Inspiring The Next Gen

On January 25, 2024, Yalo welcomed the wonderful high school students in the NextGenAtl program to our offices. Next Gen closes the opportunity gap for under-resourced high school students in Atlanta through exposure and support. We were proud and excited to host them.

This connection was made through our active participation in The A Pledge here in Atlanta. We are proud, inaugural members of The A Pledge and are fully committed to its mission. The A Pledge is a call to Atlanta advertising and marketing agencies to come together in a committed effort to create inclusive opportunities within our industry. Over the next decade, we will make the changes needed to ensure our teams reflect the diversity of our community. As we do, we will see systemic opportunity grow in our industry, our city, and our nation.

Next Gen partnered with The A Pledge, creating opportunities for its member agencies to host local high school students. The goal was to share and discuss our world of marketing with the high school students, helping them understand what it is like to work in the marketing field. We wanted to give them a clear perspective on the multiple ways for them to pursue a career in marketing. 

We kicked off with a little dinner because we got started late in the afternoon, as they took buses after school to our offices. While the students ate, I gave an overview of Yalo, what type of agency we are, how we do our work and who some of our clients are. After that, we created a ‘tour’ for them through the different departments of our agency which included Creative, Account Management, Development, Talent Acquisition, and Executive Leadership. The students were put into 5 separate groups, which each started at a different Yalo department. 

A Yalo leader from each of these departments spoke to the students for 10 minutes, and then we rotated the students to the next department. During each 10-minute session, each leader spoke to the students about what it looked like and what it meant to be a marketing professional with a specific skill set, such as Creative, for about 6-7 minutes with 3-4 minutes for questions from the students. Each session was very interactive and engaging for the students. The students interacted at a high level and offered some very enthusiastic questions. 

Seeing their energy and enthusiasm at the late hour of the day was infectious. Our team fed off them and did our best to try to match them! I led the Executive Leadership session. And after sharing with each group the story of how I started Yalo, I asked every student 1 by 1 ‘why were you interested in attending this event’. One, very transparent student, noted ‘to be honest, I forgot we had an event tonight, so here I am!’ I truly appreciated his honest answer, and it put a smile on my face! Overall though, that answer was really the outlier compared to many of the others I received to my question. I was thrilled to hear that many of them had already started their own businesses (AR app game developer, hairstylist, among others). I can tell you that I was not thinking about such things and asking these types of questions as a high school student back in the 1980’s!

At the end of the day, while it was exhausting to conduct 5 mini-seminars in rapid succession, it was exhilarating and inspiring to hear these students talk about their own passions and interests. It was a fulfilling evening helping them think through the possibilities of a career in marketing.

We are thankful to The A Pledge for creating such a great opportunity for Yalo. We are thankful to the students who took the time to visit us at Yalo. I can only hope that they got as much out of the evening as our Yalo team members did. I can tell you that I walked away from the event excited about how the next generation will shape the future of marketing!