When you look at this picture, you probably haven’t seen us before associated with this newspaper–maybe you have. This unbelievable, all-female team is a crucial reason for your picking up of this publication or however you are reading these words. 

Hello, we are The Collegian advertising team. Elise Heesch, Lesly Abarca, Emily Urban and me, Josie Nelson. 

We come from different backgrounds and expertise in advertising, but we all share one common goal: continuing the grand legacy of our independent student-run newspaper, The Collegian. 

What most people don’t know, is that behind every good newsroom, publication or organization, is a team of creatives working to provide full funding for their outlets. That’s us. 

Each week we collaborate with a multitude of different businesses and organizations within our town. Sometimes, we even go door-to-door–literally. We understand their needs and provide top-tier advertising as well as a friendship between the business and The Collegian. 

And believe me, we have a lot of friends. 

Not only do we highly appreciate our supporters, but their business and our determination allow us to fully pay for our staff and our weekly print publication. Let me repeat that. 

Our work pays for these stories, our incredible editorial staff, the designers, photographers, our advisers and more. Curious how we do it?

Here are 3 ways we work together as a team:

1. Motivate each other

We have been working with each other for a while now. But sometimes we have to keep each other on our toes. This includes check-ins, meetings and asking our teammates how we can help them. Motivation has been especially necessary for the past few years with pandemics and whatnot. If we stay motivated, we are able to build connections not only with eachother but with our clients. Relationships are everything in organizations, you never know where one connection might lead you. 

2. Stay Inspired

When our idea doesn’t work one way, we ask ourselves, how can we look at this differently? For example, an online campaign turns into a yearly calendar publication. Cool, right? We’ve got inspiration from other creators on being a team. When we stay together as a unit, it’s obvious in the work we produce. 

3. Friendships are forever

Believe it or not, we are actually friends outside of The Collegian. Put a few people in a group and let them soar and this is what you can get out of it. We are all so different, whether it’s age or interests, even lifestyle, yet we mesh together so well. There’s something to be said about how wonderful it is to work with people who are different from you–we got lucky for sure. 

To our past and current clients, thank you for working with us and taking a chance on Collegian advertising. Your contributions, along with our entire team’s dedication, have kept this publication going for decades and motivated the numerous editorial staff and advertising teams that have come before us. And thank you, to The Collegian teams before ours, for instilling what publication is really about for us, our relationships with one another. 

To be honest clients, we’ve been on a team together all along, putting our passions into one publication collaboratively. 

Now, when you get put into a new job or group with people you don’t know, try to find some common ground with them. And remember, a lot goes into the production of one organization. Usually, there’s a couple of teammates behind the scenes that do extraordinary work. Hey, maybe one day you will be as lucky as us to be a part of something so special. 

Want to be our new friend? Reach out to [email protected] to learn more.