Name: Caila Burke
Major: Marketing/Advertising
Hometown: Cheshire, MA.

Contact Info:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cailaburke
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/cailaburke
linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/cailamarieburke
website: http://yaaagrlz.tumblr.com
email: cailaburke[at]gmail[dot]com

The Brief:

If you’re looking for someone strong in event marketing, grassroots/buzz marketing & social media especially focused on action sports & youth culture markets, Caila Burke is the one for you.

Caila started an internship position at Okay!! Okay!!, a small boutique marketing agency in Burlington, VT and was quickly promoted to an event/project manager. There, she initiated and managed social marketing for the Okay!! Okay!! Brand and was in charge of management and production for events from beginning to end—event briefs, PR/media outreach, onsite execution and post-wrap up reports for all.  Additionally, she worked on site to handle grassroots marketing campaigns for large brands to directly connect the brand with the consumer. 

Currently, as a marketing intern at Fuse Marketing, she works specifically with youth culture & action spots brands to conduct market research for grassroots campaigns while learning the ins & outs of the industry and how best to reach that market. As she progresses, she is being assigned to more projects and trusted with a variety of different, pressing tasks.

If it’s not already apparent, Caila was drawn to marketing for the people.  She enjoys learning about people and likes the idea of being able to understand the connection between people and brands. To her, marketing means a fun career with endless opportunity and creativity.  She wants to meet new people, learn as much as she can, travel, and be successful, which are all aspirations she knows she can reach through a career in marketing.

In addition to her studies, Caila has gained valuable experience by working with:
Boarding For Breast Cancer (B4BC)
Burton
Gravis Footwear
Gatorade
New Balance
Mountain Dew (dew action sports tour)
MTV’s published book, Radio Silence
Phtographer Tobin Yelland
Artists Justin Fines & Steven Harrington
Stowe Area Association
Magic Hat
Big Heavy World
JDK

In her free time, Caila enjoys snowboarding, adventuring/traveling, action sports, youth culture, good music, her friends & Family, and dance parties.

Need an outgoing, dedicated, and driven employee in the action sports or youth culture market, someone who knows how to drive your product /brand to the target market? Then you should definitely Hire This Grad!

The interview:
Sum yourself up in 140 characters or less:
senior at #campchamp interests- #actionsports #youthculture #socialmedia #livingfun #adventures #snowboarding. Seeking a job in #norcal/#pdx

What does success mean to you?
It means being happy in all that you do. Success to me would ideally be having a career that I am passionate about- -one that is exciting, fun, and challenging that I wake up everyday excited to be a part of. It means having the love and support of family and friends and living in a wonderful place surrounded by wonderful people. It’s adventuring, traveling, experiencing all you can in life.

I hope to be financially successful in the future, but in order to do that I believe you need the confidence to follow your dreams and find happiness in who you are and what you want to do in life.

What do you consider your biggest success?
My experience. My greatest success so far has been the connections I am building through my education in the industry that I would like to work in after I graduate. My internship at Okay!! Okay!! was a great success, and my internship at Fuse is a great success (I tried for the same internship 2 years ago and didn’t get it, so the fact that I was able to get in this semester shows my progress over the past few years).

My greatest success, though, would be my involvement with B4BC, a non-profit organization stressing the importance of early detection of breast cancer. B4BC is one of the most respected non-profit organizations in the action sports (snow, skate, surf specific) industries and work with many influential brands and athletes in that market. Not only has it been a success to be able to work with them, but I was able to help create and implement a student brand ambassador campaign for them, and ultimately be the student voice of the organization in VT through various events and inviting opportunities. I have learned the importance of non-profit organizations and have gained a general understanding of  marketing for a non profit.

What is something you’ve learned from your mistakes?
I’ve learned that you need to take every experience and make it mean something—whether it is bad or good, take those experiences and use them to better yourself.
I have learned that not everything you do is going to be something you love, but in order to reach a place where you love what you do, you need to work hard and give your all to everything that you do.
Use criticism wisely, don’t ignore negative feedback. Use it to help you. Also, don’t let negative feedback upset you, or get your hopes down. That is probably the biggest mistake I’ve made in the past— taking negative feedback too personal.


Describe your ideal working environment:
super laid back, but professional. wide open offices, NO CUBICLES, bright colors, happy people, lots going on, movement & excitement. Ideally a job where I am split pretty equally between traveling & being in the office. northern California, Portland, still open to other wonderful places to relocate to.

How do they get the cream filling inside a Twinkie?
The magic twinkie cream fairy.

If a newspaper wrote an article about your leadership style, what would the headline be? Hustle.

References:

Elaine Young, Marketing Professor and Assistant Dean of the Business Division at Champlain College:

“Caila ROCKS! Seriously. She’s a go-getter who has had gone after a great mix of internships in event promotion.  She is staying true to her passion through her internships and even her work in class. She has interned with Okay-Okay and learned first hand how to do grass roots event promotion. Currently she is interning at Fuse, a gen Y focused extreme sports marketing firm. I have no doubt she is doing excellent work there. Most inspiring has been Caila’s commitment to Boarding for Breast Cancer (B4BC). She started a student chapter for a class project last year along with another marketing major (Jackie Cooper) and has continued to support the cause on the mountain and on the campus.  She is dedicated, hard-working, passionate and fun-loving. She’ll bring that spirit into anything she does.”