How Sasha Fortunatti Landed a New Job as a Digital Marketing and Social Media Manager

Sasha Fortunatti is a jack of all trades. In college, she majored in modern language and cultures, with a dual focus in French and Arabic. After completing her degree, she dabbled in law, working as a paralegal before she eventually fell into event planning, working as an event manager for a beauty company. Ultimately, this job made her realize her aptitude for digital marketing.

As Sasha coordinated and publicized events, she realized she was already thinking about things from a marketing perspective. She researched speakers to book for events, strategized ways to encourage attendance, and even created event communications. While her career path was certainly not linear, all signs seemed to be pointing toward digital marketing.

Sasha learned of Columbia Engineering Digital Marketing Boot Camp through a LinkedIn ad. The 18-week timeframe was appealing, and the course focus — helping learners plan and execute marketing strategies, hone ad campaign development skills, and gain familiarity with in-demand industry tools like Google Ads and WordPress — was what Sasha was looking for.

After doing some research and attending a few free digital marketing classes, Sasha realized that the boot camp was the clear next step toward meeting her career goals. No stranger to shifting gears and picking up new skills, she made the leap and hasn’t looked back since.

Creating a loyalty program

For Sasha’s favorite boot camp project, she and her classmates were divided into groups and tasked with creating or revamping a loyalty program for an existing brand — then figuring out how to advertise it.

After some brainstorming, Sasha’s group chose a prominent brand in the clothing industry. The brand didn’t have a loyalty program in real life, which gave Sasha and her classmates full creative freedom. 

“We really started from scratch,” said Sasha. “We had to ask questions like: How are we going to reward the customer? How are we going to motivate existing and new customers to sign up? What does the content look like? In the end, it was really nice to see how we were able to bring the loyalty program to fruition.”

While the boot camp’s online nature occasionally made it challenging to coordinate group work, Sasha enjoyed the overall experience of learning remotely. It also turned out to be great practice for her current job, which is entirely remote. “I didn’t know I would love working remotely full-time,” she said.

Landing the job

A major catalyst for Sasha’s boot camp enrollment was a stagnant, ongoing job search. She realized that in order to stay competitive in the job market, she had to level up. “Before the boot camp, I was actively looking for a job for over 18 months,” she said. “Then, once I started the boot camp, I was getting more views on my LinkedIn profile.” 

After completing the boot camp, Sasha was able to land a new job in under three months. She’s currently the digital marketing and social media manager at HomeWorx by Slatkin & Co., a fine fragrance company that specializes in producing candles, reed diffusers, and other home fragrance products.

In her new role, Sasha usually starts her day by looking at metrics to see how well her ads are performing. She uses Google Ads, one of the tools she was introduced to in the boot camp. Then, she switches gears and creates content for Instagram. After that, she may have a meeting with the company’s photographer to discuss material for upcoming social media campaigns. Finally, at the end of each social media campaign, she creates a deck recapping the content and its performance, sharing outcomes with the rest of the team.

“Every day looks different,” she said. “I’m learning a ton and I’m really able to implement a lot of what I learned in the boot camp.”

What’s next

Moving forward, Sasha is keeping her options open and taking things one day at a time. “I’m enjoying what I’m doing and I love the challenge,” she said. Perhaps at some point, she’ll hone in on one particular aspect of digital marketing such as Google Ads or content creation, but she’s not feeling pulled in any particular direction yet. Beyond that, she’d like to lead a marketing team of her own someday.

“I had such a great experience with the boot camp,” she said. “It opened up so many opportunities for me. I got the job I wanted.”

Interested in becoming a digital marketer or exploring an exciting new career path? Check out Columbia Engineering Boot Camps today.