Anna Gleyzer, a senior majoring in marketing with concentrations in sales leadership and category management and a minor in hospitality, is a committee chair for Blue Demon Week 2018. (DePaul University/Jeff Carrion)
For Anna Gleyzer, a senior marketing major with a minor in hospitality in the Driehaus College of Business, one campus involvement experience led to another, including becoming chair of the 2018 Blue Demon Week committee. Blue Demon Week takes place Feb. 18-24. The weeklong celebration includes campus-wide events intended to build school spirit and affinity for DePaul. As the committee chair, Gleyzer helps coordinate the week's activities.
Gleyzer also currently serves as the marketing specialist for programming in the Office of Student Involvement, a member of the Phi Mu sorority and a member of the Student Activity Fee Board. Although that sounds like a college career's worth of activities, Gleyzer also was previously the vice president of finance of the panhellenic executive board, a Chicago Quarter Mentor for the First-Year Program and a student assistant in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions.
Once Gleyzer got involved in student organizations, she really felt at home at DePaul. She wants to help other students to do the same.
"I think it's important for students to feel a connection to DePaul. It helps them feel like DePaul is their second home," Gleyzer says. "I hope the Office of Student Involvement and DePaul Activities Board events get the students involved and connected to DePaul."
In addition her involvement in student organizations, Gleyzer makes the most of her college's academic programs. She has studied abroad in Switzerland and taken a Birthright Israel trip. Through DePaul's Center for Sales Leadership in the marketing department, which works with companies to connect students to jobs and internships, Gleyzer secured two internships. Both opportunities provided her with experience in category management, focusing on tailoring a company's product range based on consumer demand.
Her first internship took her to Walmart's Bentonville, Arkansas corporate headquarters during the summer of her sophomore year. There, as a modular and category development intern, she joined the laundry care team. The following summer, she held another internship position at PepsiCo's Frito Lay headquarters in Plano, Texas as a category management intern on 7-Eleven's Pepsi beverage team.
"The internship at Walmart was crucial for me because I got to work at a Fortune 100 Company at the age of 20," Gleyzer says. "I also got to work on a real project that was going to be implemented at stores all over the country. As a member of the number one team working with essential products people buy, I learned a lot about category management. I'm thankful for my experiences at DePaul; I know they helped me land these internships."
After graduation, she hopes to continue working for companies that focus on diversity, trust and respect for all, where she can continue to learn and grow.