About a year ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Laura Paolillo at a new employee welcome reception. She stood out immediately—gregarious, engaging, warm, and full of energy in her role as a Lecturer of Business at Ocean County College. At first glance, our connection may have seemed unlikely: a business lecturer and an outreach director from an environmental organization. But it quickly became clear that this was exactly the kind of collaboration we both had been looking for.
It wasn’t long before Laura and I were buzzing with ideas to get her students involved with the Barnegat Bay Partnership. I’m always eager to find ways to engage students outside of the sciences, and Laura is passionate about connecting her classes with real-world organizations like the BBP. So, we came up with a plan: her marketing students would step into the environmental world by developing mini-campaigns to help promote the BBP’s work.
Laura leads the Marketing Club at Ocean County College, which gives OCC and Kean @ Ocean students interested in marketing, media, and design a chance to build skills through workshops, hands-on projects, and networking. I was excited to collaborate and shared our photo library -everything from field research and outreach to general b-roll – with the club. Using that content, students were challenged to learn about the Barnegat Bay Partnership’s mission, write a script, and create a promotional video. They worked in teams to bring their ideas to life – one of those videos is now featured on the BBP’s website and YouTube channel!
Not only did the BBP gain some fantastic promotional videos, but Laura also helped connect individual students with our team for more in-depth, credit-based experiential learning. One of those students, Liana DeAngelis, a marketing major at Kean University, went above and beyond during her internship. Liana took initiative from day one learning new software, creating fresh content using the BBP branding guide, and helping to spotlight the success of the Barnegat Bay Blitz. She developed a social media campaign to highlight Blitz captains, personally reaching out to each one and crafting posts that celebrated their efforts and contributions. The posts that Liana created increased the BBP’s exposure and engagement with the Barnegat Bay Blitz, contributing to one of the most successful events yet.
Laura and I are already brainstorming new ways to involve the Marketing Club next semester, with hopes of building a lasting partnership with her students. The BBP extends a heartfelt thank you to Laura for her dedication to supporting nonprofits and to each of her students who contributed their creativity and hard work this semester!
