Laina Canary

I attribute my success to two things: my community and my mom. I lost my father at the age of [AGE], and in my community, my father was such a teddy bear - he was a people person and everyone knew him. After that, I saw the biggest shift in my community, and even though I was so young, it will forever be something that I will carry for the rest of my life. I will forever be grateful for my community for lifting me, my family up. So many leaders extended their wisdom, their knowledge, and their opportunities to me - people who taught me what I loved in my career. Hardy County gets so underestimated on the potential of it, but there are so many impactful people there. My mom has been a single parent to me and my brother for 12 years, ever since my father passed away. She will always be my professional role model because she has this ability to be so serious, yet so calm and supportive. In medicine, you have to have that, and the same thing applies in my professional career. She is truly the most driven, independent, motivated woman I know, and she will always be one of my biggest impacts of who I am today as a person. The values I carry are a lot because of how I just watched her live her life and her professional career.

The best career advice I ever received came from my mom when I was at a roadblock in my life. I had been denied from UF, I thought I wanted to go into marketing, and I was flip-flopping between being a teacher, being a researcher, all of these different career paths because I was hopeless and lost. I hadn't figured out my passion or my calling yet - this was before my internship at the development group. My mom said to me, and I will never forget it: in whatever you do, be the best at it. That really applied to my life because if I did choose to be a teacher, if I did choose to work at a church, if I choose to work at a museum - to be the best at my job, and that is what true success and fulfillment feels like. To make a real impact in other people's lives. If you are truly passionate about your job, if you're truly in love with what you do, regardless of status, regardless of pay, and you work the best at it, that is what true fulfillment feels like. I will carry that on in my career for the rest of my life.

My advice is aimed at young women who are trying to figure out their next steps, what they want to do, if they're feeling lost in a career path or personal life decision. Always know that the Lord has a path and a plan for you. Even when you think that you're so behind, and you have so much catching up to do to your peers, or you're comparing yourself to a peer who looks perfect, has their life planned out, who you just wish you were at that level, who knew what they wanted to do, who knew they had a passion for something - because that was how I was - everything works out for a reason. God places you exactly where you need to be with a plan and purpose for you. More specifically for the advertising field, I would say one of my biggest recommendations is your networking. Whether that's in a sorority, in a club, at a career fair, or if you're in a grocery store in the most random places, networking and building valuable relationships with those people around you will always set you up for your future in whatever career path you choose to do. That one person you might have met in a completely different organization that has nothing to do with advertising - their mom or dad might own a marketing firm, their aunt or uncle might be in the advertising industry. You never know who you're going to meet, so make sure you're really making an effort to build networking experience, taking every opportunity that is given to you, and truly building lasting, valuable relationships. Also, advertising and marketing in the business world is so different from medicine or being in something where all you need to do is graduate college, meet your requirements, and you have a set job and pay. In this field, you're going to have to work your way up. You might work at one job for a certain amount of time, and then that may take you 4 to 5 years, even longer. It's a constant building process, so you have to have this mindset of I'm willing to work hard for what I want and continue to build myself so that eventually I can one day achieve my goal that I set out for myself.

Right now in our generation, we're seeing, especially in the field of advertising, this stigma around marketing and advertising. Every single day we get 3,000 ads a day in our face all the time, and it's almost become this narrative that ads are very deceptive, that ads are not personal, that ads are not trustworthy. Actually, advertising and marketing is ranked pretty high up in which careers are the most non-trustworthy. I think that's definitely a disadvantage now when as a company and as a brand, you're trying so hard to differentiate yourself amongst your competitors. But moving into my opportunity from that, I think one of the biggest opportunities I see right now in advertising is that shift in narrative - the shift in narrative to being trustworthy, to being personable. We're seeing this growing so much in advertising right now. We went from infomercials to now we look at the Super Bowl ads. I think about in particular Lay's - the Lay's advertising commercial. I thought it was so remarkable because instead of trying so hard to sell their product, they were giving you a story behind it. They were giving you this is when Lay's was created, this is a family-owned business, these are the values we have in producing the chips and the culture and the things that you eat every day. Shifting advertising to being more personable and more trustworthy is a huge opportunity I see in the industry today.

The morals that I consistently live by start with being a trustworthy person. I think that's the biggest one that plays into my career in advertising, and the moral and value that I want to shape in my career and make an impact in advertising - a field that I truly believe we need so much of it. I want to help change that narrative. Regardless of career, I think for me it's just honestly being a kind, warm, and welcoming person. Coming from my background in my area, there was a lot of poverty that we were surrounded with every single day, and a lot of people who were really struggling. I always, regardless of who was sitting next to me in class, lived by the fact that I never knew what they were dealing with personally in their lives. I never knew if they were dealing with the loss of a parent, if they were dealing with financial struggles, if they were going to have to go work after school. I always carry that because you never know when someone is struggling, so always making an effort to be kind, to be warm and welcoming to everyone, because you never know what they're going through - even if they're rude to you, even if you don't want to be around them. Always make an effort to be present and be kind and kind-hearted.