All posts tagged: Career

Short Post: Biology and Life

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I have been looking for a steady job now for almost a year now and one of the questions I get asked the most is why? Why am I pursuing or want to pursue a career in such and such? People really want to know where you are coming from and what your vision of the future is. Honestly, even though I know my answers, sometimes I have to look back to the beginning and ask myself why? Why am I now fascinated by the use of space in cities and urban environments? Why am I pursuing a career in understanding the urban? Like most stories, there is a beginning. As a young child, I was always chasing after butterflies, digging up earthworms, and collecting fish. Their movements and their features fascinated me. Metamorphosis, the transformation from an ugly caterpillar to a beautiful butterfly, captivated my imagination and in many ways it is a metaphor for life. I never though much of it until high school, where I met a wonderful biology teacher by the …

WLM Financial Marketing and Branding

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During September 2015 to January 2016, I worked as a Marketing Coordinator/Analyst for the real-estate broker WLM Financial. Based in Inglewood, CA, the company focused on providing first-time home buyers with financial advice and loans needed to purchase their home. Using my knowledge of GIS and demographics, I identified the locations of their target markets. I proposed ten cities in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area that they can look to expand marketing operations into. On the broker side of business operations, I looked at home sales data, mortgage data, and property prices to locate other states that WLM Financial can look to apply for broker licenses. After getting to know their operations, targets and goals better, I created a marketing and a branding plan for the company. In terms of brand building, I used their current website and Facebook page as points of interest and set goals to be reached by July 2016 and July 2017. I created a social media schedule for them to post select content and to generate more reach and views to …

The Power (or Lack of) of Internships

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There is always something to learn in every situation – depending on your perspective. Some might say it is always better to get an internship at a large corporation for its name recognition, connections, and employment opportunities. It is true. A lot of times, having a big name on your resume (much like a degree from a renowned academic institution) can stack the odds in your favor during a job hunt. Yet, I believe being an intern at relatively new or small companies provide special opportunities to learn and grow. The current company I am working for is small. We have two owners, nine employees, and two interns including me. I am the marketing intern and I work with two others, making up a three-person marketing team. The small size of this company meant that I was actually handed much more responsibilities and allowed much more involvement in the business than the average intern. As of today, I am in charge of operating and managing the company’s market research and analysis, Facebook Ads, and Google Ads …

Learning and Growing! Internship and Coursera Specialization!

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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 …

Customer Service is…

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Today, I helped out with the Taiwan Products Day in San Gabriel, CA. It was a great learning experience and one of the first times I helped out with a large scale event. Customer service was incredibly important and I found it amazing to help people. With a winning smile and great patience, it was amazing to see how easy it is to make someone feel comfortable. I enjoyed solving problems as well. One of the vendors could not find her package at all and it was essential for her meetings with her buyers today. (Hooray Google!), after obtaining her tracking number and the logistics company, I was able to track her package. We found that it was delivered safely to the hotel and was misplaced somewhere. With the help of the friendly hotel staff, we were able to locate her parcel and deliver it to her before the event began. It may sound simple, but helping a nervous vendor feel comfortable and ready for her meetings was a great feeling. I began to understand …

Relaunch…The Brand New Ideas by IamLliw

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Hello everyone! IamLliw is back! For those that don’t know, check out About Ideas by IamLliw. It has been a long time. In the last couple years, I attended and graduated with a M.A. from Arizona State University. I focused on urban environment studies through an urban political ecology framework. My passion for space and the use of space led to me examine relationships between social issues and their spatial distribution. Along those lines, I immersed myself in urban planning and development, as I pursued my interest in urban environments that developed during my time in the Department of Environmental Protection of Taipei. The major projects I have been involved in typically revolved around the spatial analysis of cities. That is also where my passion lies – understanding, analyzing, and creating space. Unfortunately, this blog fell to the wayside with my focus dedicated to my studies. However, my experiences in academics taught me the importance of developing and sustaining a voice. At its core, every published research paper is an intellectually developed and evidence based report …