, Mr. Atkins and their guests and Prince­ton alumni arrived. They all intro­duced them­selves; there were sur­geons, there was a lawyer, a few res­i­dents, and a par­tic­u­larly hilar­i­ous polit­i­cal cam­paigner. Over din­ner they dis­cussed their dif­fer­ent career paths, shared inspir­ing anec­dotes, and relayed poignant advice. Mr. Atkins’s din­ner in my honor was amaz­ing, after Day One I was already sure that I had made the right deci­sion in choos­ing to go on this par­tic­u­lar Princetern­ship. I can’t wait until tomorrow!

Wednes­day, Jan­u­ary 11, 2012

This time my alarm clock was the family’s two cats that crept into my room dur­ing an obvi­ous attempt to retake their guest room. This cute­ness proved an omen that this day was bound to be amaz­ing. This time we took a cab to the offices in order to make an early meet­ing I had with Matt McNally, Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent and Global Chief Media Offi­cer. Mr. McNally gave some insight as to how Dig­i­tas Health was founded because he was one of the few peo­ple around when Media Broad­cast­ing Com­pany merged with Dig­i­tas to cre­ate Dig­i­tas Health. One very potent tid­bit that I picked up from our talk was about the impor­tance of strong work­place rela­tion­ships. “I would rather work with great peo­ple mak­ing lit­tle money, than with less fun peo­ple mak­ing a lot of money.” After­wards, I met with a few peo­ple who also offered great advice and helped expand on what they did at Dig­i­tas Health.

After what seemed like a sales pitch to the com­pany from a poten­tial part­ner in Mrs. Lo Atkins’s office, I embarked on arguably the most fas­ci­nat­ing part of myPrincetern­ship– lunch with Mr. Penn him­self– Dr. John DeMaio, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent of Busi­ness Strat­egy who is one of few peo­ple who was there since Dig­i­tas Health’s begin­ning. We trav­eled a few blocks down and ate at a quaint lit­tle Amer­i­can clas­sics restaurant.This 2-hour lunch was amaz­ing. Dr. DeMaio explained how he com­pleted nearly all of his study­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia (Psy­chol­ogy, M.D., MBA, and etc.).  He stressed  the impor­tance of work­ing hard and he res­onated with a favorite quote of mine by Mal­colm Glad­well– “Hard Work is a Prison Sen­tence if it does Not Have Meaning”.

After a won­der­ful lunch…my Princetern­ship was com­ing to a close. Mrs. Lo Atkins left me with some last minute tips as she helped me pre­pare to hail a taxi­cab and take an Amtrak Train back to Prince­ton. In ret­ro­spect, I am extremely glad that I had this oppor­tu­nity. I want to thank Mrs. Priscilla Lo Atkins, Dr. Joshua Atkins, and every­one that had a part in mak­ing this such a spec­tac­u­lar Princetern­ship. I rec­om­mend Princetern­ships because they can expose stu­dents to fields that they are sel­dom exposed to and honestly…what else are you doing dur­ing breaks? This is a great chance to actu­ally ben­e­fit and develop your future. I now know that I def­i­nitely want to pur­sue a med­ical degree and one-day fuse my love for busi­ness and adver­tis­ing. 5 stars out of 5!