workshop facilitation
Rebuilding foundations for a student organization post-pandemic through design thinking workshops
professional organization • one year term • 2022-2023
project brief
The North Texas American Marketing Association was the first organization I joined as a freshman. Post-pandemic, the organization lacked formal structure as it transitioned from Zoom meetings to on-campus events.
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project outcome
Through design thinking tools and workshops, I kept the executive board motivated and engaged through a jam-packed calendar year. Together, we continued to be an award-winning, nationally recognized chapter.
my role
President – Goal Setting, Brainstorming, Event Planning, Fundraising, and Reporting
industry
Marketing
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timeline
One year
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team
Barbara Lamont, VP
Brendon Manns, Finance
Beatrice Mahiga, Membership
Lailah Rodriguez, Advertising
Laura Rengifo, Events
Payton Young, Operations
key results
3
Nationally Outstanding Category in Three Categories: Chapter Planning, Membership, and Communications
49%
increase in membership and over 1k Instagram followers through expanded outreach
$2,059.86
raised to increase financial accessibility to our international conference.
problem
The pandemic left a leadership vacuum in student organizations.
Student organizations didn't have the capacity to keep students engaged in Zoom meetings, and burnt out upperclassmen officers retired without a transition period. As universities moved to all in-person activities, the students who began college in the pandemic were tasked with rebuilding student organizations without precedent.
64% of college students reported self-isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
National Library of Medicine
vision alignment
My goal was to create systems that supported the board and sustained AMA's growth.
A guiding principle of my presidency was James Clear's Atomic Habits. He believed that a 1% improvement every day can lead to transformative impact.
In spirit, I asked each board member to choose one major goal for the year. Even if they only achieved that one goal, they would still be accomplished in their role.
target user
Our primary users were marketing majors and minors motivated by career development.
We knew that all our users, even those who are not marketing majors, sought out
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community
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professional development
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industry connections
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Most of our active members were transfer students looking to get involved. We focused on giving them opportunitites to meet more people like professional speedating and tailgating.
UNT AMA Executive Board
competitive research
We desperately needed to rebrand our online presence in a website redesign.
Since our North Texas chapter is part of 320+ chapters around the United States, we looked at more successful chapters' websites like Montana State University to guide our redesign.
We learned to
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restructure and prioritize information about our mission, vision, and membership requirements.
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add member testimonials to our website.
We reached 385+ new visitors after the redesign.
Montana State University's AMA Website
Officer testimonies on UNT AMA website
SWOT analysis
Opportunities in corporate sponsorships could solve our weakness in internal funding.
To achieve our VP of Finance's goal of taking a group of students to the International Collegiate Conference in New Orleans, we needed to focus on fundraising efforts. After identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, a clear direction was to leverage corporate sponsorships.
SWOT analysis
Sponsorship document
We created a sponsorship document detailing our goal of taking 15 students to New Orleans, and we ended with $1,000 in corporate sponsorships. We took 20 students to New Orleans in the Spring.
affinity mapping
We brainstormed ideas and delegated events through affinity mapping.
One of my favorite workshops was when we brainstormed ideas, organized them into clusters, and voted on our favorites. This activity took less than an hour and helped us set up the entire fall semester with a backlog for the spring semester.
rose, thorn, bud
Ideas turned into experiences, and experiences needed to be improved.
Halfway through the fall semester, I led a retro so that we could reflect on what was going well, what was not going well, and what opportunities we weren't considering. This rose, thorn, and bud workshop helped our team unite over our accomplishments and reflect on our missed marks.
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Our insights included:
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New members joined each week.
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We were close to 1,000 followers on Instagram!
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We needed more preparation time for meetings. Continuing the semester with short turnarounds for events would have led to extreme officer burnout.
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Meetings should be more interactive, even if we bring in a guest speaker.
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We hadn't planned any collaborations yet.
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Based on these insights, we implemented changes, such as planning weeks in advance and preparing a list of questions to ask our guest speakers to open up discussions for our members. It was a moment of accountability for all of our officers, including myself.
iteration
In our continuous growth, the officer board needed to be restructured.
As more members joined, I soon learned that supporting all my board member's ambitions was becoming unfeasible. I was
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Replying to text messages from six people
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Representing the organization university-wide
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Coordinating communications nationally
I needed a second-in-command, and there was an open opportunity after one of our officers stepped down for personal reasons.
Reorganizing the board's structure to include an Executive Vice President allowed everyone, including the President to be supported by each other.
evaluation
We surveyed and interviewed our members to gain feedback.
In our end-of-the-year survey, we learned that members really loved interactive guest speakers, which helped us plan spring semester.
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After we took our members to the International Collegiate Conference in New Orleans, we interviewed some of our members and came up with 18 recommendations to improve the planning and leadership for the next year.
Our Marketing Workshop with Student Activities on learning from your users.
project results
We set new records as a student organization.
Running the UNT American Marketing Association was one of the hardest, yet rewarding, experiences. We accomplished so much more than we could have ever imagined, and we created a plan that could inspire the leaders after us.
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My highlight as President was our inaugural end-of-the-year banquet and watching one of my officers winning the Emerging Student Leader Award from our university's leadership awards!
key results
3
Nationally Outstanding Category in Three Categories: Chapter Planning, Membership, and Communications
49%
increase in membership and over 1k Instagram followers through expanded outreach
$2,059.86
raised to increase financial accessibility to our international conference.
my takeaways
Trust your team.
It's okay to ask for help and rely on your team.
Fail fast.
Anything that doesn't work the first time is a lesson.
Leading is supporting.
Set your team up for success before yourself.
learn more
see our Chapter Plan and Annual Report for more!
Chapter Plan
Annual Report