Harper Yang: Making Positive Contributions in the Community

One thing that I have learned while working at the San Jose Office of Economic Development (OEDCA) is that no matter what your role is, you must be a well rounded, multifaceted individual to make a positive contribution. The team that makes up the Office of Economic Development is made up of extremely talented and diverse humans coming from all types of backgrounds. Most employees will expand their responsibilities past their job description because they identify a gap in their work. My advisor, Carlos Velasquez, wears many hats as the Public Information Manager at the City of San Jose. Carlos is the only staff member at the OEDCA that is responsible for marketing which includes, but is not limited to, social media, SJ economy website, monthly newsletters, and external outreach. We work to raise awareness, fostering trust throughout the city and catering to the needs of the stakeholders. Being responsible for the OEDCA’s marketing requires ample adaptability and strategic problem solving skills. When working for the City of San Jose, the stakeholders are more than just “customers,” they are the residents, businesses, city leaders, and students of San Jose. Managing such a diverse set of stakeholders requires everyday adaptability, negotiation skills, and resilience. 

Recently, Carlos and I worked on an Instagram T-Shirt Giveaway that also promoted the Shop Local Campaign for the holiday season. Every year the OEDCA highlights small businesses during peak holiday shopping season so that the extreme volume of shoppers during this time will consider shopping locally to support their neighbors and community. Around this time, Carlos had realized that the office had a whole box filled with various sizes and designs of San Jose placemark t-shirts. Carlos began speaking with other team members to go over language and guidelines for a social media giveaway, and I worked on recruiting a photographer and the other two Leavey School of Business Community Fellows Interns at the City of San Jose OEDCA, Yash Sharma and Shubhaan Saxena. Yash, Shubhaan, and I met up during the week to model the t-shirts, and we were able to get the giveaway off the ground. We made the criteria for entering the giveaway to post about a small business you shopped at this holiday season and then follow the @sjeconomy page so that we could notify the winners. The campaign was widely successful, and we were able to give away almost every shirt that we had in reserves.  The shirts themselves were also quite popular, so Carlos and I immediately started working on getting the placemark shirts in stores around San Jose.

Looking back at how I have grown as an individual while at my placement, I realize I have become more confident, decisive, and advocate for myself more everyday. Juggling 5 courses, and 16 hours of work a week has been challenging, but I have learned so much in the process. I am able to directly communicate with my supervisor what my personal goals are for this internship, use external and internal communication to reach out to business partners and coworkers for information, and in real life situations, put my business education to the test. 

I am a marketing major, and in my work as the marketing and communications intern, I have found myself using data analytics in my everyday role. Recently, I have started compiling the data from our Constant Contact website to analyze the effectiveness of our monthly newsletters. The data has shown growth in opening rates, as well as outliers with high levels of interaction. I look forward to being able to share this information with the OEDCA team at their weekly meetings they call “Family Dinner.” Family Dinner is something unique to my placement, that enriches the experience of working at the OEDCA. Every week on Wednesday at 11 am, the entire OEDCA team meets in a conference room to go over any recent successes, difficulties , or new events that are on the horizon. This meeting speaks to the collaborative and communicative environment that the OEDCA operates in that makes working there so enriching. 

As a Jesuit university, Santa Clara University does a wonderful job of making sure its students receive a well rounded education. One of the biggest things that influenced me to choose Santa Clara University was the way they integrate Jesuit values into their core education requirements. The Jesuit value of Cura Personalis aligns directly with my work at the Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs, as we use business not only as a profit-driver but as a tool for the city. In a business mindset, we often are so focused on profitability. In class, we learn how to market towards consumers so that they will buy our product, to allocate our marketing dollars as efficiently and profitably as possible, and we even learn how to analyze the profitability of a potential new project and compare it to how much money we could have made if we put that funding into a diversified portfolio. I often find myself caught up in the “money” of it all, that I forget why I am learning all of this. The fundamental reason for my business education is to guide me towards what I want to do with the rest of my life. To decide what type of work I want to pursue, what type of employee I want to be, and ultimately, what type of impact I want to make on the world.