OttoTHON

OttoTHON (Syracuse University’s Dance Marathon) is an organization at Syracuse University which works with Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals and Miracle Network Dance Marathon to put on an annual 12-hour dance marathon event that fundraises for the Upstate Golisano Children’s Hospital. OttoTHON also fundraises throughout the year through various activations and special events.

For the 2019 OttoTHON event, I held the public relations chair position on the executive board. My responsibilities in this position included managing OttoTHON’s social media channels, creating graphics and collaborating with the media chair on other projects. I also oversaw a small public relations committee that handled media relations and other miscellaneous tasks.

For OttoTHON’s 2021 event I was the external communications director. As a part of the team of directors, I was about of the decision to move our event from November to February, which resulted in better registration numbers, as people weren’t plagued by the stress of finals and the holidays around the same time as dance marathon.

I also oversaw a team of executive board members, facilitated all external communications efforts (including, but not limited to, social media) and acted as a liaison between Upstate Golisano Children’s Hospital, Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals and OttoTHON’s executive board to strategically plan all external communication efforts.

During my senior year, I had the opportunity to act as the Executive Director for OttoTHON 2022. I oversaw all aspects of the organization and managed a team of approximately 20 executive board members and 60 committee volunteers.

As both Executive Director and External Communications Director, I played a major role in the event planning process, making sure everything that needed to get done was done and supporting my team in any way that I could.

On this page I have included several examples of content I created for OttoTHON 2019 as well as the OttoTHON Observer newsletter put together by myself and OttoTHON’s dancer communications chair. Additionally, I have included OttoTHON’s Instagram page, which is the primary social media channel used by the organization.

Instagram Story

This is an informational story which was posted to Instagram one week before OttoTHON, which was Nov. 8, 2019. The story was posted to communicate with people participating in OttoTHON about the information they would need for the event.

Fundraising Templates

Throughout the year leading up to OttoTHON 2019, there were several times where I was tasked with creating fundraising templates that could be reposted by participants in order to help them with their fundraising goals. These are four examples from various points throughout the year.

OttoTHON Newsletter

As external communications director, I worked with the dancer communications chair, Chris Bezdedeanu, to create a monthly newsletter to go out to all OttoTHON participants. Here’s an example from October 2020.

• WAER Membership Campaign
  During the fall 2021 semester, I worked alongside three other classmates to put together a campaign planbook for WAER, which is Syracuse University’s NPR affiliate station. We were tasked with the goal of increasing memberships and converting regular members to sustained members who donate on a monthly basis. The planbook includes our research, a breakdown of our objectives, strategies, and tactics for the campaign, a budget, a GANTT chart to show the timeline of the campaign, and example deliverables that could be used by the client.
• Song Analysis Podcast
  I created this podcast analyzing the song “All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version)” for a class at Syracuse University called Reading Popular Culture. I analyzed the lyrics and score of the song to understand how they conveyed different messages and themes. My thesis for this podcast was that by giving her audience a longer version of the song, Taylor Swift has created a piece of content that is even more relatable than it was before, and it ultimately helps her connect with her fans that have experienced a similar unhealthy relationship and/or breakup and help them feel less alone in such a difficult time. The new version of the song also shines light on the issue of men in Hollywood dating women significantly younger than them and how those predatory relationships take shape.
• Best Practices Ted Talk
  A Ted Talk style video arguing that the flat organizational model is the best practice for public relations. Flat organizations allow for more direct contact with leadership, streamlines communication, and tend to have higher levels of productivity and morale. This video was created for PRL 424 (Public Relations Leadership and Management) at the S.I. NewhouseContinue reading “Best Practices Ted Talk”
• Internship Social Media
  I have an internship at an influencer marketing agency called Perlu. At this internship, one of my responsibilities is managing the social media pages for the company as well as for the conference it sponsors called National Influencer Day. I am responsible for content calendars, content strategy, content creation, hashtag strategy, and social media engagement. All the content is educational graphics and videos that provide information about social media management, influencer marketing, and general social media skills.
• E-Newsletter
  In this assignment, we were tasked with choosing a company and creating a hypothetical newsletter that could be sent to employees. It had to be designed and look like a realistic newsletter and have relevant information for the employees of the company
• OttoTHON
  OttoTHON (Syracuse University’s Dance Marathon) is an organization which works with Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals to put on an annual dance marathon that fundraises for the Upstate Golisano Children’s Hospital. In 2019, I was the public relations chair, in 2020-2021 I was the external communications director, and for OttoTHON 2022, I am the executive director of the organization.
• Hill Comm.
  During the fall 2020 semester, I was a graphic designer on an account for Hill Communications, which is Syracuse University’s on-campus PR firm. I worked on the Acropolis Realty Group account and created various graphics including posts for social media and a company holiday card.