PRSSA Fall Firm Trip

 This past Tuesday a few of my fellow PRSSA members and I went to Columbus, Ohio for our annual in-state fall firm trip. We left campus at 8 am and headed to our first stop which was ODOT. There we talked to Erica Hawkins the Chief Communications Officer and three of her colleagues that work with social media and video production. It was interesting to hear about how a government organization uses social media platforms like Tik Tok. 

Our second stop was the Columbus Crew performance center. Tim Miller, the Senior Director of Communication and Broadcast, led us through the facility and talked to us about the press conference he just got finished that morning. The Crew fired the head coach for one of their teams the day before. I didn’t even know the Columbus Crew was a thing until this trip. After talking to Tim at the performance center we headed to lunch at the Walrus, which was pretty good. 

After lunch, we walked over to Nationwide Children’s Hospital offices and met with Katie Thomas, the Senior Manager of their Population Health Marketing team. Katie had three of her co-workers on different PR teams talk with us as well. They let us ask a bunch of questions and gave some great advice. One thing Katie emphasized is that it's okay to not know what you want to do right out of college and you don’t have to have a job set up right out of college. 

Our fourth and final stop was Slide 9 which is communication, public relations and digital marketing agency. We met with Kim Ratcliff, the Vice President of Strategy + Culture. She gave us a tour of their very modern and beautiful office. After the tour, we sat in town with Kim and two of her co-workers and talked about their agency and agency work in general. I found it helpful that she talked about how all agencies are different.  

Firm trips with PRSSA are super fun and informative for me. It was worth giving up a day of fall break. From this trip, I learned more about Nationwide which is one of the companies I have been looking at for internships and I have become more interested in agency work. 

Here are some pictures at each stop! 

                         

 

Until Next Time My Dudes, 

Em