Hi! My name is Zarah Punjwani and I’m a rising third-year at the University of Georgia (Go Dawgs!), studying Marketing and International Business with a minor in French Language and Literature. I’m also Qu’s Marketing and Sales summer intern.
I chose to major in marketing because I wanted to go into a creative field that also provided a lot of structure. One of my career goals is to work overseas, as I love to travel. French is a passion minor, but will also open a lot of doors in the world of international business, as it is one of the most commonly spoken languages.
I joined Qu this summer because I was interested in the technology industry after trying out other industries that I lost interest in (fashion, politics, and youth development). I was matched with Qu through the Ismaili Professionals Network, an agency that helps to advance the careers of Shia Ismaili Muslims in the U.S.
I started at Qu in May of 2021, one year into the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning my internship was done remotely from my home state of Georgia. Even though a remote internship meant I had less interaction with the team, the benefit of working from home helped me to adjust to the work pace at Qu quickly. I didn’t have to move to a new city, which meant more of my energy went into my work.
My usual day at Qu begins with a morning marketing team call with the CMO Jen Kern and two other members of the marketing team – Armaan and Paul. We discuss our plans and projects for the day, so everyone knows what they need to be doing. After the call, I have a few hours of focus time to work on my designated projects. Most of my daily work includes marketing analysis on social media platforms and creating graphics. I also do a lot of work with account-based marketing (ABM), which helps to personalize connections between Qu and our partners.
A few afternoons a week, I have a daily call with the Sales team. A great group of guys, we usually discuss where they are with potential prospects and how the Marketing team can help them. The rest of my day is usually free for me to work on my projects unless I get called to another meeting, which can vary – sometimes I sit in on meetings with the Executive team, I’ll work with Motion (our podcast agency), or I’ll work with our vendors to help create Qu promotional materials for the upcoming conference season.
One of my favorite projects at Qu was creating our social media calendar. I got to do a lot of design work where I was able to get creative and create multiple assets for our CMO to choose from. I also got to conduct a social media analysis of our corporate and executive channels, and create strategies to increase our online presence. These were my top 2 projects because they allowed me to get creative, but also had a lot of structure for me to be confident in what I was doing. I had a style guide to work with for assets, meaning I never worried about the created assets being absolutely unusable. For the social media analysis, I was working with data that was already there, meaning there was no way for my findings to be incorrect or misleading.
One of my biggest fears when starting at Qu was doing something wrong, due to previous internships where I lacked support or guidance on projects which led to projects being done wrong and my team losing faith in me. At Qu, I had a strong team who always reassured me that I was on the right track with my projects and they provided a strong support system as I slowly became exposed to the industry. I became more confident in my work and never hesitated to ask questions when needed.
The main takeaways from my summer with Qu are:
- Always be confident in myself and my work
- There is no one set way to get something done
- Use my mistakes as learning experiences and not as reasons for me to lose faith in myself
After I leave Qu in the fall, I will be returning back to the University of Georgia to kick off my third year of undergraduate studies. I will be going back to campus with tons of new experiences, memories, and personal learnings. You can find me on LinkedIn here.
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