January 2020 - Present

The Doherty Center for Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship focuses on experiential education that encourages creativity and design thinking, opportunity recognition, and plan formulation and implementation. Throughout the year, we sponsor entrepreneurship-themed co-curricular activities open to all majors. The programming provides opportunities for students to develop their entrepreneurial mindset and skillset further.

Working as a scholar intern at the Doherty Center has been one of the highlights of my time here at Elon. As a marketing intern, I help with social media, email campaigns, campus outreach, and gaining exposure for the center overall! Thus far, one of my favorite tasks has been creating the "student showcase" where Elon students (present and past) have an outlet to show their work!

Student Entrepreneurs

The entrepreneurial spirit that individuals have inspires me each day, which was one of the main reasons I was so drawn to the Doherty Center. After a few weeks on the job, I realized that there wasn’t enough media exposure that the center provided to the students and alumni that have created their own businesses. Working with my boss and the other scholar interns, I helped create and facilitate the “Student Business Highlights” and the “Elon Student Business Showcase.” Each week, I interview students on their small businesses during the school year and create marketing material to be published within our newsletter, which goes out to about 850 individuals, along with all of our social media pages.

For a look into “Elon Entrepreneurs,” the student showcase for Elon students and alumni, please click here.

Marketplace Under the oaks

With a feeling of wanting to do more for the student and alumni business owners, I decided to work with the Doherty Center to become a Founder of Marketplace Under the Oaks, an online showcase highlighting over 45 current Elon students’ alumni business owners. This network allows the individuals to work together, creating a “business support system” while also increasing their campus-wide exposure. Within the first month of the launch of Marketplace Unde the Oaks, sales resulted in over $5,000 through our in-person shop and weekly pop-ups.

Community outreach:

Something that the Doherty Center works hard with is creating relationships with entrepreneurs in the surrounding areas. Starting in July of 2020, myself and the other marketing intern, worked together to reach out to small business owners in the area, for a series of highlights called, “Doherty Center Presents”. An example as to what this media campaign looks like can be found below:

Media Campaigns:

Working side by side with the other marketing intern, the two of us created numerous social media accounts for the center, gaining hundreds of followers within a month. Together, we post frequently throughout all social media channels. The two channels in which I work most closely with for the Doherty Center are LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Every Tuesday, I use MailChimp to send out the “Doherty Center News”, which is their weekly newsletter. This campaign goes out to about 800 recipients and has an average open rate of about 50%.

Events:

Elon Innovation Challenge:

The Elon Innovation Challenge is hosted by the Doherty Center for Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship and is a cross-campus collaboration between Elon College, the College of Arts and Sciences, School of Communications, Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, School of Health Sciences, School of Education, and School of Law.

Taking place February 28th and 29th, The Elon Innovation Challenge was a huge success. Preparations took place throughout the entire month of February to ensure that the event ran smoothly.