Guest Speaker: Amy Paul

Last week Wednesday we had a guest speaker in our PR 2 Tactics class, Amy Paul. She is a recent graduate of UW-Whitewater and shared a very informative and helpful presentation! She gave a PowerPoint about where she went after graduation and how she got to where she is today.

Paul graduated in 2011 and majored in Public Relations. What was interesting is that she mentioned she was originally a dance major and then changed when she realized how much she loved writing. She started took a position at the Milwaukee County Executive Office as a public relations assistant. She had a lot of tasks to accomplish such as planning and carrying out major county events and administering all social media efforts.

After the Milwaukee County Executive Office, Paul got a job at Bottom Line Marketing & Public Relations as a PR assistant. She explained that her job requires a lot of writing. She spends most of her time throughout the day writing, planning, making press releases etc.
After Bottom Line Marketing & PR, Paul got a job at Ascedia where she currently is working as an Interactive Account Coordinator.

Paul went on to talk about what helped her receive these jobs. I found it extremely interesting she got an internship with the Milwaukee Admirals. She stressed that this unpaid internship helped her greatly and she is still closely connected with her boss to this day. She also stressed how important it is to ask and reach out for more responsibilities from your internship bosses. Paul said before she left for the day she would ask her boss if there was anything else that needed done before she left and he was more than happy to give her a task, but it also showed that she is willing and hard-working.

In college, Paul joined clubs such as PRSSA and was very involved. She also had an internship at the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.

I was very inspired by her presentation and learned a lot from Amy Paul. I plan to take her tips and reflect them on myself to grow as a PR professional some day.

My continuing journey...

My name is Sara Neumann and I am a second semester junior at UW-Whitewater. I transferred from UW-Milwaukee studying psychology and realized it wasn't for me. I decided to major in PR and have been very happy with my decision ever since. 

I just enrolled in PR Tactics 2 and I am so excited to get started! I fell in love with Tactics 1, so I know this class will be great too. This class will be a great next-step in my journey. I'm excited to go to networking events and get my name out there to important executives of companies. It's also helpful that we will be working on our resumes and practicing media releases. All in all, this class will be a great learning experience for me. 

As a PR student, my expectations in myself are to do well in my communications classes and learn all I can. I plan to get an internship later in the spring of next year. My career goals include graduating and continuing my journey. I would love to work in the PR industry anywhere after college, but ultimately I plan to work for a sports franchise and use my PR and journalism experience in that. 

I've constructed a few writing pieces that can be found in my LinkedIn profile and my Weebly. They were pieces I wrote for my PR Tactics 1 class and I think they were great practice for writing news, press, media and electronic releases. 

Follow me on Twitter: @Sara_Neumann

Check out my LinkedIn profile: Sara Neumann

Check out my Weebly profile: Sara Neumann