By Erin DeGregorio '16
On Friday, October 23, Christine Cuoco, director of global business marketing for Twitter, came to campus and conducted a lunchtime lecture in a very unique and interactive way. Cuoco answered student and faculty questions in tweet form that contained the hashtags, #SienaTakesTwitter and #SienaTweets, as well as questions from the lecture’s audience in The Norm.
The Siena Marketing Association originally met Cuoco last year at the Harvard Undergraduate Women in Business Intercollegiate Business Convention (IBC), held in Cambridge, MA. Thanks to all the networking and hard work made by the Siena Marketing Association and the Financial Management Association over the last 10 months, the Siena community was able to greatly benefit from Cuoco’s visit.
“Having the opportunity to converse with Christine was an absolute privilege. Despite her incredible success, her humble and friendly demeanor made her extremely approachable,” said marketing major Erin Grogan ’16. “She offered, without reservation, some of her most profound and thoughtful advice and I think everyone learned a great deal about their professional goals after our talk.”
Prior to working at Twitter, Cuoco was an employee at JPMorgan Chase & Co., Time Inc., and American Express in New York City. During her time on Wall Street, she applied the skills she learned at her undergraduate liberal arts college to her work environment and professional practices and presentations.
“I’ve had a liberal arts education, so while I majored in math, … all the classes I took outside of math were pretty much in the liberal arts field. I took a bunch of Italian classes and studied in Siena [Italy],” said Cuoco. “What I appreciate from Dartmouth, even today, is the way I learned how to think and solve problems throughout my four years of college. I had a sense of curiosity and love for learning even before college and I think that was fostered in the liberal arts environment and that’s sort of what I leveraged throughout my career to take advantage of new opportunities.”
However, during her hiatus year in searching for a new job, Cuoco knew she wanted to make a difference and have a greater impact in a mission-driven company, and saw a potential in the emergent field of social media.
Cuoco also shared her best Twitter project experience thus far in which her team taught businesspeople how to use the Twitter platform organically as an educational tool and how to track performance in 2013 and 2014. She was a part of the process from inception to launch, and assisted 10,000 clients within the first few months. In her current position, Cuoco is on an 18-man Industry Marketing team that sells advertisements, promotes tweets and communications, and helps American and Canadian companies understand products and features. Additionally she elaborated more upon the latest Twitter feature called “Moments,” which hones in on global stories and events taking place at the moment that we should care and talk about.
Cuoco’s concluding, insightful advice to the students in attendance was to be persistent, to network, and to be curious and ask questions before going into any field of interest.
“Use the skills you’re developing here when you’re doing your job search and when you’re interviewing. Do your homework; think about those skills that you need for your classes and apply that to the interviews you’re really excited about. If you’re integrating what you’ve learned to the conversation you’re having, you’ll immediately impress anybody that you’re meeting with because not everybody does that.”
