Jenae Green is currently the Manager of Integrated Marketing and Special Projects at Marie Claire. From Kent State to Marie Claire, Green is one of The Fashion School’s amazing success stories. She not only followed her own dreams, but proved to the rest of us that it is possible. I got to spend the day with Green at Modista Group’s MODIvation Conference and she was full of advice, industry information and just a pleasure to be around.
What is your biggest piece of career advice?
When it comes to career advice, Green’s answer really stuck with me, “people hire who they want to hangout with all day.” When you think about it, you’re spending almost as much time, or more, at the office, and the people who get hired need to mesh well together. She also added, “use your personal days.” You are given this time for a reason, everyone needs time to relax and mentally refresh in order to come back ready to tackle any challenges.
What is your biggest industry don’t?
Just sending out your resume, “If someone hasn’t given me a reason to vouch for them yet, I don’t really have a reason to push your resume out to my boss or to HR. So, meeting with me, getting to know me, having me get to know you, staying in touch with me so that when something comes up I can be like ‘this person would be perfect for that.’ Just sending your resume is not going to get you a job and that is not networking. It is starting to network, but you have to do more and put in more to actually effectively network.”
What does your perfect intern look like?
“Polite, respectful, and very hardworking. Someone who knows that no task is beneath them because you’re going to be asked to do very miniscule and tedious and annoying tasks and knowing that you need to do those annoying tasks really well in order to get the bigger task and the more glamorous things. Someone who knows nothing is beneath them and who has a passion to do whatever the role is and that has some knowledge of the industry. Not just knowing you want to work for a magazine, but more specifically why you want to work for Marie Claire or another magazine or this team. Knowing exactly why you want the role you are applying for. And again you hire someone you want to hangout with. Having a great personality also goes a long way.”
Jenae posing with Jaslene Gonzalez, winner of America’s Next Top Model Cycle 8.
As a Kent State alum, how did being part of The Fashion School and attending Kent State help you in your career?
“Attending the fashion school allowed me the amazing opportunity to Study Away at the NYC studio for a semester which is when I interned for Vogue. I truly believe that internship and experience had a lot to do with how the rest of my career has played out thus far. I also had the opportunity to hone in on my leadership skills by being on the executive board of Modista for three years.”
How did you get started on your passion project, ourCUSP?
“ourCUSP has been a part of my life for a couple of years now (see this post for back story) but I finally had the time to fully flush out my ideas/vision and launch ourCUSP in December of 2017. I had a lot of girls reaching out to me for advice and I saw something I wasn’t satisfied with, which was the diversity in offices of fashion and media companies – which ultimately leads to the lack of diversity on the runways and magazine covers, and figured out how I could do my part to be a part of the change.”
In regards to the magazine world making a huge digital shift in the past year, Green reassured us that it isn’t going anywhere, things are just changing. Specific roles are consolidating, not entire magazines. Meaning that, for example, an editor for Marie Claire could also be an editor for Harpers Bazzar.
I know we were all thinking this in the back of our minds, so I asked. Working at Marie Claire is nothing like The Devil Wears Prada, it is actually the complete opposite.