{"id":32506,"date":"2011-04-07T08:12:56","date_gmt":"2011-04-07T12:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=32506"},"modified":"2011-08-18T15:36:16","modified_gmt":"2011-08-18T19:36:16","slug":"sassy-savvy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2011\/04\/sassy-savvy\/","title":{"rendered":"Sassy & Savvy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Sami<\/a>
Sami Jensen. Photo by Peter Morenus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Despite the daunting reality of today\u2019s challenging economic times, Sami Jensen \u201911 (CLAS), a sassy, savvy communications major, embodies the qualities that will enable her to succeed. For starters, Jensen could teach a class in Networking 101. For the past two years, she has had an internship at the Avon, Conn., communications firm of Williams & House \u2013 a position she landed as a result of exuding her personality in the right place at the right time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was working in sales at an Apple store, and my customer needed three desktops,\u201d Jensen says. \u201cThat was the largest sale I\u2019d ever had. In talking with her I learned she ran a communications firm \u2013 and that very day I\u2019d become a communications major.\u201d The customer was so impressed with the young saleswoman that she offered her a paying internship.<\/p>\n

In addition to being a full-time student and interning, Jensen created her own blog, Poor & Pretty (www.poorandpretty.com<\/a>). The blog\u2019s content categories range from arts and entertainment to money, sustainability and cosmetics, but entries about fashion, cupcakes and Do It Yourself are the most popular categories among its readers.<\/p>\n

In December, Jensen added entrepreneur to her resume, launching a trendy Etsy shop \u2013 The Cupcake Soap Shoppe \u2013 to celebrate her blog\u2019s first anniversary.<\/p>\n

\u201cEtsy.com is for crafters,\u201d Jensen explains about the website that enables people to sell handmade and vintage items online and reconnects makers with buyers. \u201cFor me, that\u2019s making soap from scratch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jensen interviewed one Etsy shop owner per month to learn about selling online. Before starting up her own Etsy shop, she also experimented with vegan, hypoallergenic source materials, ultimately creating soaps that look and smell so good they include a label warning that they\u2019re inedible.<\/p>\n

\u201cPoor & Pretty is about a lot of things, but I want cupcake soaps to be my signature product,\u201d says Jensen. \u201cI\u2019ve learned from my marketing and communications classes that it\u2019s best to start small and expand. My education has made me comfortable with communication technology and social change \u2013 how blogging and social networking have changed the way people shop. I\u2019ve learned from my professors and other students how small businesses are using Twitter and Facebook to become more transparent. It\u2019s so much easier to ask a question about a company on a Facebook page. Because of the economy\u2019s crash, we as consumers are looking for that,\u201d Jensen says.<\/p>\n

A member of Bloglovin\u2019 and Independent Fashion Bloggers, Poor & Pretty\u2019s social networking tools include an RSS feed, Twitter account and Facebook page.<\/p>\n

\u201cA blog is absolutely sunk without those features,\u201d Jensen notes. \u201cWhat\u2019s so important about me and my communications major classmates \u2013 we\u2019re the generation growing up with social networking media \u2013 \u00a0is that we\u2019re able to speak to managers of older companies and say, \u2018You need to be on Twitter and Facebook, and we know how to set it up,\u2019 or \u2018Yeah, you need to have an iPhone app for that.\u2019 In using technology, you can be very creative or you can just be very techie \u2013 I can\u2019t program an iPhone app, but I can design it so it\u2019s pretty.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article was published in the Spring 2011 edition of UCONN Magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blogger and entrepreneur Sami Jensen ’11 talks fashion, art, beauty, and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[43],"class_list":["post-32506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 07:55:01","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32506"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44720,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32506\/revisions\/44720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32506"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=32506"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=32506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}