Meet the graduate
Jenn Flannigan became involved with Miami Business Enterprises within her first couple years at Miami and realized she loved marketing. "I like the creativity of it," said the 2006 graduate. "It's not the same stuff every day." As social chair of her sorority, she also loved planning events and activities for the chapter. But her senior year sales class made her rethink what she wanted to do for a career. After talking with a professor and attending Miami's career fair, she interviewed with Black & Decker and was hired for their sales and marketing development program. She develops strategies to increase sales for Black & Decker products.
Beyond the classroom
What first attracted Jenn to Miami was its architecture program. An internship at a Dublin, Ohio, architectural firm didn't cement her passion for design, though—a rotation in the firm's marketing department helped her realize that that was the field she wanted to go into.
Hobby vs. job
Jenn said she put architecture aside because she didn't want to turn a hobby into a profession. Instead, she took marketing classes and realized it was her "thing."
Training day
At Black & Decker, Jenn must complete several levels of the program before she can work with a specific product. She creates sales strategies with managers of 35 stores in Maryland, Delaware, and Northern Virginia. She also helped with event marketing at a NASCAR race. Now she's advanced to managing new staff in the sales and marketing program. "The program takes you through all the different aspects and gives you everything you need to build a solid foundation in our products and services," she said.
Long-term goals
Jenn's role changes every six months as she moves through her training to work with larger markets and product lines. Eventually she'd like to work at Black & Decker headquarters as a project manager. "It's a lot of responsibility, but I think it'd be sweet to do that," she said.
