Marjon Parham

I would say my faith in God. I was brought up in the church, the Baptist denomination, but definitely my faith in God, and also the way I was raised. My parents were very big on not only putting God first, but then also being sympathetic to other people's needs, learning to serve, give back, and just being very warm and hospitable to people. Treating people the way that you want to be treated. And so that's something that has stuck with me, and it has really helped me, even as now as an adult.

I would say do not rely - okay, school is great for theory, but definitely get experience. Try to get internships, and if you haven't, try to get something now, some experience. Also, if you can't get an internship, or you don't have a lot of experience, create it. Create your experience. I have one young gentleman reach out to me and say, I haven't done any kind of internships. In fact, what I've been doing is doing YouTube videos on how to do such and such, and I'm like, great - start looking at your engagement, start looking at your following. You can't wait around, you just can't submit a resume anymore and just wait for people to call you. You have to go after what it is that you want and even create your own projects. For me, I'm always using some of the organizations, like, I'm a part of a sorority, so I do events for them pro bono. I do stuff for them, I volunteer with World Vision, I'm on the alumni board of my high school, which is an all-girls school here in Michigan, so I help out with them, help out with a little bit of social media and other promotions type of work. Just always staying connected.

The biggest challenge I've noticed is as I get older, it's so competitive, especially with AI, even though I'm really good in AI. With AI and a younger demographic of people coming out of school, since I've been in this so long, it's so much digital now and it's almost phasing out the traditional public relations type of grassroots methods. People don't need a publicist, they're using AI to do their own press releases, their own media alerts, and even though there's an art to PR and communications, some people don't want to pay for it or don't see the need in paying for it. Sometimes I get people who, at the ninth hour, need your help because they've been relying on themselves or a small team of people, and now they want you to come in and work miracles. And then also, I've been in situations where people don't want to pay you what you're used to making, because maybe somebody out of college is willing to go for less than $20,000 than what you're asking for. On the opportunity side, I just took a class in AI, and it was really, really good, and it was actually taught by baby boomers, which I thought was so cool. These were women who are kind of near retirement, or if not already in retirement, and they were talking about AI on a personal level, but then also how to recreate their brand or their career. It also challenges you to stay abreast of what's going on. Gone are the days you just go off what you did 20 years ago. You always have to reinvent yourself, stay on top of the latest trends, constantly looking to see what's trending, what's hot, what's new, because what worked last week may not work this week.

I'm definitely big on work-life balance, and that's something I have to learn over the years. There were times where I would just work, be like a workaholic, and now I'm learning how to balance it between work and family. Also self-care. That's something that I learned working with nonprofits because we would be required to take off so much time, as well as take a lot of training in somatics and self-care, and so forth. And that's something that was totally new, but I totally am thankful for it, because I wasn't used to doing that.