Hey! I'm Maria Laskowski.
I'm a Public Relations graduate from Michigan State University with a cognate in Social Sciences.My love for writing and design inspired me to pursue a career in public relations. I'm interested in a position where I can combine my personal interests and passions with the industry.
Hey Again!
First and foremost, I'm a big sister—the most important part of my life is my family. As a first-generation college student, my biggest goal is to pave the way for my younger siblings.I've always been an avid reader and writer, which led me to initially pursue Journalism during my freshman year at Michigan State. When the Advertising + Public Relations department introduced the Public Relations major during my second semester, I applied as soon as I could. It's the perfect major for my skillset and I haven't looked back.My real-life experience working in restaurants helped me learn how to cope well under pressure, communicate effectively, and work hard. Additionally, my membership in Zeta Tau Alpha is a huge part of my college experience. Serving as Vice President of New Member Education, I learned a lot about leadership and was able to make a positive impact on my chapter and its sisterhood. My hard work was recognized by the Panhellenic Council during the 2021 Greek Gala Awards where I received the Membership and Leadership Development award on behalf of my chapter.I'm fascinated by beauty, fashion, pop culture, and how brands in these industries can utilize social media to create a community of fans passionate about their products. I'd love to explore opportunities within a forward-thinking marketing team fueled by consumer research so I can continue to combine my interests in social media and the social sciences to help brands create innovative feeds their fans will love.
Resume
This is my most up-to-date resume, including my education, work experience, extracurriculars and any relevant awards.
Mixed Media
I've in a little bit dabbled of everything from graphic design, photography, editing, theme development & more. I love the creative side of the business and have a passion for creating clean, aesthetically pleasing designs.
Social Media Skincare Branding
For PR 330: Social Media Management, I collaborated with a partner to create a brand guide and social media campaign for a small business. We created an imaginary skincare brand that specializes in CBD products.
Bid Day 2021 Theme Concept
Part of my role in ZTA involved planning Bid Day, a celebratory recruitment event for all new and current members of my sorority. I worked on developing a theme and presented it to the chapter through this slideshow. It includes the Bid Day banner design on the first slide, t-shirt designs on the next, followed by concept boards. This helped everyone get an idea of what kind of decor and outfits we were visualizing. To see how the event turned out, click here. (Spoiler: It rained on my parade!)
Photography
The following are some examples of my favorite pictures I've taken. My favorite subject to shoot is people, I love to capture emotion in photographs. The first photo was selected to be featured on Herff Jone's inDesign homepage. We were also awarded third place in the divider spread category featuring the photo of the school walkout by MIPA.
ZTA Brochure
This is intended to be a tri-fold brochure. I created this based on Zeta Tau Alpha's national website as well as the website for our local chapter. This was an assignment for my PR 325: Intermediate Social Media and Public Relations Techniques class.
Driftwood 2019 Yearbook Spreads
My senior year of high school I served as our yearbook's Editor-in-Chief. Although these examples are old, I love to include them because I built them from the ground-up. I developed the theme for the book "A Deeper Look", chose the fonts and colors, and created all of the templates and graphics. For these spreads, I took all of the photos, interviewed students, and wrote the copy myself. Our book was given the honor rating of First Class by the National Scholastic Press Association and a Silver Award with a commendation in writing by the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association. Individually, I received an honorable mention from MIPA for the following categories: feature writing, sports reporting, headline writing, caption writing, and for my sports spreads.
Writing Samples
My passion for creative writing started in elementary school when I was writing stories on lined paper during class. I'm proficient in all styles of media writing from articles, press releases, social media posts and more from my coursework at MSU. Outside of professional writing, I love to read and write poetry on the side.
This is a portfolio I put together in PR 225: Writing for Public Relations. Some of the work examples included on my website are pulled from this project.
Article for The Brief
The Brief is an online publication created by undergraduate Public Relations students in PR 320: PR Storytelling for Digital, Video and Print. All of the stories focus on the Advertising + Public Relations department at MSU. I wrote this article as an assignment for that class. I included a social media promo post I designed for The Brief's twitter account to promote the article.
Social Media Posts
This is a mock-up of a digital wellness awareness post I created to be shared on Instagram.
I created these graphics to be shared on the Michigan Association of Health Plans (MAHP)’s social media channels through my internship at Martin Waymire.
Mock Press Release
I wrote this mock press release based on a statement released by The White House Briefing Room regarding the war in Ukraine.
Social Media Research
I spent a semester researching social media's influence on people's perceptions of social issues. I'm including this report because it involved background research on the topic and both qualitative and quantitive data collection as well as extensive data analysis related to social media. All of my research informed a final social media campaign proposal intended to combat the spread of misinformation.