Laura Foti is a Syracuse University Newhouse School of Public Communications alumni who took time to speak to our COM 117 class on October 1st. She began her interest in communications as a young girl. Her father, being limited in the activities that he could engage in with Foti due to his severe rheumatoid arthritis, taught her how to tell stories at a young age. Foti developed a liking to communications and looked up to her father, who began his career as a journalist and then switched to Public Relations. After graduating from high school, Foti had a yearning to travel and expand her cultural experience before attending college. She took a gap year in which she lived in Argentina with host families and blogged about her experiences being an American adapting to the foreign culture. She even had the opportunity to dance in the Carnival. Also while in Argentina, Foti wrote stories in Spanish for an Argentinian newspaper and discussed her good and bad experiences living in the country. She even began getting recognized by locals as the American girl who wrote the interesting stories for their local paper.
When Laura Foti finally arrived at the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, she was quick to involve herself in many clubs and organizations. She wrote for the Daily Orange, reported for the “Noticias” segment of Citrus TV, became a member of the PRSSA, and eventually went on to become the director of Hill Communications. Foti also took on many internships throughout her four years of college that helped prepare her for a career. For example, she interned for a baseball team filming segments, editing footage, and taking photos of their games. She also interned with GE in digital marketing. Through working for these college organizations and interning for these companies, Foti learned a lot about networking and how to make connections with people. She shared advice with us on how to improve the way we present ourselves to future employers. For example, she encouraged us to “connect with people and tell them your story.” She also said that we should learn now how to tell a good story because that is a skill that can get you a job someday. When speaking to future employers or networking in general, we should find things in common with those people and use them to spark conversation. Lastly, she told us that we create our own opportunities, so we need to be persistent in finding them.
Today, Foti works for Deloitte as a business technology analyst. Foti works with new and emerging medical technologies like, for example, a wrist band that could forever change healthcare as we know it. She loves her job because while it has very much to do with business, she is also frequently able to apply the public relations skills she learned while at Syracuse University. She chose a business-oriented profession because it very much interested her and she believes that the happiest people are the ones that take risks. There is a great deal of uncertainty to her job now. She does a lot of traveling and essentially has a new job to work on every time she checks her email. Everyday, Foti deals in storytelling when she talks to clients, figures out what they want, and then helps them find compatible products while logically explaining the products to them. She encouraged us to always think about how we can utilize digital products to make our lives easier. The more digitally knowledgeable we are, the more impressive we will be to employers, especially in this day and age where mostly all communication is done digitally and there is constantly new products coming out.
I thoroughly enjoyed Laura Foti’s presentation because it was very informative and helpful to me especially, being as I am a public relations major myself. It encouraged me that although she was a public relations major, she was able to successfully find a job that dealt with more than just PR skills. This means that when I graduate, I will have an array of career options to choose from. She gave great advice regarding how to make connections with people and network with professionals. After Foti’s presentation, I am truly excited to see what my future as a public relations professional has in store for me.