Wow, it feels like just yesterday I was Googling “how to pronounce interoperability” while Ubering to my first interview for an internship with Aria Marketing. Not only did I think I would never figure out the correct pronunciation, but I also never could have imagined what the following two years (and counting) had in store.

Prior to my college graduation this past December, I had the opportunity to work as an intern at Aria Marketing for eight months. During that time, I was able to not only explore the world of healthcare PR, but also gain first-hand experience working in an active marketing agency. Communicating with reporters, drafting monthly reports, and tracking events/awards were a few of my daily tasks that allowed me to expand and enhance my skills learned in college. It was even more exciting to learn that, at the end of my internship, Aria wanted to offer me a full-time Account Coordinator position. There is nothing more satisfying than knowing you have a job waiting for you right after college.

Aria Marketing, a leading healthcare public relations and marketing communications agency, announced it was selected as the agency of record by VisualDx, a diagnostic clinical decision support system used by over 2,300 hospitals, health clinics, and medical schools worldwide. Since April, Aria has launched a robust communications strategy to raise awareness of the role VisualDx’s solutions play in the COVID-19 response, as well as kicked off a PR effort to promote the company’s mission and the thought leadership of CEO and Founder Art Papier, MD.

If I had to sum up the goals for The Pitch, I would say that they are:

• Provide useful information that helps healthcare marketing and PR professionals to do their work.
• Give our clients, employees, prospects and prospective employees a closer look at who we are, what we are interested in and what life is like at Aria.

As we begin the New Year, we can’t help but do some reflecting. So, for this first blog post of 2018, I sat down with an Aria veteran, EVP Jessica Cohen, to uncover some of the lessons she has learned working in healthcare PR, her thoughts on the changing industry, and why she has called Aria home for more than a decade.

I started working at Aria Marketing just over a month ago, and one of the first things that impressed me about the company is that there are so many people who have become “Aria lifers” (Scott, Jessica, Ross, Nancy, Chanel and Katie). So, I set out to find out what keeps people at this PR agency. Is it the #BreakfastWednesdays (a habit hard to break, once you get used to it), the diversity that each one of Aria’s clients brings to the table, the continuously evolving and exciting field of healthcare, the energetic and passionate  team, or Aria’s monthly #HappyHour event? To get to the bottom of the “Aria lifer” trend, I decided to go right to the source(s). Here’s what they had to say:

Over the past 15 years, LinkedIn has changed the way people network, interact with their professional audience and even apply/recruit for job openings. With more than 500 million professionals actively using the site, getting your company onboard should be a no-brainer. While we can digress into a number of different uses of this professional platform, this blog will focus on our top recommendations for leveraging LinkedIn for your organization.