The Alumni Files - Erica Cipoletta
To continue our series, The Alumni Files, we are excited to introduce our next alum,
Erica Cipoletta!
"My name is Erica Cipoletta and I graduated from Marist in 2021 and have been living in NYC since. I joined MPorium during my senior year at Marist. In my first semester, I was on the Marketing team. During my second semester, I was the Student Marketing Director.
Two skills I developed were customer service and networking. Working my MPorium shifts helped me strengthen my customer service skills. It taught me how to be professional, polite, and confident, no matter who was in front of me. This has helped me so much when communicating with event vendors and clients.
I started my career post-college in Public Relations, working at brands like Coach, Giuseppe Zanotti, and PEOPLE Magazine. Currently, I’m the Assistant Event Manager at Luxury Watch Maison, Panerai. I organize and manage all events across our 17 boutiques. I also work with our AVP of Marketing on all institutional events and brand partnerships for the North American Market. My responsibilities today are very similar to my responsibilities while being a part of MPorium. I am in charge of putting together events from beginning to end while working with the other departments (Visual Merchandising, Operations, Sales & CRM) to ensure things come to life, on time and on budget.
Networking is important in event production. Networking to find new vendors and brand partners is one part of it. Another aspect is networking with people who might be the perfect audience for your event. During MPorium, I emailed and met with departments across campus to secure spaces for our events. We also had to find ways to promote these events across campus, in order to share our work with our community. This was executed through social media, flyers, and word of mouth.
Some of my favorite memories were all the after-hours moments that led up to our big wins. I’ll cherish my memories of listening to music with my friends while doing a weekend inventory or giggling ‘on set’ of a marketing photoshoot. MPorium introduced me to people in my senior year who are now my best friends today!”
