Are you good with people? Interested in marketing?  Love social media?  Then you’ll love our Spotlight on Annie Dreshfield, a Scrippsie whose hybrid job includes PR, social media, and community management at Nextdoor.com, the ‘private social network for your neighborhood’!

SCRIPPS PROFESSIONALS NETWORK: So what was your life at Scripps like?

ANNIE: I went to Scripps partially because I fell in love with the campus the first time I ever saw it (while visiting my brother for his first Parent’s Weekend at CMC), but also because I knew I could receive the education I wanted. I knew I was going to study writing and even though that would require self-designing a major, I realized that I was excited by the chance to design my own major. When I sat down to talk to my advisor, Kimberly Drake, early my first year, she asked me about any other topics I’d be interested in studying, and I chose media studies. I’d obviously grown up with the internet, but I’d also grown up playing video games and participating in online fan fiction communities. I wanted to somehow work that into my education and possibly a job after college. I ended up self-designing a major called Creative Writing for Contemporary Media, which was basically a writing major fused with media studies, specifically new media and digital media theory.

Self-designing a major completely shaped my education and time at Scripps, and I couldn’t be more thankful that I was not only allowed, but encouraged to take part in determining my own education. I ended up writing my thesis on online fan fiction communities, which was surreal – if I’d told my younger self that I would be penning a 100+ page research paper on my hobby in college, I probably wouldn’t have believed it!

Continue reading Scrippsie Spotlight: Annie Dreshfield (2013) →

This week’s Scrippsie Spotlight is on Jaclyn Roher, a psychology major who now does User Experience Research for Meetup.com!

Scripps Professionals Network: How did you end up with Meetup?

Jaclyn: I started with Meetup right after I graduated from Scripps in 2012 as a Community Specialist-my job at that time was basically half community management, and half customer service. I communicated with Organizers and members of Meetup all day, answered tech support questions, advised Orgs on how to best lead their community, and wrote content for our site. Over the course of my first year there, I was exposed to so much more of the tech industry than I had seen before (I was a Psych major at Scripps, so I didn’t know too much going in, I’ll admit). But I was intrigued, and after about a year, a position opened up as a User Experience (UX) researcher on our strategy team; it combined psychology and tech in a way that I only WISH I knew about at Scripps.

SPN: Can you tell me about your work in User Experience Research?

Jaclyn: I was fortunate enough to start in that role part time in June 2013, and then was able to transition full time as a UX researcher this past December. Meetup’s UX program is small, but mighty. Whereas lots of companies hire an outside firm to do their usability testing for them (or don’t have the resources to do it at all), we are able to do it all in-house. That lets us throw things in to a test session at the last minute if we need to (which gives our developers a flexible schedule to work), and iterate different versions quickly, essentially speeding up the amount of time it takes to release a product. I run between 2 and 3 sessions daily, testing about 5 different products that our development teams are working on.

SPN: What’s it like working for Meetup?

Jaclyn: It can be tough balancing a whole company’s needs, while at the same time, synthesizing data and debriefing with folks in order to ensure that we’re doing right by our users, but it’s been an awesome journey so far. I basically get paid to collaborate with our product teams, chat with users about how they use said products from these teams, and then help inform decisions that are platform wide!! I’m geeking out here, but it’s honestly an awesome intersection between the social sciences and technology, and I only wish that I had started on this track sooner. I’m happy to answer any further questions you may have, since the UX industry isn’t quite super robust (Not yet, anyway…)!

Does Jaclyn’s work in User Experience Research sound like something you’d like?  Does Meetup.com sound like a company you’d like to work for?  Check out the Women in Tech internship here or the jobs here, and feel free to hit her up on Facebook if you have any questions to ask her!