Growing with the Needs of Her Business

Rashmi Sharma ‘23 left India in pursuit of more than a master’s degree. After graduating with a degree in fashion design, she launched her own fashion start-up offering outfit customization services. As her start-up began to take off, Rashmi decided she wanted to grow alongside the needs of her business—so she enrolled at Pace.

Fast forward to today. Rashmi is hard at work on a Master of Science in Social Media and Mobile Marketing and getting real-world experience as a social media intern at the Council of Peoples Organization (COPO). She told us in her own words about her role at COPO, what she has learned on the job, and how Career Services helped her along the way.

What initially drew you to Pace?

When I began my own startup in India, I recognized that I needed to improve my social media abilities and my digital marketing skills, as my startup was mostly handled through social media platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram. I started looking at universities in New York that offered social media degrees. That’s when I discovered Pace University, which had one of the best courses for my needs and a fantastic professor-to-student ratio.

What does a typical day on the job at COPO look like for you?

So, COPO helps low-income South Asian and Muslim immigrant families advocate for themselves and reach their potential. Overall, my role is content generation.

For example, I write blogs about delicate topics such as domestic violence, mental health, and child abuse. I also write about COPO events, create content for weekly newsletters, and keep their social media channels and website up to date. I also cover real stories of clients who visit by interviewing them and then creating material based on their answers. After all of that, I collect the data insights about all our posts so that we can track reactions and accordingly plan the content for the next week.

What role did Career Services play in your internship with COPO?

Career Services was a huge help to me, from helping me develop my resume, to discovering the wonderful opportunity to work at COPO. I actually got two summer job opportunities, one as a graduate assistant registration specialist and the other as a social media intern at COPO. I thought I could only select one, but Career Services encouraged me to take advantage of both chances and assisted me in finding a balance between them.

How do you think your time at Pace and your work at COPO will impact your business?

Not only have I improved at generating content, I’ve also worked on my ability to evaluate insights and create reports, then use those reports to forecast the content and my duties for the upcoming week. The internship at COPO has helped improve my social media abilities, which I believe will help advance my business.