What COLAB Means To Me

I have said a million times over that COLAB is an amazing experience and opportunity. What I have neglected to do is to define what the experiences and opportunities mean to me besides the obvious of agency experience, chance to enhance my skills and networking, there is a deeper meaning to COLAB.

I have aspired to be an account manager in the creative industry since I was 17 (2 1/2 years). By this time, I had already ruled out Interior Design because I hated it after a class I took at the University of Alaska Anchorage. I knew that I wanted to work in a creative setting but also knew that I didn’t want to be responsible for creating the design work. I would tell people this story and never knew that the position I was describing had a title. I looked online at a number of different colleges that would teach me the business of creativity. I was disappointed after awhile because it seemed every school offered either a creative education or a marketing/business/mass communication education, which was far to broad for what I wanted. It wasn’t until I came across The Art Institute of Portland when I found where I wanted to go for college without a doubt. My parents took a trip with me from Anchorage to Portland to attend the AI open house. We wandered into the Advertising room where I immediately felt I was in the wrong place because all I kept hearing was, “We teach you how to create, we teach you how to draw, we teach you how to blah blah blah.” Nothing about business or management. Feeling disappointed, I meandered into the Design Management room just in time to hear Alan Murdock (Program Director for Design Management and Design Studies) explain almost word for word the career I always described as my ideal. At the end, “this is what account managers do”. SOLD. I now had a title to my ideal career. We stayed and talked with Alan for awhile, the entire time my excitement growing. All I needed to do now was graduate high school, say goodbye to my friends and family, my home and move to Portland where I knew no one. I was scared and excited at the same time.

Being in school (and Portland) for two years and going through all the experiences of moving away from everything familiar, I have grown as an individual. I now appreciate the creative side to the industry a lot more than I did before and I don’t take every effort to avoid design. I actually enjoy it.

So, how does this relate to COLAB? Well, COLAB is further enhancing my appreciation of design and creative work, and placing me in professional real world environments where exceptional work is done. But to me the most beneficial aspect is that it is giving me a chance to work under Account and Project Managers, giving me solid experience in the field, and helping me achieve my ideal career path.

For me, in one sentence the experience and opportunity of COLAB is allowing me to take the next step in becoming an account manager.