Hello, my name is Sam Rivilis. I am a rising junior majoring in marketing and pursuing certificates in Sports Management and Peer Leadership and Ethics at the University of Pittsburgh. I’m originally from New York but chose to go to Pittsburgh for its exceptional business program and city environment. I’ve always considered myself adaptable and am excited to use such skills on this trip.

During my free time, I enjoy working out, watching tv shows, and spending time with my friends. On campus, I’m involved in greek life as the president of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. As president, I oversee the fraternity and act as a communication tool between our chapter and the national board. When overseeing the fraternity, I have many responsibilities. Some of these include overseeing the executive board which makes up of 6 other members. Additionally, I conduct chapter meetings weekly to give reports for the upcoming week to the chapter and check in with the other executive board members on any updates they have within their respective roles.

Professionally, most recently, I worked with a storage company in Pittsburgh as a marketing intern. My responsibilities for my job included working with my supervisor on various projects, as well as working independently and reporting to my supervisor. One of my biggest projects was an image acquisition project, in which I traveled to their various locations to capture internal/external images of their buildings and key features offered to put on the company’s new website. With this, I also would then use Lightroom to edit the photos. Another project I took on was with the design team to work on an advertising campaign. With this, we brainstormed ideas for a student storage campaign and different designs for flyers to distribute across campus.

I selected this program specifically because I have always been interested to do an internship and go to Dublin as two separate activities. However, being able to do both at once kills two birds with one stone. I believe an internship is a key to developing key skills for future career paths and helps create a sense of what you want to do and what you don’t. Additionally, Dublin is a place I am truly passionate to see. I’ve always been interested since high school to travel outside the U.S., specifically to Dublin because of the culture there and the landscape/scenic views. This program will not only be able to take me to the place I’ve wanted to go for over 5 years, but also help me develop a sense of where I want to go, career-wise, in the future.

Over the course of this program, I wish to improve many of my business skills such as social media skills, leadership skills, and advertisement skills, and develop a sense of what a work life would be like. I haven’t had any work experience in my major-specific field, and I wish to build upon the natural skill level that I already have. On top of this, I would like to learn about the culture of Ireland to evolve my sense of culture and have a better understanding of international ethics. Understanding international cultures and ethics is important when being part of a large corporation and can be a useful skill in the future for jobs I may be hired for. I wish to hopefully work at an athletics sports-based company such as Dicks or Nike and these companies being big corporations means they export and license internationally. Understanding and having real-life experience internationally can help provide me with unique experiences that can be key to differentiating my skills from others. Academically, this program helps fulfill my experiential credits and internship credits for my degree. As a marketing major, to complete my bachelor’s in science of business administration, I am required to fulfill an internship for 3 credits and experiential credits. Additionally, I am interested in working an internship over the summer. Internships, I believe, are key to taking the skills you’ve learned at school in an academic setting and putting them to the test. This is important to my career because it will be the first time I will be getting hands-on experience in my field. Giving me hands-on experience in my field, will help also in my academics because it will help with class decisions specific to the major I declared, and which classes I need more help in. Identifying my weaknesses before pursuing my career can enable me to focus on my weaknesses while in school and enhance my skills.