Global Social Reach: A Profile of DigiCOM Grad Kristin Nguyen ’10 

Kristin Nguyen ’10, associate director of global social media for Celgene [a biotechnology company], spends her days overseeing social media channels and overall presence from content strategy to campaign execution to analytics reporting. She also educates internal and external stakeholders regarding Celgene’s social media initiatives.

“LVC taught me the skills necessary to create engaging content, whether it was writing a radio advertisement, building a website, or designing a digital literary magazine,” Nguyen said. “The ability to create and recognize quality content is a skill I’ll always need while working in social media, marketing, or communications.”

The digital communications major was new at LVC when Nguyen was an undergraduate. She chose LVC and the major because and it gave her the ability to study two of her interests—graphic design and writing. She also enjoyed the individual attention she received from professors because of the small class sizes.

Nguyen appreciates the foundational principles that the digital communications professors taught her, which helped her figure out how to solve problems technically and creatively.

“This approach to learning is so important in this field because it’s changing every day,” Nguyen said. “You have to be constantly testing and learning and a major aspect of that is the willingness to figure things out on your own.”

Because of the wide range of skills learned in the digital communications major, Nguyen knows classmates who have pursued careers in a wide array of areas including higher education, marketing, and web design.

“While we were in the same DigiCOM classes and experienced the same professors and curriculum at LVC, we’re now using those skills successfully in various different roles,” Nguyen said. “DigiCOM truly gives you the foundation in design, media, marketing, communications, business, and programming that you can quickly and easily build on in your own unique way once you graduate.”

Nguyen is excited for the future of communications and marketing professionals. She believes that the prevalence of big data will allow companies to gather deeper insights into their customers’ behaviors. Additionally, she is thankful that the DigiCOM professors provide new classes and tools to reflect these industry trends.

“DigiCOM professors care about keeping their students at the forefront of all things digital because they know it is a necessity to work and be successful in the industry,” Nguyen said. “In this way, they’re proactively paving the way for the next generations of LVC DigiCOM leaders to come.”

 

 

Editor’s Note: In line with LVC’s faculty keeping the curriculum at the forefront, the program recently added a new major in addition to digital communications—interaction & experience design [I.Ex.D.])—and restructured the department into the Department of Design, Media, and Technology.