This Tuesday, Nov. 4, I attended the last Speak to Inspire for this school year and heard from two Rosary alumnae. This Speak to Inspire featured Maddie Pelayo ‘16 and Shayna Marks ‘04, who have careers focused on marketing. Mrs. Pontius ‘03 organizes the Speak to Inspire meetings and works with alumnae to coordinate events. She said that “Speak to Inspire encourages Rosary students to start thinking beyond high school. The program allows the students to hear how women, just like them, have gone on to make a difference in the world through a variety of different career paths.” Speak to Inspire is a great way for students to learn more about different career paths and give them advice from past Royals!
Shayna Marks discussed her journey to get where she is today and some of the challenges she faced. She says that it “took her a long time to get where she is,” but she put “faith into herself,” which guided her. Shayna also discussed her freedoms in owning her own business. She enjoys having the freedom to be in charge of her schedule and treat herself to a trip once in a while! Her business focuses on providing services to woman-owned and led businesses to empower them in their journeys. Her last piece of advice was to “follow what you like and what you’re good at” to feel fulfilled and thoroughly enjoy the work you are doing. It was great to hear from her experience and learn how she grew with each obstacle she faced.
Next, Maddie Pelayo talked about her current job and how she enjoys working with multiple departments to create new content. It was great to hear how she works with influencers, photographers and analytics to help produce effective posts. Maddie said she loves her job so much because she is “a large consumer of social media and she gets to produce more content for others to see” which “completes a cycle of social media content” for her. That is a great point, because a majority of us are large consumers of social media and do not get a chance to see the work that is being produced. She also discussed how she gets to strategize with her team to choose which influencers will promote and bring in more revenue for the company. Hearing from Maddie helped me learn about the work that it takes to produce a social media campaign and how much preparation is required before it begins.
Although this Speak to Inspire was the last session for this school year, Mrs. Pontius says “Speak to Inspire will be back next fall with a new set of speakers and new topics. If a student has an industry or topic they would like to hear from, they are always welcome to reach out, and we can work on trying to get alumnae in that field back to campus to be part of Speak to Inspire.” Next year, do not miss a chance to attend a Speak to Inspire and hear from Rosary alumnae about their journey because they may inspire you to broaden your choices!
