Career | Island & Hills

December 14, 2015 / 0 Comments

I&H Spotlight: Rachel Koretsky

Meet Rachel Koretsky, 23, the Founder and CEO for her startup upace. We talked to Rachel about the exciting new fitness app, and what it’s like to be an entrepreneur and leader in her career.

Maddie: What is upace?
Rachel: upace is a management mobile and online app to help individuals find the optimal time and resources to live a healthier lifestyle. The software will allow the university to analyze data that will assist in meeting campus needs. Our mission is to help students find fitness resources on campus at the right time to fit within their individual needs. In fact, that is how we created our name – find your pace.

M: Describe your role.
R: I am the founder and CEO of upace.

December 2, 2015 / 0 Comments

Get Inspired

A wise woman once told me “fake it ’til you make it”; I’ve found that one of the best ways to do this is through consistent study of other people’s work. When making a living in a creative field, it’s important to gather as many sources of inspiration as possible. While Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr can all be good starting points, I have compiled a handful of my favorite “alternative” inspiration sites. The need for visual inspiration isn’t exclusive to designers. The next time you’re stuck on a problem, idea or brainstorm, take a break and explore; designspiration.net has an incredible search function (type anything in — or search by color! — and you’ll get results). Friends of Type and Fonts in Use are amazing for the typography junkie and rookie alike (they’ll make you look at type differently). Oh Beautiful Beer has been a longtime favorite (and secret dream job) of mine. See the full list below:

The Pattern Library

The Dieline

Designspiration

Friends of Type

Fonts in Use

Nowness

Oh Beautiful Beer

What inspires you? How do you get “unstuck”? We want to know in the comments below!

October 6, 2015 / 0 Comments

I&H Spotlight: Madhulika Banerjee

Madhulika Banerjee is a 24-year-old graduate student in Arizona, working on getting her Master of Science in Cellular and Molecular Medicine. I recently spoke with her about her degree, her research in working to solve colorectal cancer, her recent international experience in medical school in India, and how she stays motivated while maintaining her rigorous schedule.

Aditi: You’ve got two more years at the University of Arizona, and you’re also working on some research. What do you like about it and dislike about it?
Madhulika: It’s a small department, which is nice because it creates an intimate environment between not only my peers but professors as well. It’s definitely a difficult program though. It’s like mini-prep for med school. My program focuses on viewing what’s inside the human body at a cellular and molecular level and relating it back to the medical field. That might include relating things to different disease presentations, drug discovery, or experimental research, just to name a few.

A: What do you hope to accomplish after you graduate?
M: My end goal is to finish masters and get into med school. As I’ve gotten older I’ve definitely realized that it’s incredibly easy to fail at a goal but it doesn’t mean that you stop dead. My back up plan is to apply for a PhD, either in the same department at my school or maybe a different place, doing cancer research. I’m not sure yet what type of doctor I would want to be once I complete med school. Sometimes it’s easier to identify what you don’t want to do. I know I don’t want to be a surgeon or an OBGYN.

September 23, 2015 / 0 Comments

I&H Spotlight: Locke Hughes

Meet Locke Hughes, 27, a Senior Editor at Greatist.com living in Manhattan. We picked her brain on how she turned her passion for health, fitness and journalism into a successful and fulfilling career.

Maddie: What’s your day job and your responsibilities there?
Locke: I’m a senior editor at Greatist.com. We’re a health and wellness startup on a mission to help people think about health in a different way—namely, that healthy equals happy (no six-pack required). Our content is science-backed, expert-approved, and totally down-to-earth. You won’t find any talk about cleanses, crash diets, or soul-destroying workouts here (unless it’s to say how crazy they are). On a typical day, you’ll find me pitching new story ideas, assigning articles to freelancers, top editing articles, overseeing fitness photo shoots, and writing (the fun part!).

M: Tell me a little bit about your career trajectory. How did you end up as a Senior Editor at Greatist?
L: It’s probably a familiar story. After graduating from the University of Virginia with an English degree in 2010, I came to NYC, spent a month job searching while sleeping on a friend’s couch before I found a freelance position at O, The Oprah Magazine (and an apartment). Then I took another freelance role at Seventeen, and finally a legit job as an assistant to the editor-in-chief at Woman’s Day Magazine. After that (people move around a lot in the publishing world!) I moved to Shape to be an online assistant editor, where I eventually became the senior social media editor. Last year, my former boss from Shape approached me about coming to Greatist, where I am now. Moral of that story: Meet with anyone and everyone! I originally connected with my now-boss five years ago when I bought her a coffee when I first moved to NYC. I stayed in touch, and eventually she helped me get my job at Shape, then ended up hiring me at Greatist! You never know where a cup of coffee may take you.

August 6, 2015 / 0 Comments

I & H Spotlight: Kendall Breitman

With the first presidential debate happening tonight, we couldn’t imagine a better spotlight subject than Kendall Breitman. Kendall, 23, currently works as a political reporter in New York City.

Maddie: Tell me what you do.
Kendall: I’m a political reporter at Bloomberg Politics.

M: What made you want to get into journalism and reporting?
K: I didn’t originally think about doing journalism at all. I always liked writing, but I didn’t want to do creative writing, so I didn’t really know what else was on the table. I took a journalism class, and that opened up the whole world of journalism to me. I started editing arts and entertainment for my school’s newspaper (I thought that was what I wanted to do). I got an internship doing political journalism, ended up loving that, so it all came together out of different situations in my life.

August 5, 2015 / 1 Comment

Refreshed & Reenergized

In my first post, I talked a lot about drive, passion, and the importance of going after what you want, but along with those things comes some type of pressure, or stress. As AlunaGeorge says it best, “Life can be cruel, if you’re a dreamer.” This line resonates with me because I feel like anyone with a goal, or an ambition, naturally suffers along the way, but I’ve recently realized that it’s healthy and beneficial in the long run to find out what makes me feel calm and self-aware. For me, it has always been important to achieve an equal balance of ambition and peace of mind, and an ability to recognize what is important in life.

July 27, 2015 / 1 Comment

I & H Spotlight: Genesis Keller

In our first I & H Spotlight, we talk to Genesis Keller, a 24-year-old LA-based teacher with the Teach for America organization.

Aditi: Who inspires you?
Genesis: Definitely my mom as well as the other women in my family. I’m also really inspired by what my friends are doing. We make a point to support each other and we’re always bouncing ideas off of each other. The kids I work with inspire me and make me want to be a better teacher and person, overall. They teach me about myself and about what’s important in life. My job in general inspires me because I love that I develop meaningful relationships with my co-workers, and I feel like I’m making a positive impact in the lives of these kids, in some way.

July 10, 2015 / 0 Comments

Networking – Part I

My senior year of college, I was constantly attending various mock interview sessions and alumni networking events, convinced that unless I picked up the skills and strategies taught at these seminars, I was going to be unemployed forever. Of course I was totally wrong. While these events were certainly helpful and gave me plenty of practice, there was something about memorizing my 10-second elevator pitch that felt forced. I’ve always considered myself to be pretty emotionally intelligent, and I realized that none of these conversations I was trying to pre-develop in my head could possibly seem genuine. If I ever found myself in a situation speaking to an employer of a company that I dreamed to work for, my gut reaction would absolutely not be to go on a 10 second rant about my career goals. That would be so awkward. I realized that these seminars were a lot like the difference between taking a class about a certain industry vs. doing an internship in that industry. While the class gives you the basic knowledge and understanding, you have no way of knowing what your strengths are or what your challenges may be, until you are actually in that situation. Upon graduation, I moved to Los Angeles, and decided that I wanted to come up with my own strategy for networking, that didn’t feel forced, and didn’t feel like work.

Category: Career