On Monday from 1:25 to 4:15 p.m., students in AdLab — the country’s largest student-run agency — are buzzing around COM, dashing from executive board meetings, to all-agency, to department breakouts, to team meetings.
Over 125 AdLabbers are assigned to 15 client teams, and members of the Executive Board provide feedback and mentorship while leading them all.
Behind the scenes is the senior leadership duo of President Lily Segal and Executive Vice President Chloe Kim.
Segal, who was an account executive for Sallie Mae in Fall 2022 and VP of accounts in spring 2023 before her role as president, said that the path she took “isn’t just a cookie-cutter path that everyone has to follow.”
“We had someone who was on E-Board last year for accounts, and she’s like, ‘I want to try strategy,’ and then she just became a normal AdLab strategist.”
Kim had a similar course, starting as a strategist on the CommCreative team and then becoming VP of Strategy before taking on the EVP role. She agreed that the journey from being on a client team to a director role to the vice president level is a common one, but not the only one.
“Most people start off in their first semester in AdLab with testing out seeing how the AdLab system works … especially for people who’ve never had the sort of agency experience,” Kim said.
Segal acknowledges that AdLab can be rigorous, but it’s also highly rewarding.
“I describe it as like a team project on steroids,” she said. “Obviously that’s going to come with its ups and downs. It’s something that you have to navigate. Then, things happen. Clients go on vacation or they don’t like something, so it’s about figuring out how to deal with that. It takes practice.”
The “figuring out” that AdLabbers do is a highlight of Segal’s role as President.
“It’s so much fun to see people create some really cool and creative stuff and solve problems in creative ways and just [do] some great research,” Segal said. “So that’s honestly been my favorite part where I’m able to kind of take my hands off of stuff and just watch people do their thing.”
Kim also enjoys seeing the AdLab process and the corresponding results.
“You kind of get a bird’s eye view of sort of everything that’s going on in the agency,” Kim said. “It’s like a mama bird moment where I’m like ‘I’m so proud of everything that’s going on’ because I get to see a more general view. I get to see the real progress that’s going on from some teams and we’re very proud of the work people have been putting in.”
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