A recent email from yet another of our alums, Ashley Smith:
After graduating with a degree in English Literature I worked for a seafood company in Seattle for a couple of years. I was lucky enough to get to travel to Alaska’s Aleutian Chain twice a year and work with fishermen injured while working.
The travel bug bit me during those trips, so in 2008 I packed up and shipped off to the African country of Namibia. I volunteered with an organization called World Teach. They placed me at a secondary school teaching English, and I lived and fell in love with a native family and a fascinating and beautiful country.
After my year flew by, I moved back to the US and straight to Phoenix, Arizona. I worked for a year doing anything I possibly could to make money and finally landed at Yelp.com as a local Account Manager assisting local businesses with their advertising. I was lucky enough to find Yelp when it was still young and the Phoenix office held less than 50 employees. We are now (almost four years later) an office of about 800 and a publicly traded company; and I have moved from local account management to working with National Advertising clients around the country.
I get to travel and manage advertising budgets of over a million dollars a year. It’s very interesting and definitely keeps me on my toes! Two weeks ago, I was offered and accepted a position at Yelp managing a team of my own National Account Managers. I’m very excited to see where this next adventure teaches and takes me!