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Tocquigny CEO Leads Round Table Career Discussion for UGS Students

Advertising and Public Relations professional Yvonne Tocquigny will meet with a small group of Undergraduate Studies students to chat about careers, choosing a major, and how choices made in undergraduate careers can affect life after college. Tocquigny is the founder and CEO of Tocquigny Advertising Agency, a successful full-service marketing and interactive agency that boasts Dell, Jeep, IBM, Caterpillar, and the Domestic Violence Hotline as clients. The talk is part of the Magellan’s Circles series, which gives UGS students opportunities to talk with successful professionals about paths through college and to eventual careers.

Tocquigny founded her agency in 1980 as a design firm, after the small agency where she’d been working as an art director folded. She describes the company’s start as anything but easy, and got her break when she started a successful relationship with Dell. This relationship has now lasted for over twenty years, and followed the company’s rise to a nationally-regarded agency: it was named by Adweek as number 20 in their listing of the top 50 national interactive agencies

Magellan’s Circles provide an open forum for students to ask questions and gain insight into a variety of paths to career options. Up to twenty students will participate in each round-table discussion, each with a speaker handpicked by Dean Woodruff. One past participant reflected that he “really enjoyed the casual environment in which I could just sit down with someone who is extremely successful and ask him real questions that have been bothering me.”

Past questions by participants include:

  • I think I’m interested in working in a certain career field, but I don’t really know what that would look like as a specific, day-to-day job.
  • I don’t know what real employers look for when hiring college graduates.
  • My advisor says I don’t need a specific undergraduate major to get a job in most career fields…but I’m not sure if I believe it.

Upcoming speakers are Bjorn Billhardt, Founder and CEO of Enspire Learning, Inc., on March 8, and Lee Walker, “serial entrepreneur” and former Dell president, on April 5. Please RSVP. for all events. If you are interested in attending or have questions, please email us.
Download Magellan’s Circles flyer

Tocquigny site
More about Yvonne Tocquigny
Austin Business Journal profile