Crystal Melody Olmos

I would say my grandparents, absolutely my grandparents. They immigrated from Mexico back in the 40s, 50s, and my grandfather dropped out of school when he was in third grade, and my grandmother also in about 2nd grade. They moved to Houston, Texas, and my grandfather worked on the shipyard, my grandmother worked in a bread factory. They didn't know much about American culture, but one thing that he did know is that he wanted his kids to be set up for success educationally, because he didn't really know how to read that well. He provided for his kids, and then for his grandkids, he set up bank accounts, those accounts where you put into it so they can only use it for college purposes. I never thought that I was going to go to college. I always just saw the influences around me, especially being in a lower socioeconomic environment, and just being part of a family with just me and my mom, she was a single mom. Just my grandfather pushing me to get an education to do things that he couldn't, I decided, well, I'm gonna do this undergrad. And I actually got through it with the money that he provided for me, and that was something that I learned later on in life, that not everybody has that. When you come from a lower socioeconomic background, they never teach you how to save, they don't teach you how to allocate money, and he already did the first part for me. That's really what pushed me to do my undergrad. And then for my master's was actually my husband. He got his master's and his doctorate, and seeing him do that influenced me. He's a director of bands here at LSU, and he's a Black man. When I asked him why he was doing so much to get his doctorate, he told me he wants to change how kids listen to music, he wants to teach kids from a different perspective rather than European white standards. He said it's not that he feels great about conducting the national anthem, but not even 50, 75 years ago, this song was not meant for him to conduct. This is his form of protest. Just hearing his reasons and his why for getting his master's and doctorate, that influenced me. As minorities, as me as a woman, it really just pushed me to want to be the good statistic. I want to be the one that pushes and that can influence, and I need to be educated to do that.

I think the main thing is they're male-dominated industries. I'm a marketer, so when I'm talking to civil engineers, they don't always get it. Same thing with lawyers, same thing with technology experts. I think just bridging the gap of what marketing can do for these services is something that I currently go through, and trying to show them and prove to them this is from a marketing perspective and the audience, the end user's experience. But then in the future, I think with AI, it's just made people lazy. Whenever I look at our competitors' social media posts, or whenever I look at their website and I see misspellings, it's becoming so profound now. AI should be checking for spellings, but it's just like, you know, relying too much on this one technology to do the brunt work, because now we can do graphic design, now I can do content, now I can do all these things. I feel like people are kind of relying and getting a little lazy on the actual strategy part of it. So I think that's coming up here in the future for everybody.