On Thursday, May 2 the U-Marketing club hosted a presentation by alumna Mansi Narula ’10 in the Visual Arts building. Mansi provided attendees with pieces of advice for students to sharpen their skills such as curiosity, networking and taking risks. She regards finding mentors at her company and providing a good support system as vital to bettering herself at highly competitive companies where feedback comes only at yearly reviews. Although her career did not start out in marketing, with the help of others and by trusting her interests she landed her role at Pinterest which she explained that she loved.

Mansi says that Union provides students with a diverse perspective and well-rounded education, which is a very different experience from other schools. She told students to have “the passion and vision to own that diversity to get to where we are going.” Mansi did this by deciding to get her MBA to further propel her career.

Mansi graduated from Union College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics. While attending Union Mansi was involved in the Economics club, Campus Action, Minerva Council, Aum Hindu Association, Shakti, Bhangra Union and Gamma Phi Beta. Her career path has spanned a myriad of companies such as Pfizer, Twitter, Keurig Dr Pepper and Pinterest in roles spanning finance, sales operations and marketing. She recently graduated with a Master of Business Administration degree in marketing and management from the University of Texas. Currently, Mansi works within brand partnerships at Pinterest in New York City.

Leading up to today, all of her past experiences have taught her something new. She described how during her time at Twitter, a “real-time company,” she was on call 24/7 and often had to fix features and learn to take the risk of sending them out into the world without testing them. Working for Dr. Pepper contrasted her Twitter experience as like many other consumer-packaged-good companies in the United States, there is a systematic approach for how business is done. She admitted she had doubts and road blocks along the way but came to realize she wanted to be in the technology industry where she has now ended up: managing and helping Nestle brands come to life on Pinterest.

She closed by advising the group gathered to make a list of the ten career paths that interest them, pick three and talk to people, then ask them to connect them with a further three people. She explained that by doing this every three months, she was able to grow her network and learn more about different fields and her interests.