“Due to the scholarships that I have received, it means that I can complete my undergraduate (education). This is huge to me and I am forever grateful to be able to receive a college education at no expense to me,” explains Mya Linden, a senior in the Lewis College of Business. A recipient of the PROMISE Scholarship, Boxwell/ Churchill Scholarship, Chick-Fil-A Scholarship and A. Michael Perry Scholarship, Mya is grateful for the generosity of others who are funding her education. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and moving to Charles Town, West Virginia, at the age of four, Mya chose to attend Marshall University after falling in love with the Huntington campus. Her older sister attended Marshall and Mya was presented the opportunity to visit and sit in on a class. “I wanted to attend somewhere where it felt like a family and that I could walk through campus and run into friends,” she explained. “Marshall felt like the right fit and it turns out it was everything that I expected and more!” Mya is majoring in marketing and management with a minor in entrepreneurship. Her favorite part of her program is the relationships she has built with her peers and professors. She serves as the president of the American Marketing Association; was recently inducted into Beta Gamma Sigma, a business honors fraternity; serves as a senator in the Student Government Association and is a member of Alpha Xi Delta. “Due to the connections I have built, I was able to obtain two internships that have allowed me to have hands on experiences in the marketing and management field,” she said, adding that they have allowed her to move forward in extracurricular activities by holding positions that teach responsibility and time management skills. “The relationships I have made have excelled my professional career at Marshall University.” Crediting Dr. Ben Eng as her favorite professor, Mya believes she would not be as prepared for her future if it were not for him. “You can tell how much he cares about seeing students succeed, and he goes above and beyond to help create opportunities for them,” she said, explaining that he helped her prepare her resume, which landed her an internship. This past summer, Mya had the opportunity to intern at Intuit for 12 weeks. As a member of the QuickBooks Connect team, she was responsible for creating a three-day, high-energy business conference event and marketing it. “I was in charge of three main projects. First, I served as the lead for the Business Bazaar, where I was in charge of finding 16 unique and creative small businesses to come and sell at our business conference, QuickBooks Connect,” she said. Second, she served as the lead for the testimonial campaign where she contacted previous attendees of QuickBooks Connect and interviewed them to create quotes, a sense of their story and marketing content for different channels. “Third, I worked on internal and external sponsorship research where I compared sponsorships with our pricings and offerings to see if we could increase our rates,” said Mya. She also organized all of the global markets sponsorship levels for easy comparison, as well as helped find main-stage speakers, created surveys for testing market content and conducted venue research for global markets. Hearing about this internship opportunity through the 2017 Design for Delight program that was hosted at Marshall, Mya created relationships, passed her resume along and received an interview. She believes the most fascinating thing she has learned that will benefit her professionally is how to create marketing content to get the exact message you want. “I asked leading questions in my testimonial campaign and got to experience it from start to finish,” she explained. “The content I created is even being used in a marketing e-mail going out in early September and is posted on QuickBooks Social Media.” Having previously visited San Francisco and doing tourist things, Mya enjoyed exploring like a local this summer; however, she did face obstacles adjusting to traffic and living in such a populated area, as well as learning to find a work/life balance while gleaning everything she could. “My biggest challenge was wanting to take on as much as possible,” she said. “At some points, I felt very stressed and overwhelmed, but I wanted to be able to take advantage of my short time there. With this challenge, I had to work late and sometimes on the weekends, but I realized that it has helped me to fully take advantage of my summer internship by being so involved. My biggest obstacle was being there for only a short time. It was hard to adjust and fully dive into the company in 12 weeks. I wish I had more time!” Student Spotlight