PetRelocation Talks to ClubGEN Students at Career Week

If you can remember being twelve years old, you'll remember what it felt like to look around you and wonder where on earth you belong (heck, many of us feel this way even as adults!). As a native pet friendly Austinite who went from a pet-crazy kid to a professional horseback rider to overseeing the online strategies of one of the world's leading pet travel companies, Petrelocation.com, I feel extremely fortunate to have ended up where I am.

So when I was invited to speak by a local program called GENAustin (which stands for "Girls Empowerment Network") for their ClubGEN Career Week, I was excited to get a chance to help other girls learn about careers in social media and online marketing. ClubGEN is an innovative after school program for middle school girls led by high school students from surrounding schools. The program puts an entertaining spin on educating middle school girls about high-risk behaviors like eating disorders, teen pregnancy and juvenile delinquency. During their Career Week, they bring in other women from the community to talk about their career paths and what they've learned along the way. ClubGEN is completely elective, so the fact that these girls stick around after school until 5 PM shows that the program is not only working, but also fun for them!

When I arrived at Covington Middle School, the school I was talking at, there were two other women who were also speaking. One was a product manager at a high tech company who had spent several years traveling the world as an international software sales associate. Another woman worked with non-profits on their strategies and development.

We met in a classroom and spent the first half of the afternoon playing "Career Charades," which is exactly what it sounds like! My "team" picked a news anchor, a nurse and a veterinarian (one of the little girls did an excellent job pretending to be an angry cat about to get his vaccinations!). Then it was time for the career speakers. I talked about my experience at PetRelocation.com and how my childhood interest in writing and online communications had helped shape my career path. I talked to them about social media and how I am able to use it to stay in touch with past clients and their pets, while also building relationships with future ones. What was really fun was to see the girls' faces light up when they realized I worked for a "pet" company. They were really interested in the concept and asked some terrific questions. The questions were very similar to the ones we get asked the most by people who love their pets: Why can't I just travel with my pet? (You can, sometimes! We can help you figure out how.) How do you feed them when they travel? (We make sure they have water bowls in their crates and food attached to the top of their crates for their rest stops.) Have you ever moved a tiger? (Loved that one! The answer was "Not yet!") Do you have any pets? (Yes, one big white fluffy cat named Chubby Charles!)

I encouraged the girls who were interested in pursuing careers in communications, social media or who had an interest in writing, to start now. I told them if they love cats to blog about cats and use Twitter and Facebook to talk about their cats. It's never too early to establish yourself as a thought leader.

At the end of the talk, one of the girls raised her hand and shyly said, "This isn't so much a question as it is something I just really want to say. I think it would be really great work somewhere where you got to hear about people's different pets and then help them move them...I think that would be a really great job."

I definitely agree with her!