Feature Release: Michelle Toukan

Anyone who is looking for local resources at Buffalo County Community Partners, BCCP, in Kearney has probably seen a few familiar faces around. Michelle Toukan, the Marketing Director, is one of those familiar faces. Most times, Michelle can be seen in communicating with staff at meetings, designing graphics for projects, or writing content for the website. Her work often requires that she stays up-to-date on trending information and communicating messages to the BCCP staff and outside of the organization.

Michelle started at BCCP in 2015, after graduating college with a advertising and public relations degree, where she held the position of Marketing Coordinator for two years. Followed by that, she became an insurance agent in 2018 for Horace Mann in Minden. This position was held for another 2 years. Eventually, leading her back to BCCP with a new position of Marketing Director in 2020. Among all this Michelle started a side gig in 2017 as a tutor for writing and still does tutor till this day.

In order to complete this assignment, I used a fair amount of tactics outlined below. After searching on LinkedIn about my need for an interview with a professional working in the media, the person I originally chose didn’t respond. So, I chose to interview Michelle via email because I already know her well as my prior boss and current mentor. We’ve had many interactions over my one year of working at BCCP and felt comfortable using this format to communicate. When formatting my presentation, I referred back to my experience as a marketing intern and associated design skills.

While Michelle does have my dream job, she does a lot of the work that I desire. Some of the core skills she feels are necessary to complete the job includes: being task oriented, disciplined, able to carry multiple projects at one time, able to know how long projects will take, able to design graphics, and to write with proper English. While I do not generally desire to carry multiple projects at one time, I do enjoy creating graphics for social media and writing content like press releases and stories.

Many of the ideas I took from Michelle’s interview underlined what I have been experiencing for much of my own internships and education at UNK. In addition, I look forward to continuing on a career track that allows me to utilize a perfect blend of my strengths in a company that promotes those skills. In the end, I'm still unsure about my career goals like what company I want to work for and what position I want to obtain. Since beginning my career in higher education, I've considered pursuing more classes, certifications, and even freelance work for my own clients. Graduation, on the other hand, is approaching faster than ever.