My Story

Being raised by Midwestern socially conscious folks in college towns, I was exposed to social advocacy on a personal level. I faced my parents’ boycotts of certain brands when I reached for something in the grocery store, and I ended up with dried apple rings instead of Cheetos in my Rainbow Bright lunchbox.

Following in the footsteps of my progressive upbringing, I studied in Northern California and then moved back home to finish up my college career in Women’s Studies from the University of Kansas in 2003.

But around the time that I turned 28, I began wondering if working in membership development marketing with girls’ and women’s advocacy nonprofits was something that I wanted to do forever. I made the bold move to change the direction of my career and moved to Chicago to start a master’s program in Public Relations at Advertising at DePaul so that I could connect my nonprofit experience with something bigger and integrate my creativity into larger scale marketing campaigns.

I discovered that companies are connecting with social causes in big ways. Equally important to me was how my generation, Gen Y, was leading in this trend by taking the reigns of digital media and entrepreneurship to connect with their target audiences in new ways.

In essence, this blog is very general in that it’s about the connections that I see growing between social causes, marketing strategies, and Millennials’ entrepreneurial contributions to these intersections.

You can check out my Linkedin profile. Or feel free to drop me a line at annaholcombe(at)yahoo.com. Thanks for joining me on my journey!

*Header photo by Christopher Macsurak at http://www.flickr.com/photos/macsurak/with/5101989457/.