1101: What’s It’s Like to Be a Senior Coordinator in Public Affairs With Esmé Stribling-Hough, Weber Shandwick [Main T4C episode]

Esmé Stribling-Hough is a Global Public Affairs Senior Coordinator at Weber Shandwick, a marketing communications firm. She graduated in 2020, during the height of the pandemic, and landed a job at Laurel Strategies Inc., a global business advisory and strategic communications firm. Esmé was promoted to senior associate after just a year and then moved to Weber Shandwick shortly afterwards. She was a resident assistant as well as a student representative to the Board of Trustees and a student representative on the Wellesley College student planning committee.  Esmé got her B.A. from Wellesley College where she majored in Political Science. WHAT YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE: How her college coursework relates to her work (6:35) What she’s been doing at Weber Shandwick, specifically her work dealing with the war in Ukraine (8:51) How public affairs firms help companies navigate crises (12:12) Why it’s important to mess up (20:17) What are the intangibles she’s picked up from watching senior executives (25:30) How she found her first job (30:28) How she transferred her classroom skills to her new job (27:24) What it means to “fail loud” (39:20) What’s her advice for undergrads stressing about a first job (46:26) Why it’s so important to take advantage of free time in school (53:06) When she failed and what she learned (57:36)