By Renee Baker

Julianne Zhang (Class of 2009) is good example of how focusing on your best subject in school can pave the way for a career you love, and excel at. At TIS, English was her best subject, and the English Communications program at the City University looked “practical and interesting”, so she enrolled. For her final project, she worked with the publishing company P3 to run the Hong Kong Young Writers Awards.

Upon obtaining a degree in English Communications, Julianne worked as an internal communications specialist at Melco Crown Entertainment for one year. She was in charge of the company’s webpage and hosted events; her department also teamed up with the corporate communications and corporate social responsibility departments to run press conferences and award ceremonies. “At first I thought the job would be a bit wishy-washy but turns out I actually got to work on some pretty cool projects and got to meet tons of industry experts and professionals who taught me a lot about working in a demanding corporate environment.”

After her job at Melco, Julianne moved to London to do her master’s degree at the University College London. The school brought many industry speakers in and Julianne was able to figure out what exactly she wanted to do in the publishing field. “There was also a lot of tutorials on publishing tools and methods which is always useful when applying for jobs because you can say that you’ve got knowledge in certain applications etc. “ Her final dissertation, which was on Digital Sales and Marketing Strategies, helped her delve into the digital marketing sector, which is what she is involved with today.

Currently, Julianne is a marketing executive at the British Standard Institution. Her job has too many duties to fit into one article! “I manage the adverts for the company’s monthly external magazine called Update Standards,” Julianne says. “I also look after print and digital collateral as well as video content for one of the company’s products called BSOL. On top of that I do industry market research in order to find sectors of the market that we can generate leads from. I also look out for events/exhibitions that our sales team can go to and make sure they have the right content for when they travel out to different destinations.” That isn’t an easy load to keep up with, but Julianne handles it with the ease of a professional.

In the future, she hopes to branch out into brand building and industry placement.