When People Ask Me What I Do...

When people ask me what I do, I usually simplify the story and say, "I'm kind of like a graphic designer for a real estate company." It's pretty lame because my job is way more interesting than that.

The "real estate company" I work for is a holdings company that supports six unique companies, most of which, serve the affordable housing market. To keep it simple, we determine where to build affordable housing communities; we apply and find investors for the tax credits needed to build the communities; we build the communities; and we lease and manage the communities. There are two other companies, but they aren't really related to the affordable housing industry (skilled nursing management and a conventional senior living management).

That part is pretty boring and difficult to follow when you really get into it, but you have to have a basic understanding of the place in order to get a feel for just how much variety we get in the Marketing department.

The Marketing department consists of four, full-time employees and a couple of interns. I am the Senior Creative Specialist and have been with the company the longest (at two full-time years + one and a half intern years). You can see why I tell people I'm a graphic designer, right? Senior Creative Specialist, while very cool on LinkedIn, sounds stupidly pompous to say out loud to your dentist. Mark actually is our Graphic Designer. We really do a lot of the same things except that, firstly, he is a better designer, and secondly, I have a few more administrative (organizing), managerial (bossing around) and strategic (attending meetings) responsibilities in my position. All of which I think he very happy to do without. Blair is our Strategic Communications Coordinator. When I said I have a few more administrative, managerial and strategic responsibilities to my job, that "few" is in comparison to Blair, who is a master of those responsibilities. Adam is our Marketing Coordinator and he dabbles in graphics, administrative tasks and photography.

Mark, Blair, Kait and Adam celebrating after the long, stressful and time-consuming
annual Emerging Issues & Trends in Real Estate Forum

We are all pretty green (particularly within the scope of our company), but work together swimmingly as a team. I think those two things go hand-in-hand in our case. Mark, Adam and Blair joined within a three month period, so we all had to find our role on the team relatively quickly. Once we did, we were more understanding of how essential our collaboration was because none of us really knew what was going on.

Anyway. The job of the Marketing department is to support all of the previously mentioned companies. I started to try categorizing and listing some of the materials we produce, but it was too tedious to try and accurately reflect the variety we get. Almost anything that is client-facing or internal crosses our Adobe programs in one way or another: print materials, videos, photography, web content, signage, event coordination, etc. We have seen a little bit of everything and more than enough of a few things. Here is a list of what is on my plate at the very minute I wrote this post (the simplified list, because don't you hate it when people pretend they're the busiest person in the world...WE'RE ALL BUSY DAMMIT):

• Georgia Affordable Housing Coalition Conference
• Social/Service Committee Survey
• HR College Career Fairs
• Community Newsletters
• The Emerging Issues and Trends in Real Estate Forum
• Wilshire Hills II Monument Sign
• Horizon Senior Village Preleasing Materials
• Hidden Glen Logo Mock-ups
• CHM (skilled nursing) Facility Spotlight Blog Post

See how diverse and interesting that is?! I have a conference, a survey, career fairs, newsletters, a FORUM (which is so much more detailed and complicated than just a "forum"), community signage and print materials, logo designs and a blog post. And that's the easy part. The real trick of it are all the projects that come up unexpectedly. I'm just minding my own business, knockin' items off my to-do list, when an investor fund book request comes in and everything else shifts to the back burner. This is not uncommon...I'm going to go ahead and say that as a department, we probably get eight to ten "fires" a week - of varying degrees.

There are weeks so wild that I think my mind will unravel, and projects so challenging that I'm actually a little scared when I start them. But at the end of the week and when the project is done, I feel proud of what we have accomplished...also, exhausted and much in need of the weekend. What I love most about my job is that it allows me to be an integral part of the company I support. I don't know if the company would say so, haha, but it certainly feels that way.