Welcome to The Social Impact Podcast, brought to you by the Loeb Center at Amherst College and hosted by Ella Simons ’26!
In each episode, I sit down with a student or alum to explore their personal career journeys, the choices that have shaped them, and the insights they’ve gained along the way. Whether you’re curious about purposeful work or looking for inspiration in your own path, tune in for fresh perspectives and meaningful conversations. Look out for the final episode in the Social Impact series, dropping soon!
The transcription below has been edited for clarity.
Ella:
Hi there everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Social Impact Podcast from the Loeb Center! In this week’s episode, I’ll be sitting down with Ava Zielinski, the marketing and communications intern here at the Loeb Center, and a Spanish and economics major who has a bright future in the world of marketing. So hi, Ava.
Ava:
Hi, happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Ella:
Yep, so you’re my fellow podcast intern here, and I was wondering–was podcasting something you had experience with prior to your work here?
Ava:
Absolutely not actually, I was going kind of blind when I first started. So essentially, what kind of ended up happening was, I’ve always loved listening to podcasts, and I know that they’ve become a very popular form of content as long-form content became definitely more consumed over the past couple of years, especially post-COVID. I really grew to love listening to podcasts, especially going on walks or while I was doing a lot of autonomous kinds of mindless work, folding laundry, going on drives, things like that. And something that I had noticed, and my supervisor, Shannon, had noticed was that there were a lot of opportunities for students to connect in real time with alums and with obviously, their friends, learning about career advice and things like that. But there was no way for us to be able to preserve that knowledge that was being transferred. So the idea for On Air, which was the first podcast that we started, and is an ongoing sort of venture, was to be able to go in whenever a new alum comes into campus, who’s brought in by the Loeb center, who’s able to talk about their experiences, their career journeys, their advice, their time at Amherst, to preserve those words from them for years to come. So if you’re a student who here at Amherst and unfortunately, weren’t able to make their office hours because you’re in class, or they’re overbooked, or you’re a student who’s coming in three years from now, and the person that we brought in for On Air that you know really aligns with your career ideals or what you would like to do later on in life, already came and went, it’s a lost opportunity. And so our thought was to be able to preserve these words, to be able to allow students for years to come, to be able to listen back to this advice. And really that demonstrates, I think, how invaluable all of the experiences of people on this campus and then their lives after this campus are.
Ella:
I think we have, like, a very unique, like, pool of alumni, too.
Ava:
We really do.
Ella:
Yeah. And any of them, I’m sure would make a great podcast, which is kind of rare, I bet, for a college podcast.
Ava:
They’ve all been so unique and interesting. But I think the one thing that brings them all together is just that they’re so genuinely open and warm and excited to talk to you about what they do, which I think is something that is just uniquely Amherst trait as well, especially meeting so many students from different walks of life here. Everybody here has a very unique passion for something, and you can definitely see that also in their major combinations, people are really excited to talk about what they’re learning and what they’re doing in their classes, or the essays that they’re writing or the theses that they’re doing, and what they might be doing for an internship, and you can definitely see that passion translates even later in life with all of these alums. So that’s something that I’ve honestly loved the most about it.
Ella:
Yeah, that’s super cool. So I was wondering about your approach to interviews. So do you let the conversation just flow naturally? Do you come up with questions on the spot, or do you have a general plan or specific questions that you come up with beforehand?
Ava:
So what I’ve done in the past years is I’ve had a set of uniform questions that are, I guess, guard rails, a little like guidelines for how I’d like to execute an interview. So generally, I’ve always asked, at least, when talking to alums, because I’ve been doing this for three years now, is having specific questions that are generally pretty uniform. I always have them start with an elevator pitch about themselves, and I kind of create the scenario: your favorite celebrity gets into an elevator with you, and you’ve got to make yourself look really cool in front of them about what you do. What do you say? And that’s always a really great way to mark the conversation. And then from there, with the knowledge that I have about the job that they do and what their career journeys looked like, which is generally something I have researched going through their profile on the Loeb Center website, and what they’ve been able to say during their events that [the Loeb Center] were holding for alumni-in-residence. Then from there, I sort of craft questions that are either contemporarily related to student experiences, whether that be funding issues or concerns about constrictions in hiring in certain industries, and sort of craft those questions related to that. But in all honesty, it’s been really fun just to kind of see where the conversation goes, because sometimes they bring up really, really awesome kernels of information and wisdom, and my mind kind of latches on to it, and I’m like, “Wait, please talk. Talk more about that. I want to hear more about what you have to say there.” And honestly, I think those are the moments where the conversations are the most valuable, because they’re the most organic in those periods of time.
Ella:
Yeah. And you’re interviewing them on behalf of Amherst students, as a whole. So what you identify with them as being particularly interesting is something that more people are gonna want to know about than just kind of general questions.
Ava:
I would agree. I think also, as an intern at the Loeb Center, and specifically a marketing and communications intern, you’re in a very unique position where there’s people who work at this school who are willing to listen to you and your ideas, and you’re also a sounding board for the rest of campus, a sort of liaison, or this middleman, if you will, for student voices and then the ability to actually act on them. I think it’s a really important position, and also a really big duty to be servicing the student body and properly communicating their needs to a bunch of people who can make change happen.
Ella:
So how have you used your marketing and communication skills to expand the reach of your podcast, or just in your work at the Loeb Center?
Ava:
Sure. Well, starting out, the position that I came into was very new. So the podcast wasn’t established. None of this was established. Now it all has grown over time with the creative freedom I’ve been given, which I’m very grateful for. It’s been really great to come up with ideas and kind of be sitting around having a little rap session with my supervisor and other interns, and coming up with really great ideas that have been able to stick over time. So in the beginning, when I came in here, I was doing a lot of marketing of initial and original events that were already happening. So I was putting up lots of posters and creating posts using Canva, a lot of things like that, to kind of put the word out about events. What’s been interesting, specifically, if we’re looking at On Air, is I started with making graphics advertising these events, and essentially, you know, putting up the photo of the alum coming in, the name of the event that they are leading, and then maybe a tiny little blurb at the bottom, like learn about X, Y and Z, transform your career interests in technology, something like that as a very, very quick snippet, or glance into what the event would look like. And that would just go up, as a singular post on the Loeb Center Instagram, and now it’s changed a lot with the birth of the podcast On Air. Specifically, we’ve been able to be a lot more dynamic in the way that we market the events, because we’re not only marketing the alum and what they have to say through reels and things like that, which has been really cool to be able to go back and pick out specific snippets of the conversation that I’ve had with this alum. We put it to music. We put it against some sort of eye-catching video that’s available, royalty free, online, as with a lot of Tik Tok videos that people watch, you have that initial video where you have the initial audio and then someone’s playing, like Flappy Bird or Temple Run, a split screen to kind of keep someone’s attention. So we do something similar like that now to kind of market this conversation, and also to be able to market the event that this alum is putting on as well. So it’s kind of taken on a new life of its own, and I think it’s been very interesting to see how much more dynamic our marketing has been in that sphere. And I think it’s also created a lot more traction and attention also around the events.
Ella:
It sounds like the split screen, and a lot of these [marketing techniques] require a lot of technical skill.
Ava:
Yeah, a little bit, a little bit, yeah.
Ella:
So what do you focus on most with the podcast? Or is there something that you focus on most between the preparation before you meet the guest, researching the guest, the actual conversation itself, or editing and post production?
Ava:
Sure. So something that’s interesting, and that’s been really nice, that I’m very appreciative of, is that it’s definitely been a team effort. So my supervisor, Shannon, often takes care of a lot of the post production and a lot of the editing stuff. That’s something that she’s really great at. She works on the transcription stuff. She works on, you know, editing out different words and things like that. And I take care of making the transcript look nice to be able to put that out as a blog post on the Loeb Center website as well. So if you’re a student who is intrigued by a guest but really doesn’t feel like listening to everything that is being said, would rather read it or maybe pick out important pieces of information relevant to them. That’s also an option. So I take care of that part. So I would say I’m more focused on the front side, on the research, and then on the conversation itself. I would say the biggest lift, at least on a personal level, is probably the conversation that happens itself. I think it’s important to know what kind of guest you will be interacting with and what their background is. But more than anything, your ability to relate to them and your ability to have an energetic and dynamic conversation is the most important part of what is happening here, because you know, you could do all the research in the world, and you could have the most amazing editing skills. But if the conversations are a flop, then it doesn’t mean anything.
Ella:
It’s true. Yeah, something for me to think about. So you shared with me that you have had several marketing and communications internships, it seems like in the fashion industry?
Ava:
A little all over the place, actually, yeah. So, I can walk you through it a little bit. So this position that I got at the Loeb Center, which I interviewed for at the end of my first year, and then began going into the following school year of my sophomore year, was very much a catalyst for my understanding as to what I wanted to do. Post-grad [from high school], coming into college, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I thought I wanted to be an English major. That didn’t work out, and a lot of college has been just slowly putting the pieces together of what intrigues me and what’s been really fun to learn about, and just following those lines, just following those connections. So what’s been interesting is, when I interviewed for this position, I was just really intrigued by the idea of marketing and communications. The job description was really cool. It was something that I could see myself doing. And I was like, might as well apply for it. I love a campus job, I could use the money, [I thought] this would be great. And we’ll see what happens from there, and the amount of creativity and the skills that I was exposed to and the strategy also behind everything, I absolutely loved. So that fall of my sophomore year, it was the fall of 2022 I realized, you know, this is something that I want to do, and this is something I want to lean into if I’m going to look for an internship between my sophomore and junior year. So I started applying to different sorts of marketing and strategy internships. There’s so much under the umbrella of marketing. It’s unbelievable. There’s so much. And it also depends on what industry that you’re in, what kind of company you would work for. Are you working for an agency, are you in house? Is it advertising? Is it public relations? They’re all very different things that fall under this umbrella. And I met a ton with Carla Costa, who is our career Community Advisor in Arts and Communications. Bless her soul. She helped me so much and kind of, you know, we would just have a lot of back and forth about, you know, what opportunities would be good, what to apply to, and things like that. So I just applied everywhere I could, looking for anything that was related to that role or that label. And the spring of my sophomore year, Carla passed along an opportunity from an agency, a PR agency called Nike Communications, that is currently run by an Amherst alum who graduated in the ‘80s. It is a public relations agency that specializes in luxury brands. So when I first heard about it I was like, “Whoa, this seems really cool.”
So specifically they split up the teams into different niches within [the company] so there was one team that worked on lifestyle brands, so they would work with cosmetics and also fashion. There was another group that worked specifically on spirits, so they worked a lot with the Bacardi brand and represented them. There was another group that worked on food and hotels. They would work with a lot of really, really luxury hotels and marketing, also different luxury restaurants that were world-renowned. And then there was my group that I was with, which was wine and design, and the majority of that was working with wine, with lots of different wine brands and vineyards and things like that. And there were a couple of spirits mixed in there too. And it was really interesting. I really liked it. It was really cool to get exposure outside the Loeb Center, because the Loeb Center is obviously a very specific organization. The marketing is very specific to college students and to careers. And this was a really great hands-on experience of understanding what it looks like to be negotiating with brands and writers to get the word out about different clients. It was really cool. I think in the end, I didn’t totally love the PR space, and I was hoping for something to be a little bit more strategic, a little more strategy based. My favorite parts of our meetings that we have here are when we’re sitting down and just feeding ideas or we’re taking an existing event saying, “Well, what can we do around this?” And so as an intern, obviously you don’t have much of a voice. But I worked very closely with a lot of my supervisors, and I could see how they were talking to different writers and using their connections there and stuff like that. And it was so close to what I could see myself doing for a little while, but it was just not quite there yet, but it was really great to also have an understanding of what you want and what you don’t want.
Yes, so I went back to the drawing board a little bit, and considered going back, and I continued applying to a bunch of other internships, again, looking in sort of the marketing sphere. And I landed a sales internship for the company Moody’s, which was really interesting. Also, again, sort of its own niche, they’re a Financial Services Corporation. But the department that I was working in was very much not financial. Moody’s themselves have been around for over 100 years, I believe. And they do credit ratings, that’s what they’re known for, for businesses, for the government, and they’re known for doing risk analysis. And over the years, especially as they’ve expanded, they’ve taken on other companies. They’ve absorbed other companies, and gathered all these data dashboards where they use this information to be able to help companies and organizations understand the risks of doing business with other groups, or understanding the credit risk of different decisions that they’re making, or how best and most efficiently they could carry out certain processes. And so from the sales side there, it was so incredibly interesting to see how people had their own client books, and they were doing strategy every day, and they were constantly having relationships with people. And I think out of everything, something that I noticed that I connected with the most here at the Loeb Center was how much I loved talking to people. The podcast stuff has probably been one of my favorite parts of this job. And to be able to do that all day and to be working on relationships with other people was like my bread and butter. So learning from people who were already at Moody’s, and then also being able to, you know, network and talk to people all day and learn what they have to say was great. I loved it. It was a fantastic environment. The people were so kind. And from that, I was given an offer to go back. So this fall, I will be starting a job with them in a sales rotational program. And within those rotations, you’ll be exposed to different areas of the sales and marketing division of Moody’s. So one of those rotations that I will be doing this fall, or in the coming two years, is actually part of their marketing department. So I’ll be able to decide what’s the best fit, but it all sort of falls under that realm.
Ella:
It’s really amazing to hear how the skills that you’ve learned here have really translated to what you’re gonna do after school. And congrats.
Ava:
Thank you. Yeah, I don’t know if I would have come across this if I wasn’t working here, because also Amherst, as a liberal arts school, is so fantastic because you’re able to take classes in so many different disciplines. I loved it, taking classes into so many different majors. But in terms of something like marketing, which is a little more niche, it’s offered at a lot of larger schools, at state schools, and also parts of minors or other other programs at a lot of other universities that generally have more bandwidth–that doesn’t really exist here. So it’s hard to find something like that if you don’t know where to look. And being able to come [to the Loeb Center] and sort of flex that creative muscle and learn so much has been fantastic in and of itself.
Ella:
It seems like talking to the different guests who’ve come on here, a lot of students repeat the idea of casting a wide net. Because, even if you have an idea of what you want to do, you don’t actually know what that entails, until you really try it.
Ava:
That is so true.
Ella:
So once again, hearing that repeated again is really solidifying it for me. I also know that you’ve studied abroad. What did the study abroad experience affect your idea of potentialities for your life?
Ava:
Well, it was fantastic. I’ll start with that. Yeah, I was fortunate enough to be able to study abroad in Madrid, Spain with the Middlebury program as a Spanish major. I went with a language program, so it was an immersion program. All my classes were in Spanish, and I learned so much. It was really, really cool. It was really fun. Also to be in a city, something very different from Amherst, and just kind of try on that hat in life, especially now that I’ll be moving to a city, and I grew up in a small town. So I haven’t really had that experience quite yet. I am from a small town in Connecticut, I went to a public high school with a graduating class of 200 kids, which for a public school is very small. Everybody that I grew up with I knew since I was five. So it was really different to go to a huge city and be anonymous for a second and be absorbed into that cosmopolitan culture. And that was really cool. And it was also really a wonderful experience to just grow comfortable with being uncomfortable, to be in a place with a different language, and although you speak that language, you don’t speak it as well as the people who grew up speaking it. From day one, you don’t understand the cultural context of everything. The US is at the center of the world. There are so many other things going on in the geopolitical sphere that from these classes and from being exposed to the environment, a lot of people’s jaws dropped. A lot of Americans’ jaws dropped. It was really interesting in that sense. So I think the main takeaways that I had was, first of all, I don’t want to lose my Spanish skills. I don’t want to lose my language skills. It’s such an asset in this world, and we’re an ever-globalizing world, and on top of that, too, I would love the opportunity to live outside of the United States again. Yeah, it was such a fantastic experience. I learned so much. I love living here too, and it’s been great. But it would be a little crazy of me to not want to leave again after having such a wonderful experience and seeing so much.
Ella:
It seems like that. I took Spanish in high school. I haven’t continued a language here, which I do kind of regret. But it seems like intimately knowing another language just opens you up to a whole other culture completely. And that’s something that’s very interesting. And if you have those skills, I think you know you should use them, for sure.
Ava:
Yeah, for sure. And I also think that the Spanish major here is really wonderful in the sense that you are allowed to develop your language skills, but it also allows you to take many courses across many different disciplines, just in another language. So I’ve taken a film class in Spanish. I’ve taken different sorts of European Studies classes in Spanish, things related to gender studies, to architecture, to history, and it all falls under the same umbrella. So it’s almost like double trouble. You’re getting credit for your Spanish classes and towards your major, but you’re also getting to learn so much in that target language too. So it’s been really cool.
Ella:
Yeah, that does sound cool. So how do you balance your different activities? I know you’re on the track team, you have this communications and marketing position, and [you’re involved in] the Newman Association too, which is the Association of Catholic students here on campus. First of all, how do you balance that? And secondly, how do you think they affect each other? Do you see any interconnections?
Ava:
Sure. So yeah, very busy. I am newly retired from track, though, so all of a sudden I have more time on my hands, even though, at the end of the semester, things are still very busy. So I like to say I went from being too busy to just regular busy now, but I think, in all honesty, my saving grace has been time blocking. I’m the kind of person that likes to do things back to back. So the way that I like to structure my schedule or my classes, I would rather have two classes back to back and have the rest of the day to have meetings or do work and go to practice. Then, I’ll have one class in the morning and then another class two hours later. It definitely affects your ability to do deep work, and to be able to kind of sit down and have this time dedicated. Like four hours dedicated to being able to just cross a bunch of stuff off your list, for me, has been something that’s been really valuable. With track, we would practice six days a week and we’d have only one day off. Yeah, wild, right?
Ella:
Wow, insane. That’s so much.
Ava:
It’s a lot. And traditionally, I would have Wednesdays off, that would always be my day off. And that would be a day that I would try to have as little class as possible, I would schedule my meetings for that day and try to have as much open time as possible to be able to catch up on things. And that has always been super helpful in either making sure that you’re on top of things, or even getting ahead. That’s another thing I would always do, is just making sure I get ahead. So at the beginning of the semester, I would work really hard to make sure I was in a comfortable spot to be able to miss doing homework one night so that I could have fun with friends, or go to GADS. When you have a meet, you can’t really do work there, because it’s hard to concentrate when there’s all these people around you and things like that. So those have been my two big ones, in terms of managing everything. I definitely think that it’s been very interesting to see the connection between being a student athlete and then also my work here at the Loeb center in general, seeing and hearing about what people on my team are interested in doing and things like that. I feel that I’ve been put in a very unique position to be able to at least put some wisdom in there if someone is unsure about something, or they need internship advice or anything like that. I think being able to work at the Loeb Center provides you with a very intimate knowledge of what people do here and how much the people who work here care about the student body. So if there’s ever a student, or never a teammate of mine who’s uncertain about something, or wants internship advice, or asked me how I did what I did, and I always point them here, and I always tell them about the events going on, or “Oh, you should really meet with this career Community Advisor. This would be perfect for you.” And I think that’s always been, that’s been really helpful. Traditionally, the student body has been a little afraid of the Loeb Center. It’s seen as this kind of intimidating place. Careers are so serious, like deciding what you want to do with your life, and it’s a lot easier to just ignore it than to go face the music and throw yourself into it. And then when you come here, you realize how warm and caring and kind and supportive everyone is. You’re like, “I don’t know what I was afraid of in the first place,” but getting over that initial barrier as another student, if I’m able to preach to a lot of people, how much good work I see everyone doing here, I definitely think that it helps reduce that fear. So that’s something that I’ve noticed as a big connection between the two.
Ella:
Yeah, like demystifying it here.
Ava:
Totally.
Ella:
No one’s gonna bite you. My first time in the Loeb Center was actually this year, my junior year, first semester. And I came in because I was unsure of how to put my resume together. I received great help, completely revamped my resume, and then I got this position with that resume.
Ava:
Yeah they’re really helpful.
Ella:
No kidding. So I guess my final question is, I know you’re graduating this year, so what would be your main advice to students who are still here?
Ava:
Oh, that’s a toughie. I gotta pause for a second. I wanna give you a good one.
Ella:
Thank you on behalf of all of us.
Ava:
Of course. I mean, I’ve heard a lot of advice from a lot of other people, and think they’ve given good advice, so I feel the pressure to be able to pass on the same thing.
Ella:
I’m sure it’s gonna be great.
Ava:
I would say trust your gut, for sure. If you’re interested in a class, take it. There’s a reason why you’re interested in it. If there’s a job description that jumps out to you, look at it, maybe apply to it, even if it might not be something traditionally that you’ve decided is in the cards for what your career might look like. There’s a reason it jumps out to you. I’m a big believer in the idea that things happen for a reason, and if you give yourself the chance to listen to yourself for a second, instead of listening to everyone else around you and what they’re saying: you have to become a doctor, or you have to become a banker, or you have to do pre-med, or you have to be a certain major in order to get a good job, or you need to get this internship in order to be successful. None of that matters if you don’t know what you want. And I’ve seen so many times students come here with an idea of what they want to do, and the opinion of the student body, the opinion of the school sways them a bit, but then they end up returning to exactly what they wanted to do in the first place. And it’s good to explore, and be open to lots of things–that’s fantastic–but listen to yourself. What are your values, what is your body telling you about this? And that’s going to lead you to some pretty incredible places.
Ella:
Wow, that was great advice. Thank you so much.
Ava:
Thank you, thank you, it’s been a pleasure.
