Members of the Marketing Club at CSI took a proactive approach to their studies with a winter break trip to Young & Rubicam (Y&R), one of the leading marketing and communications firms in the U.S.

Vitaliy Isikov, the president of the Marketing Club and a junior who is majoring in Business with an emphasis in Marketing, says that “I think that the trip went phenomenally [well]. The students were all very inquisitive.”

Prof. Daniel Gagliardi of CSI’s Business Department and the faculty advisor for the club, notes that Vitaliy had the opportunity to intern at Y&R as part of his CSI internship class, BUS 598, and thanks to his connections there, he was able to arrange for his clubmates to get a first-hand look inside a large advertising agency.

Gagliardi recalls that he and the students met with Matt Belson, who is an account executive at Y&R. “[Belson] sat down with the students and went over what it’s like to work in an agency, how he got his job, and he also showed a reel of Y&R’s best commercials. The students talked with him for a good hour about careers in the advertising business, about the commercials, and about a lot of different things…It was a good give and take between him and the students and the students finally saw what an accounts supervisor does in an agency. When you hear from a person who’s doing it, rather than from a person who’s teaching it, it means a lot more to the students.”

As for Vitaliy’s previous experience at Y&R, he says, “My experience at Y&R was fantastic. I loved working there. It was a really great atmosphere and I worked with some really amazing people.”

Members of the CSI Marketing Club during visit to Young & Rubicam in Manhattan over Winter Break.