Lauren Kellett
January 16, 2018
Lauren (fr right) and friends at the St. Louis Small Press Expo promoting The Moon Zine (2017).
Lauren lives in St. Louis, MO, where she has worked at various arts organizations and institutions, and is currently the marketing coordinator at the Saint Louis Art Museum. She is passionate about the local arts scene in her city, and in her free time, helps create a monthly publication called The Moon Zine with friends she made at Truman. She’s a true “dabbler” who is slowly but surely taking up hobbies in sewing, printmaking, photography, and art collecting.
What year did you graduate and what was your concentration?
I graduated in 2014 with a concentration in Public Communication.
What extra-/co-curricular activities did you do?
I wrote for the Index and Detours, had a radio show on KTRM, and helped publish The Monitor. Off-campus, I volunteered at The Aquadome arts venue in downtown Kirksville. I also was in choir and a few plays and musicals my first two years.
Did you go to grad school? If so, where? Was it immediately after you left Truman or did you wait? Why?
No, I didn’t go to grad school….but I’ve been thinking about it. We’ll see!
What was your first job after graduation?
After graduation, I had an internship in the social content department at FleishmanHillard (FH), a global PR firm. During my time at FH, I was also volunteering at a local art gallery on the weekends, and through there I found out about a job opening at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM). As the PR/Marketing Coordinator at CAM, I worked on social media, website management, advertising, graphic design and event planning, and really loved getting to learn about the unfamiliar world of museum work.
Lauren at an exhibition opening for artist Nicola Tyson at the CAM St. Louis (2017).
What work do you do/What are you doing now?
After working at CAM for over two years, I’m now the Marketing Coordinator at the Saint Louis Art Museum. I manage the Museum’s advertising strategy, as well as write and produce various publications to promote exhibitions and programs to the public. I also help plan SLAM Underground, a monthly party at the museum with music, performances, games, and art activities. I really love being part of an iconic institution in my hometown, and getting to come up with creative ideas for keeping the public interested in visual arts.
How has your Liberal Arts/COMM education helped you?
I think the overall flexibility of a liberal arts degree helped me experiment and try out many things that a more traditional PR/marketing degree may not have encouraged. I appreciated that we were required to take classes in different fields of study—along with my Communication curriculum, I studied creative writing, film studies, art history, and literature, and that really helped steer my focus towards using a Communication degree to promote the arts.
Which class did you dislike at the time you took it, but now you’re grateful you took it?
I was really uninterested in Communication Theory, but looking back I think it helped me tie together all the practical skills I was learning with the motivations and reasoning behind them.
What was your greatest accomplishment at Truman?
Being able to graduate early was a major accomplishment for me, and I’m grateful Truman provided me the opportunities to make that happen with summer classes and internship credits. I’m also very proud of the work I did with The Aquadome off-campus, and that many of my classes allowed me to merge that work together—such as Persuasion Theory, where our final project was to create a persuasive campaign for a local business. My project partners and I created an end-of-semester concert series called “Finals Fever Reliever,” aimed at making The Aquadome a more welcome place for all students and locals. Almost four years later, The Aquadome still hosts that event every end of the semester!
Lauren (right) with Christopher the Conquered, a touring musician, at a Finals Fever Reliever (ca. 2012).
Why is Truman a good place for a student to study?
I think Truman is a great place for a student to study because of its smaller size and openness to experimentation. I loved that I was able to easily participate and get a feel for every media outlet in the department, and really figure out which ones were right for me. I also think the accessibility to professors was a huge help, as I never felt like just a face in the crowd.
What would you say a COMM student should absolutely do while at Truman?
I think you should definitely participate in at least one of the media outlets on campus, as well as any other extracurricular activities you may be interested in. It’s so easy to get involved at Truman, and I really think it’s the stuff you do outside of your coursework that helps shape your passions and point you towards what you want to do after graduation.
Also, you should dance at Geno’s 70’s Club at least once.
What advice would you give someone who wants to go into the same line of work as you?
I would say that the most important thing is to love and believe in the organization you work for. As a public relations and marketing professional, it’s your job to convince others that what you’re promoting is really great—so it’s a lot easier if you truly believe it’s really great! One of the main reasons I got into museum work after leaving my internship at FleishmanHillard is that I wasn’t inspired by the work I was doing at FH—it was too hard for me to be passionate about clients in fast food, home utilities, and mobile phone providers. So figure out what it is that you really love, then apply your Communication degree to that field.
What do you miss most about campus/Kirksville?
SAB brought the girls from Broad City to Truman, and Lauren and a friend got to meet them after the show (2014).
A lot! For being such a small town, Kirksville was sort of magical for me. I made my best friends at school, most of whom are still my best friends today. I went into college thinking I would be bored out of my mind in this tiny town, but you really learn how to make your own fun. I loved walking around campus and recognizing almost every face, and getting to take required “Modes of Inquiry” courses with friends who were in different majors. I also really miss studying in Pickler Library and feeling so inspired by all the information I had access too. And of course, I miss The Aquadome dearly … and Geno’s 70’s Club.
What tag line would you create for the COMM department at Truman?
“Spread truth.”
If you could come back to Truman and teach a class for a semester, what would be its title and what would it be about?
I would love to teach a class on marketing non-profits and public institutions. Something I think is really fun about the work I’m in is that I’m not trying to convince anyone to purchase a product—I’m trying to encourage people to have a new experience. I’d like to show students who might think traditional marketing isn’t right for them that you can have a lot of fun in this field without having to be a salesman.
What did we not ask that you think is important for people to know?
I think it’s really important to know that all of the professors in the Communication Department are so fun to work with, and are extremely knowledgeable in what they’re teaching. One of the great things about going to a smaller school is the accessibility to your professors—you really don’t have much trouble getting one-on-one time in this department.
If you would like to hear more of Lauren’s story, you can follow her on Instagram or The Moon Zine online or on Twitter.