Reporting by Madison White
Graphics by Angela Young
Nicole Alvarez, a Global Education Project Manager from Benefit Cosmetics, joined the Women in Business Association on Zoom as the first guest speaker of the winter quarter. She shared how her career has developed across job titles and industries, and gave advice to attendees.
One of her first pieces of advice to the Zoom audience of 35 was to take new opportunities, even if they are different from anything you have done before.
“Even if you start out in one specific thing, your contacts and your skills that you develop as you’re going through your career can lead you in all sorts of different pathways,” Alvarez said. “So never be afraid to try something new.”
Her presentation detailed how she was able to pivot multiple times in her career, learn new skills and adapt to various positions at each company.
Even as she was starting out as a Graphic Communications major at Cal Poly, Alvarez knew she wanted to work in the sports industry. She landed an internship during her senior year with the Houston Astros, where she relocated for the five month long job in graphic design .
However, Alvarez struggled to find a job after her graduation in 2012. She moved to the Bay Area and found an internship with the San Jose Earthquakes soccer club. After taking another job with a construction company as a Marketing Coordinator Intern, Alvarez was accepted for a fellowship program with the San Francisco 49ers.
Alvarez worked as a graphic designer for the 49ers football team during their last season at Candlestick Park and had the opportunity to work on projects surrounding the opening of Levi’s Stadium. Eventually the fellowship position turned into a full-time job. She recalled the excitement of traveling to New Orleans in 2013 when the 49ers went to the Super Bowl. However, after four seasons, Alvarez said she wanted to move on from the fast-paced sports industry to find a job that would allow her more balance in her personal life.
After the 49ers she worked in San Luis Obispo as the Marketing Coordinator for a local winery. She and her husband moved to Scottsdale, Arizona for about a year where she worked at a hospitality agency. Alvarez noticed differences between doing marketing for a small company that owns their own brand as opposed to an agency that works with many brands.
“Personally I like being in-house because it’s your brand, you get to own the marketing, you get to make those decisions,” she said.
Even though she had moved on from the sports world, Alvarez got notice that her former boss from the 49ers was offering her a project management position with the Oakland A’s. She said that if she was ever given the chance to work with him again she would because he was an excellent boss. However, the Covid-19 pandemic cut the baseball season short, and the organization had to let go of a large part of the marketing department.
The timing worked out for Alvarez because she had her first son around that time. During the pandemic she worked from home for H&L Partners, an advertising agency in Oakland. She said working from home fit her lifestyle better with a young child.
At H&L Partners Alvarez worked as a project manager for clients like McDonald’s. She learned the basics of budgeting, workload balancing, scheduling, timelines and taking briefs.
“I just kind of got thrown into it, learned quickly, and was very thankful for that,” Alvarez said.
While working for the advertising agency, she said that she had her LinkedIn profile set to ‘open to work’ for job recruiters to see. That’s how she landed her job at Benefit Cosmetics.
“I always thought it would be cool to work for a makeup brand, but I’m like, I have no experience, how am I gonna get into this, but a recruiter actually reached out to me on LinkedIn,” Alvarez said. “So those LinkedIn messages… don’t ignore them. They’re definitely very helpful.”
Now Alvarez is the Project Manager for the Global Education team at Benefit. She admitted that while she “wasn’t really sure what Global Education was” when she started, she was excited to be working in-house for an exciting brand.
Alvarez said that her work in Global Education aims to create all the content for new products or services that Benefit launches. That way everyone, from the heads of Education to regional managers, knows everything they need to know about the product or service before it goes into stores across the world.
She is responsible for the content timelines of all the new products and services, as well. Her team starts meetings on Global Education for a product a year and half before it launches. They work cross-functionally with the Marketing, Creative, and Strategy and Product Innovation departments to ensure the timeline is accurately followed.
In Alvarez's experience, working for Benefit Cosmetics is very different from working for the sports industry because now, she is working predominantly with women.
“It’s really awesome to see all these women in high, powerful positions and being able to work with them and hearing their stories of how they came into their roles and their different paths,” she said.
Her parting advice for the audience was to find what makes you happy. She mentioned work-life balance, hours per week and salary as factors that may help decide which job is the right fit. Seizing new opportunities and taking on new responsibilities ultimately led Alvarez to her gratifying position at Benefit Cosmetics.