Investing In Her Future Career

2015 Student of the Year Brittney Lybarger is banking on a future career in marketing – and she recently took one step closer to achieving that goal.

Last week, she spent an afternoon alongside Lori Baumgardner, Vice President & Senior Marketing Director at 1^st SUMMIT BANK, to gain some insight into the field of marketing.

1^st SUMMIT BANK serves as the business partner to The Challenge Program, Inc. at Richland Senior High School, where Lybarger is currently a senior.  The opportunity for Lybarger to shadow at the bank came as a result of that partnership.  Baumgardner noted that this is one of the bank’s first experiences setting up a shadowing experience for a high school student; the bank traditionally works with college-aged students to provide part-time employment and internship opportunities.

Knowing that Lybarger’s interests include design, photography, and videography, Baumgardner put together an afternoon  that focused on the visual aspects of her job, from designing quick-response promotional materials for the bank to overseeing advertising campaigns and managing the bank’s website and social media presence.

This is Lybarger’s second shadow since August. Her first was with MARC USA, a full-service integrated marketing communications based in Pittsburgh, PA. Lybarger noted some significant differences between the two experiences.

“At MARC USA, each person is assigned to a task and collectively, they make the project,” explained Lybarger. “Here [at 1^st SUMMIT], one person can work on several different projects. You’re never doing the same thing twice.”

Lybarger mused that for her, the type of variety and hands-on involvement that 1^st SUMMIT BANK provides is appealing, since she is interested in studying several media-related disciplines. She hopes to attend the University of Pittsburgh next fall to earn a degree in marketing and a minor in a related multimedia field.