“当时正在下雪，我在五角大楼,” recalls Kristen Murphy of her first week as a Marketing 通信 Specialist with Headquarters Marine Corps. “我不知道别人对我说了什么. 我一点也不冷. People would say stuff to me and I'd be like, ‘Yep, I'm in the Pentagon.’"

一个自称政府呆子的人, Kristen worked on political campaigns for several years before deciding to revisit her education and pivot to a career in communication. “What I learned in politics is that I didn't like the policy part of it. 我真的很喜欢它的沟通策略. For two years I worked for the United States House of Representatives. 我曾身处现实世界. 我有很多东西要贡献. I felt like I didn't need people telling me theory because I had already experienced theory. 我需要帮助软化边缘.”

参加 满帆的媒体传播 学士菠菜台子大全让克里斯汀做到了这一点. “What I loved about 满帆 from the get-go was that I walked in and it wasn't theory,” she says. “就像，‘给，你就这么做. I'm going to show you the right way to do it now and then I want you to turn around and show me how to do it back.’”

在媒体传播计划, Kristen was able to explore her varied interests in photography, 视频制作, 市场营销, 文案, and design and find ways to apply them to her love of government. Sharing her coursework online over her time in the program, Kristen caught the eye of a friend who encouraged her to seek opportunities in communications through government contracting.

克里斯汀继续走她的路, she found herself more and more drawn to the strategy behind communication, 不仅仅是创造力. Under the advisement of late and beloved 媒体通信 instructor Isabel Faria, Kristen was urged to hone in on her analytical brain by enrolling in the 公共关系 硕士课程. “She helped me see that that was really the perfect pairing…this is going to take the politics that I did and blend it so well with what I took out of 媒体通信.”

The 公共关系 硕士课程 would also prove beneficial to Kristen’s future positions reporting directly to government and military officials. “[In the government and military] they don't care about the right-brain stuff. They want the very high level, they want bullet points. 他们想要一个高管级别的交易. 我的硕士课程为我做好了充分的准备.”

After discovering contract work wasn’t stable enough as a career field, Kristen leaned on the powers of networking to help secure a position as a Marketing 通信 Specialist for the Marine Corps Community Services (MCCS), a three-star command under Marine Corps Manpower and Reserve Affairs. 在这个角色中, Kristen oversees social media strategies that support and promote over 90 Marine and 家庭 Program government programs for Marines and their families around the globe.

注重生活质量, the programs Kristen and her team promote run the gamut, touching on lighthearted initiatives including bowling nights and green spaces to more serious ones such as sexual assault prevention and response and suicide prevention. “When [the Senior Officer] goes to Capitol Hill and they start asking questions about how they're addressing [these topics], it's his office that then groups with my command and says, ‘What are we doing about getting messaging out about the programs the Marine Corps has to support our Marines and their families?’”

Doing such important work only bolsters Kristen’s love for her job, 说, “I could probably make more money going somewhere else and I could have fancier tools working outside of the government. I don't know that I would have the same fulfillment that I do working for the government. 我想就是这样. 我要为那些服务的人服务.”