Week 1

Hi everyone! My name is Emerly Soong and I am the summer scholar for Learning Resources. This summer I will dip my feet into the fields of web marketing and digital strategy under the mentorship of Michelle Bougie and Michael Alm, respectively. The purpose of this blog is to provide a snapshot of my (and fellow interns') experiences throughout the summer, to take some time to reflect on the significance of some of these experiences, and to share them with the Fairway family and establish a conversation - even with people outside the company walls.

Though my time at LR has recently just begun and I have yet to fully discover the ins and outs of the company, my impression of the people and environment here have been forming since the day I interviewed with Jeni Neuman at Northwestern's University Career Services Center back in April. Jeni asked questions about my experiences under pressure, moments in which communication played a vital role in the success of a project, and if, and how, I've established a sense of balance in college - academically, socially, and extracurricularly. The interview flowed smoothly - Jeni was able to form an impression about me as a possible candidate for the internship, and I began to form an impression of my own about the Fairway companies. A salient theme I've noticed since the interview is that LR and its sister companies place an emphasis on providing clear communication, whether it be to its employees or consumers through marketing strategy. Julie Jacobs consistently sent the interns emails about the Summer Scholar program and helped us develop an early sense of the companies by sending catalogs (and popcorn!) that we'd each work for. Julie and Sarah Person also made a trip to campus to meet with the interns face to face. My managers Mike and Michelle contacted me soonafter and we had a Skype session in which we informally introduced oursevles and began to form a conversation. The companies' emphasis on communication provides an appropriate foray into the Summer Scholar Project that the six interns will tackle - to assess the current social media presence (Twitter, Facebook, ect) of the companies and to provide strategies to fully integrate social media into the overall marketing scheme.

I have already been assigned my first projects in digital strategy and web marketing at LR. Currently, I am working with Mike to research trade shows that have a focus on digital products for the company to visit. I am using an online tool that is new to me to gather this information called SmartSheet, an Excel-esque program that allows the owner of a document to easily share a project by sending an invite for viewership to others . It's interesting and exciting to witness the digital strategy department utilize a tool that aligns with new technology itself. Michelle and I are working with a program called Omniture to analyze the health of the company's online website and effectiveness of its social media efforts. The goal of this project is to determine areas of improvement for LR's online presence and implement new strategies that procure the improvement.

I anticipate to be challenged both intellectually (as I expand my knowledge about how a business works and well, the real world, too) and socially. Mike and Rick Woldenberg have both said that emotional intelligence is as equally important as intellectual intelligence. So I will be challenged socially to understand and foster a meaningful relationship with the diverse individuals who make up this environment. In effect, I have an inkling that I'll grow a lot internally this summer.

This has been a long post. Whew. One last thing: I anticipate to re-evaluate my answers to the questions Jeni Newman asked me in April. How will I handle pressure, communicate effectively, and balance my summer plans in respect to this internship? Stay tune for that post in about eight weeks.