BLF x Graduate Hotels Leadership Challenge Recap

September 23, 2020

During the Spring ‘20 semester, the BLF ‘22 Cohort had the opportunity to work on a challenge for partner, Graduate Hotels. The teams were instructed to craft a 360 degree campaign that would build international awareness for the Graduate Hotels brand. The six challenge teams presented on Wednesday, September 9th with their Marketing and Communications team and the winning team included fellows Pablo Manon Mateos, Ose Arheghan, Dierre Blash, Ellie Joyce.

Ellie shares, “To stay at The Graduate is to reflect on your own youth and reminisce with your community of friends and family. Walking the halls of The Graduate feels vintage and while right now, it reminds me of my parent’s ‘good old days’, I can only imagine the connection to this physical location and intangible sense of comfort that I will cherish staying at this hotel in the (hopefully near) future. Coordinating with a team of busy individuals virtually, and having to adapt both our personal lives and our marketing strategy to a post-pandemic world taught me how to prioritize, and made me a stronger communicator and more patient team member.”

The winning challenge team was led by project manager and fellow, Pablo Manon Mateos, who reflects, “It was a fantastic experience working with the Graduate Hotel Brands this past semester. I was already a fan of their brand so the synergy required to produce a recommendation that would capture the essence of  the Graduate came with ease. The most challenging part of this  process was learning how to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic in terms of both group organization and adapting our original idea so that it would work for the client in this unprecedented pandemic."

We want to extend our thanks to Graduate Hotels and Amy Wexler, Sr. Vice President of Marketing and Communications for partnering with us and for providing the Buckeye Leadership Fellows ‘22 with their first experiential learning opportunity.