Where did you graduate from? Major/minor?

I graduated with a degree in Marketing in May 2014. I was fortunate enough to be a part of an incredible business school, a proud member of the Tri Delta chapter (with the two of the Kelsoe sisters!) and live in Austin, TX. I highly recommend UT to any Parish junior/senior making college decisions. It’ll be the best four years of your life!

Biggest accomplishment so far in your career/ school?

I would have to say graduating from UT’s marketing program and getting a sales job with PepsiCo on the Gatorade brand are probably the two biggest! Moving to Orlando, FL for my job is also up there. Definitely hard for a Texas girl to leave the Lone Star State! I am currently the Head of PR & Social Media at Olo.

Biggest lesson learned to date in your career/school?

I recently learned not to be afraid to change paths to follow your passions. I liked working with PepsiCo, but I was stuck in sales career path and really wanted to pursue marketing. I was worried about leaving a solid job with less than a year of experience to back up my search, but I decided to look anyway. I’m so glad I did! I now work in marketing and brand management for Darden Restaurants on Olive Garden. I couldn’t be happier!

You can't live without your…?

Besides my friends and family, of course, right now I can’t live without my Disney annual pass. Orlando is growing on me, but there’s not much to do outside of the parks!

Do you still keep in touch with any of your Parish classmates/teachers/coaches?

For sure!  I made life-long friends at Parish. I mean, they actually would come and sit through my 3-hour dance recitals. If that doesn’t scream life-long friendships I don’t know what does! I have Parish friends I make a point of seeing every time I come home, and I have a few friends I still talk to on a weekly basis.  There are also times when you get a text from a person you haven’t talked to in months just to see how life’s going. Parish is so special in that way – you deeply care about classmates outside your close-knit friend group and truly enjoy hearing from them!

Favorite memory of Parish?

This is definitely the hardest question – there are so many! Is it lame to say all of senior year of high school? I also loved the middle school trips, especially the 6^th grade trip to Boston where we built boats from scratch. I’m pretty sure I still have the trip sweatshirt somewhere… (:

Would you like to give a shout out to a specific Parish teacher you had?

It’s hard to narrow down to just one! I’ve had different teachers influence me all the way from elementary school through graduation (and after graduation – Ms. Vorwerk’s calculus notes helped me in college!). I’d have to give the shout out to Dr. Chepey for putting up with my class from 7^th to 12^th grade. For my specific 7^th grade English section, he assigned us seats by taping detention slips to the desks. This was well deserved; we were a rowdy class! Instead of feeling intimidated, we decorated them and filled them out with all sorts of funny reasons to get detentions. He immediately took them up. A few weeks before graduation, Dr. Chepey pulled a few of us into his office to show us something. He saved the detention slips all those years as a memento. That’s a pretty awesome teacher. Congrats on the baby, Dr. Chepey!