Last year, Natalia Romero Ramirez posed with Adriana Pineda, J. Walter Thompson Colombia’s VP of Integrated Communications Planning, Scholarship recipients in 2015, as one of five young women selected for our Helen Lansdowne Resor (HLR) Scholarship.
This year, we caught up with Natalia, a Creative Advertising and Marketing student at Escuela de Artes y Lras Bogotá, to learn more about what winning the Scholarship meant to her.
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If I could choose the most transcendental moment in my professional life, and even personal life, I´ll choose the day I won the Helen Lansdowne Resor Scholarship; perhaps many people may think that it is because work-wise it has opened doors very quickly for me, which is true. However, that isn’t so important when you compare it to the feeling of being welcomed to do what you feel passionate about and seeing how quickly you can accomplish things you thought were so distant. Without a doubt, this will be the starting point to stop just believing and to start creating the future I want.
These three months at J. Walter Thompson Colombia really seemed like three weeks. All this time I’ve been learning and discovering how far my potential can go. Fortunately, the experience continues, not as a trainee anymore, but as a Junior Graphic Designer. I know the challenges will be greater, and that makes me very happy, because I believe I’m in the ideal place to grow and achieve many more things doing what I love: creative and art direction.
In this short time I learned that everybody once started from zero, that this is a career that is constantly built with the endeavor and effort of each person, that it is a long process, but one that in the end always brings rewards.
I had the opportunity to work with great professionals like:
- Claudia Murillo, GCD, whom I can describe with the word “patient.” Claudia is a faithful example to me of what it means to do things with love, for it doesn’t matter how many responsibilities you might have, if you always face them with the right attitude, in the end the effort will pay off.
- Nicolás Acosta, CD, I would consider with the word “perfection”; when even the smallest detail is important, that meticulousness with which one observes something in the hope of not letting anything escape.
- And Claudia Castiblanco, AD, I would synthesize with the word “dedication”; when experience lets you achieve everything you do with love, because that way you transmit your knowledge to the ones that are still learning and make it much easier.
But the most important thing, is that thanks to them and the whole team, I’ll keep learning. I wish to grow even more as a professional, and from now, project myself with big goals in the advertising and business world. In order to achieve this I will study abroad to obtain a Masters Degree in Strategic Direction in Communication and Advertising, and although I love art direction, I wish to prepare myself for more strategic roles. I’m sure that Helen’s pioneering spirit will accompany me on this path.
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