Success is the sum of the details for one Cal State Long Beach student.
Coming closer to marketing senior Naomi Rosen, all this becomes apparent.
It’s in the way this 26-year-old casts a watchful eye on the everyday experiences that encompass her, as though she were carefully examining a movie played in slow motion. Or how she twirls through classes with a cluster of friends constantly at her side, as though they came packaged in a box filled with the season’s trendiest gadgets with secret communication codes and buzz beeps.
No moment is lost with Rosen. It’s all a glittering momentum.
This is what separates her from the rest of her class. She’d tell you, simply, her life “is amazing”—and that’s with putting a ballooned emphasis on that a-m-a.
Rosen is the head of the American Marketing Association, or AMA, at CSULB for the present 2007-2008 term. She puts it better than anybody else: “I am PROUD to say I am the new El Presidente the Third!!”
Close to a hundred dedicated students attend the AMA meetings every Monday evening, making it the largest club at the College of Business Administration. When plans for the group were announced earlier this semester it was hard to turn away, even with the club’s glossy $78 membership fee.
Projects announced ranged from playing baseball games against other CBA student organizations for charity, to participating in projects like the Spring Break Katrina Rebuild, to dealing with the Honda Company as campaign-makers to university students for the 2008 Honda Accord Coupe.
Though the club has engaged in (or has been a part of) about a dozen events every month since this semester started. At the heart of the clan is the very petite though vivacious Rosen.
Rosen attributes a big fraction of her enthusiasm to maintain AMA as such an active group t0 her fellow executive board leaders, who are about a dozen of her marketing peers.
They see her the same way.
“I've known her over the last year or so and she really impresses me as an individual. She takes on a lot and makes sure that AMA is always taken care of,” said Erica Whitson, 29, a marketing student and public relations director of the AMA.
“It's rare to find that kind of dedication at school, and I'm proud to be a part of AMA because of people like [Naomi],” Whitson added.
Though Rosen claims she hasn’t always been the easygoing leader easily recognized today. She lists a number of things that represent AMA’s success—they’ve won awards for their Web site, part of which Rosen helped create; AMA has also taken major chances, as in competing in nation-wide contests, like the campaign project for Honda’s new coupe. Still, Rosen started with the AMA group without many friends and without even much interest when she transferred in the fall of 2005 from a community college in her Garden Grove neighborhood.
“I first began at CSULB as a total commuter. I went to class and went home,” Rosen said. “My second semester I joined AMA, but I only went to the Monday meetings.
“Then, towards the end of the semester as they began talking about elections,” Rosen said, “I got a wild hair in my body and the thought of running for a position crossed my mind.”
Rosen ran for the 2006-2007 vice president position for communications. And, she won the job despite her cutthroat opposition.
Rosen made it clear that that edgy, competitive kind of style of doing business didn’t fall well with her. She preferred openness and sincerity in the atmosphere. Others took notice and elected her president for the current school year.
She learned this attitude from her parents, who worked at home as computer programmers and graphic designers throughout her childhood.
Rosen enjoyed her parent’s partnership and became interested in designing herself, signing up for unique classes throughout high school and her earlier college days. She added a twist to the equation, however. She never let go of her great passion for movies even if she knew deep down inside she’d make a lousy director if she ever pursued that career, she said. So Rosen opted for combining two of her talents.
“Originally I wanted to go into advertising, because I am obsessed with movies and hate when they misportray movies in previews. So, [I] figured I would make good advertising for movies (since making movies wasn't a realistic career),” she said. “I felt marketing would be a great balance between professional world of business and a fun world of creativity.”
Being a part of AMA has turned Rosen to her first and current internship with Autobytel Inc., an online marketing service specializing in the auto industry.
When she graduates next semester, Rosen has plans to start working towards her dream job as an exec for a marketing or advertising agency, while staying close to Southern California.
“I am a Pisces and I am a dreamer. I want it all!” she said.
*The photo above was taken from the AMA Web site.
