Last week, I started my internship with WLM Financial – a real-estate brokerage. With my interest in urban planning and development and my background in the social sciences, it appears to be a good fit to work as their Marketing Intern. I was quickly integrated into the marketing team and I am happy to say that the owners have been very trusting and gave me a great opportunity to learn. They have taught me a great deal in the past week about mortgages and real-estate. They are always open to questions and really took me under their wings. I look forward to learning more about the real-estate industry and about business development.

Though I am only an intern, my opinions were valued and contributed to the direction the company is taking. Using my skills with ArcGIS, I took the initiative located our target audiences. I integrated demographic data with geospatial data from the U.S. Census Bureau to reveal locations where our target audience might be located. I was quickly able to locate ten cities in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Region and narrow it down to several zip codes. For example, in the city of Carson, we identified at least 5000 residences for our direct marketing campaign.

The owners are also ambitious. Despite the company coming into existence in July, they are already looking for additional states to expand their operations. To assist them, I looked into home sales, home value, and potential refinancing data. Equipped with this information, I developed a list of ten states with great potential for the company’s operations to expand to.

This week, our marketing plan took a leap forward as well. After attending the Facebook seminar on using Facebook Ads and Pages to promote local business, I was able to convince the owners to start the company’s Facebook Ad campaigns. Going forward, we will be looking to promote and develop our brand image on Facebook in order to drive engagement and distribution of our ads when we do start ad campaigns. If you are a first-time home buyer, look to attend the company’s seminar this Thursday at First Time Home Buyer Seminar.

Yesterday, I started my first online course with Coursera – an organization that provides online education through various university partners. I enrolled in the Data Analysis and Interpretations Specialization, which is a certification that comes with four courses and a capstone project. I took this course to develop my qualitative analytical skills and to learn Python programming, which will be extremely helpful especially with my interest in GIS. The capstone project will also provide me with an opportunity to develop, research, and present a professional quality product that I can show to potential employers as I continue to pursue my career.

To complete this specialization, I am required to update my progress on my personal blog here. So I will be sharing my work, insights, and progress here. I look forward to telling you all about how this course is going and perhaps encourage some of you to pursue additional education. One of the best feelings in the world is learning a skill and applying it. Besides, I always look forward to an adventure – that is exactly what learning is.

[Image via Coursera]