What's the Word? Eagle Alumni Spotlight Podcast: Michelle Day

Michelle Day (1991) earned her degree in Aviation Business, and in this episode she shares a little of her experience from working in the aviation industry, living abroad, and eventually coming back to support alumni engagement on the ERAU-Prescott campus. It took Michelle some time between graduation and finding an airline job-- she wishes she'd taken more advantage of Career Services when she had the chance. Michelle's current job involves plenty of travel, event planning, tours, and promotions around the country. Here in Prescott, she also supports a few student-alumni collaborations. The main kind of writing she does is via email, where effective communication involves being patient and deliberate, to make sure even the smallest message says what you mean it to say and in the precise way you want to say it.  Her advice for current Eagles is to be kind and humble wherever you might find yourself.

Episode Transcript:


[Music fades in]


Owen
Hello everyone welcome back. I'm your host. Owen Smith, with what's the word today, I'm joined by Michelle day, the Director of Alumni Engagement for Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. Michelle, thank you for joining me on this wonderful and very windy Friday afternoon.

Michelle
Yes, thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

Owen
So tell me a little bit about yourself.

Michelle
I'm originally from Pendleton, Oregon, and after graduation from high school, I came right here to Embry Riddle at the Prescott campus in 1987 and then after I graduated, I worked as a general agent for Horizon airlines. And then I progressed within the air cargo industry in freight forwarding and airline cargo sales, and I helped open a new station for cargo Lux airlines in Portland, Oregon. Then I moved to Budapest, Hungary, and I lived there for about six years. I returned the United States and did my own business for a while, and then eventually made my way back to the Prescott campus in 2013 for the Alumni Engagement position.

Owen
Wow, that is awesome. You've been been everywhere, wow. So as the Director of Alumni Engagement, what does your typical day look like?

Michelle
I travel a lot. So if I'm traveling, I can be putting on an event in another city, at a restaurant, bar, or there's just different venues that we have events at, or tours. We do tours, which are amazing. We've been to Edwards Air Force Base, the LA air route traffic control center, FedEx maintenance hanger at LAX so we've done some really cool tours. But I could also be at a trade show representing Embry Riddle. We set up a booth at several aviation industry trade shows. If I'm on campus, I'm usually working on planning those events that I travel for. And I also welcome alumni that come and visit us. We've moved recently. We're in building 23 now behind the Student Union, because they're going to do all that construction. And remove the building that we were used to be in. So we visit with alumni that come to campus, and then I also like to work with students on different projects and things that they're looking for that deal with alumni. That's kind of my usual.

Owen
That's super cool. Do you have a lot of students approaching you to make these connections, to build these relationships?

Michelle
Occasionally. Occasionally we do. I'm not able to give out alumni contact information, but what we can do is, potentially, depending on what the request is, reach out to the alumni ourselves through social media, etc, on the students behalf. But it's not something that we do very regularly, because we want to be careful of our communications with alumni and not bombard them all the time with with other things. But our philanthropy office also helps student projects with funding, and that's there's a specific process to go through with that.

Owen
Absolutely. That's very understandable. So how with your job, how do you tie writing into your day to day?

Michelle
It's mostly emails, just communicating with alumni and my colleagues and also the vendors that I deal with to set up these events, primarily emails.

Owen
Yeah, I gotcha so with your education and your job, were there any differences or similarities from what you were learning and when you came into where you are now?

Michelle
I really thought about this question before we got on today, and I just couldn't come up with anything that was that stood out as being significant. I feel like in the business world, unless you're in a writing job, writing capacity, it's really just emails. It's just communications. And then I've learned over time to be very deliberate with what I write. I don't write something and immediately send it off, even if it's something simple, I let it sit for a moment or two and come back to it. I just started using Grammarly, which is nice. It's helpful, because the longer you're out of school, you kind of forget some of those specifics that you're supposed to utilize in writing? Yeah, I would say it's just mostly communications between what I did at a previous job or what I've done here.

Owen
I understand it completely. I'm an entrepreneur myself, and I sometimes look and reread emails over and over and over to make sure that I say exactly what I need to say and exactly when I need to say it, and I understand it completely and Grammarly is the best.

Michelle
Your tone is very important, and there are ways to ask for things that come across you. In a way that the receiver will be much more willing to work with your request or work with you.

Owen
And lastly, what do you wish you would have known before leaving Embry Riddle and transitioning into the workplace?

Michelle
I graduated in 1991 and the economy and the aviation industry were not doing well at all. Was very challenging. I was I wish that I had utilized our campus career services, and at the time, it was nowhere near as wonderful as it is now, not even close. I think we had one individual that sort of cared about what we did, and I did not utilize that person. I did not utilize other resources. This was before the internet, before all the the wonderful resume website that you can go on today, you had to go off of a book or talk to somebody that already knew how to do that. I did not do that. And I wish I'd had, I should have worked a little harder at finding something, even if it wasn't aviation related. I wound up graduating, going back home to Pendleton, and worked as a server and in a retail store until I got on with horizon airlines, and even that was a $5 an hour job as a general agent. Granted, I worked my way up through the years to what I did, but I could have started off on a better foot by putting more work into the job search at the beginning, before I'd even left college.

Owen
Yeah, I feel that. Every month, at least, I go once for Career Services. So would that be your advice to students, like, if you were to give them something that you didn't really know when you were when you were here, that would be it?

Michelle
Well, that's yes, that's one of the things. The other thing that I thought about was I we kind of had an ego thing when we graduated of we're at from Embry Riddle. We're we're pretty hot stuff here. We're pretty important. And then the reality was that we weren't and and that was also the time that we were in. That's not to say how, that's how it is now, by any means, but I would my advice would be, don't assume that people are going to fall over themselves to to hire you. Be humble. Work on some skills, some soft personal skills. Work on some etiquette. You never know when an employer, potential employer may want to take you out for a meal, and if you've not done anything to learn how to use the right silverware, etc, etc, or how to order things based on what your group is ordering, are they drinking? Are they not drinking? Things like that. I think that's really important. The other thing is relationships. There's no way I would be where I am today without having built good relationships, being kind to people, being considerate, being helpful. A lot of things that have helped me. People that have helped me were those that I helped in the past, and they were more than happy to return the favor, and that has made life easier, made work life easier. So work on those relationships with people. Be kind and and be kind of humble. Doesn't hurt you.

Owen
Thank you so much for the advice, Michelle, and thank you for joining me on what's the word?

Michelle
You're welcome.

Dr. Chesley
This podcast is supported by the Department of Humanities and communication at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona. Our hosts are Abigail Bradbury and Owen Smith. Matthew Haslam is the department chair, and I'm Amelia Chesley, Assistant Professor of professional writing. Many thanks to the Prescott campus writing and Design Lab for hosting our transcripts. The intro and outro music is wanderer by Alex. You can find us where most podcasts are found, and please do reach out if you are a Prescott campus alumni, we'd love to feature you in a future episode.