Name: Val Ponce de Leon
Hometown: Boca Raton, FL
Year: Junior
Major: Marketing, Communications minor
Relationship Status: Taken, sorry boys!
Her Campus (HC): What made you decide on your major?
Val Ponce de Leon (VP): I wanted to be in the industry, either fashion, retail or cosmetic. At the time, I didn’t know which one. And I wanted to do something with the marketing or advertising aspect. I have always been interested in the creative side of things.
HC: What specifically interested you about the creative side?
VP: The media analysts and things like that. The way people react to posts and the way that people become interested in a product just by the way it’s designed or marketed on TV and in ads—that’s what I wanted to do because I’ve always paid attention to ads since I was little.
HC: You intern for Blinc Cosmetics, right? Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
VP: Yes. Blinc is an eye makeup company. Some of their products are in Sephora, but it’s mainly sold online. What they do is they mainly target the high-end market, but they’re releasing a new line in March with Sephora that’s going to be not just eye makeup, but overall makeup, and I worked with that all summer when it came to marketing and analyzing everything that was coming in as well as for Blinc.
HC: How did you get involved with Blinc?
VP: I actually met the CEO through one of my best friends and then we got talking and I told him I was going to be in Boca over the summer and he offered me the internship.
HC: Was your internship only over the summer or have you done anything with Blinc since then?
VP: I started in May and I [worked] 40 hours a week full-time until August and now I work with them remotely.
HC: I heard that you were able to go to Beauty Con in New York. What was that like? Are there any other places you’ve gone with your internship?
VP: I got to go to Las Vegas over the summer, so I [flew] with them and worked the trade show and got to be a part of all of that. I was able to see how they sell into salons and other large retailers such as Target. They focused more on Sephora and then, outside of Sephora, they focused on spas and other places like that, so I got to see how they sell to them comparitively. Then in New York, I was able to go to Beauty Con and see how they go ahead and get all of their influencers and YouTube personalities and other things like that.
HC: Do you think that your internship helped you decide a little bit more what you want to do in the future?
VP: Yeah, it helped me narrow it down. Before, it was a whole bunch of other areas and I knew I wanted to do marketing, but didn’t know what specifically for which type of company. Now, I think I want to go with cosmetics or retail and my internship narrowed it down to those two.