Associate Director of Alumni Events, Penn State University

>> My name's Michelle Moore. I am the Associate Director of the Penn State Alumni Association Alumni Events Team, and I plan events for a living. I guess primarily, there's a talent there for a lot of multitasking. You have to be someone who is pretty organized, but you can't get too far down into the weeds. What goes into event planning is first of all, you're trying to determine what the objective is of the event that you're doing. In the case of what I do now specifically, our whole goal is to engage alumina back to Penn State. So everything that we do is either planning events here at Penn State or throughout the country to help alumni connect back to Penn State. This job requires creativity, but you also have to have good finance background, as well, because you are dealing with a lot of budget management, a lot of negotiation and contracting skill. So where there is that misconception out there it's one big party planning fun event, there's a lot of behind-the-scenes work too that is involved. Currently, right now, here, at the Penn State Alumni Association, the events that we do, there's two different types. The ones that are based here, either in the Hintz Family Alumni Center or actually someplace on campus here. We awards ceremonies, dinners. We do away-game pep rallies when we go to the away-game football games. We take the President on the road. A lot of those times involved either receptions or dinners. A lot of people hear about the Coach's Caravan where we partner with the Lion Club, and we travel with the coaches across the state into the nation to bring the coaches to our [inaudible] nation.