Welcome to Alicia's Orr Fellowship Blog!

Hello blogosphere!  Nope, I'm not new to you, but I am new to the Orr Fellowship Blog.

Let's start off by letting you know a little bit about me.  My name is Alicia Gaba and I am a marketing specialist for BlueLock, one of the top entrepreneurial companies in Indianapolis (I also blog for them!).  I dabble in a little bit of freelance marketing and writing in my free time.  At BlueLock I get to do lots... PR, social media, event planning and coordination, strategy, website design and implementation, communications...I could go on, but basically anything that remotely falls under marketing, I get to do!  That's one of the awesome things about jobs in startups (although at three years in, BlueLock is quickly outgrowing its startup company categorization).  Startup company jobs guarantee you one thing - lots of responsibility and a fast-paced workplace.

I digress...back to me.  I went to Indiana University where I studied Communication and Culture.  What kind of major is that?  Well, it was a combination of rhetoric, public culture, film & media, and performance and ethnography studies - all rolled into one program (if I remember correctly it was started because IU needed to combine a few majors).  Want to learn about how building structures communicate?  Or about advertising and the consumer culture?  How about the rhetoric of social movements?  I did - and it was a pretty awesome four years of study.  Choosing classes was never easy, they were all so interesting.  I was also part of the Liberal Arts and Management Program, which combine a liberal arts major with the study of management at the Kelley School of Business.  If you're looking for an alternative option to business school, this was mine and it was the best decision I made in college.  I also minored in Pyschology - I love learning about behavioral economics, its one of the most intriguing subjects in my opinion.

Enough about my education - what really gets me going?  I have the most adorable golden retriever in the world (yes, this is true) and his name is Wrigley.  We go on long walks (and runs).  And you guessed it, I'm a Cubs fan!  I love going to Cubs games, playing volleyball (indoors or out) and can cut, dye and highlight my own hair.  I love to read and learn and write.  As you can assume, I loved school.

I hope you enjoy this blog!

Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciagaba

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Good Failures: Thomas Mason Business Leader Meeting

Friday, December 18, 2009 by Alicia Gaba


 
Last night the Orr Fellowship squad gathered for our December Business Leader Meeting (BLM) with Thomas Mason, Ph.D.  Mason is a Professor of Economics at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and is an avid proponent of entrepreneurship in Indiana.  Having seen and experienced a number of entrepreneurial growth situations in his lifetime, he had ample advice about high growth startups, entreprenuerial careers and how to continue your own personal growth whether through post-graduate education or just being a learning "sponge" during your career.

One thing Mason talked about that caught me by slight surprise (I say slight because I had looked at some of his articles already), was his take on failing.  Mason argues that having a good failure (preferably early on in your career) is a learning experience like no other.  And its best to take your chances and fail while you're young because you don't have as much to lose.  Of course being in a room with a bunch of young twenty-somethings who don't know much about failure and want to stay far from it garnered some blank stares.  You want me to do WHAT?  However, he does have a valid point and made some good cases for his argument with anecdotes of students from his past who had gone on to do great things after having "great" failures. 

It was some interesting advice for the Orr Fellows as some are in the midst of making big decisions about what lies ahead after the Fellowship. 

 
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