Given that Home From College serves Gen Z students and recent grads navigating careers and early adulthood, I would prioritize brands that are already embedded in that lifestyle and have a clear reason to reach this audience authentically.Notion: The go-to productivity tool for students and young professionals, already deeply embedded in Gen Z work culture and a natural fit for a career platform audience.LinkedIn: An obvious but powerful alignment, reaching users at exactly the moment they are building their professional presence for the first time.Canva: Widely used by Gen Z for resumes, presentations, and personal branding, making it a seamless fit for Home From College's content.Amazon: Specifically their college and early career programs like Prime Student, which are designed exactly for this demographic.Headspace or Calm: Mental health and burnout are top of mind for Gen Z in the workplace, and wellness apps consistently perform well with this audience.Indeed or Handshake: Job search platforms with a direct incentive to reach students and new grads actively looking for opportunities.Spotify: Already a massive Gen Z brand with a history of creative campus and career adjacent partnerships.Apple: Specifically education and back to work product lines that target students transitioning into professional life.Glossier: A Gen Z beloved brand that consistently partners with creators and platforms that have authentic community relationships rather than just large follower counts.American Express: Their student and entry level cards are actively marketed to young professionals, making a career platform partnership a strategic fit.

AI is something I have been actively exploring and I see it as a genuine competitive advantage in a role like this, especially when it comes to efficiency and volume. Pitching brand deals requires sending a lot of outreach, and AI tools can help me move faster without sacrificing personalization. I would use AI to help draft initial pitch templates and follow-up sequences that I then customize for each brand, making sure every message still feels specific and human while cutting down the time it takes to get there.Beyond outreach, I think AI is incredibly useful for research and preparation. Before pitching any brand I can use AI to quickly synthesize information about a company, their recent campaigns, their competitors, and their audience, giving me the context I need to make a smarter, more targeted pitch in a fraction of the time.I also rely on AI as a proofreading layer before anything goes out. In a role where every message represents Julia and the Home From College brand, making sure communications are polished, professional, and free of errors is non-negotiable. Having AI as a final check gives me confidence that nothing slips through, especially when managing a high volume of outreach at once.Finally I see AI as a brainstorming partner for rapidly ideating on pitch angles, partnership structures, and campaign concepts before refining the best ideas. I am still building my hands-on experience with these tools but I am genuinely committed to learning how to use them in a way that makes my work sharper and more impactful for Julia and the Home From College brand.

My approach to pitching a brand deal starts well before anything is ever sent. The most important step is research. Understanding the brand's current partnerships, their target audience, their content style, and where gaps exist in their marketing strategy is what separates a pitch that lands from one that gets ignored. For Julia and Home From College, that means identifying brands that genuinely resonate with a Gen Z audience navigating careers, campus life, and early adulthood, and being able to articulate exactly why this platform and this audience is the right fit for them.From there I focus on making the pitch feel like a conversation rather than a cold ask. My honors thesis required me to reach out to and secure 12 student athlete influencers from across the United States for in-depth interviews, which sharpened my ability to craft outreach that feels personal, credible, and worth responding to. That same skill translates directly to brand outreach, where the goal is to make the right person on the other side feel like this partnership was made for them.Finally I think strong pitching requires knowing the value you bring to the table and being able to communicate it confidently. Home From College has a highly specific and highly valuable audience in Gen Z job seekers and college students, and I would lean into that specificity in every pitch rather than leading with broad reach numbers. Brands that want to authentically connect with that demographic need a platform like this, and my job in the pitch is to make that case clearly and compellingly.