Students

Story by Jessica Navarro
Photography by Nicki Evans

Like so many Bauer College students, Camille Corales believes that if you want something to happen, you don’t just talk about it — you create it.

That’s what the marketing senior did last year as president of the college’s chapter of the American Marketing Association. When members told her they were having a difficult time securing work in the field without hands-on experience, Corales and another student, Christian Beduya, launched the Cougar Creative Marketing Firm.

“It’s a strange cycle,” Corales said. “For you to get a job, you have to have experience, but for you to get experience, you have to get a job.”

Through the student-run marketing firm, participants have the opportunity to work directly with companies on search engine optimization, website design, social media, graphic design, content creation and other aspects of marketing.

As Corales helped to envision and launch Cougar Creative, she directly applied what she’d learned in the classroom.

“We implemented what we learned in Bauer classes about business strategies, marketing plans and business plans into Cougar Creative,” she said.

Corales has also taken lessons from the college’s Ted Bauer Leadership Certificate Program (TBLCP) and Ted Bauer Undergraduate Business Scholars (TBUBS) to develop herself as a student leader.

“Having the scholarship support has been a blessing,” she said. “It’s given me the opportunity to build a great network, which will definitely help me in the future, and it’s helped me grow my leadership skills. But the main thing that Bauer has given me is a family.”

She added: “What sets Bauer apart from other schools is that they focus solely on students. Here, it’s about how to make the students love Bauer and their experience. It’s about getting students involved to do the best for their community.”

Born in the Philippines, Corales has long appreciated the value of family and community.

“Spending my childhood in the Philippines taught me a lot about family and relationships and being personal with each other,” she said. “You never know when you’ll fall, and when you do, you need people to help you get back up. Focus on your relationships because that’s what you’re going to have your whole life.”

That connection to relationships eventually led Corales to pursue a degree in marketing, although she initially envisioned herself working in healthcare at the request of her parents.

“I didn’t even know I wanted to do business,” she said. “It was always medical, medical, medical until I transferred to UH and fell in love with marketing.”

Armed with her experience in Bauer marketing courses, TBUBS and TBLCP, and student organizations, Corales is preparing for her last year of college, which she has chosen to extend in order to pursue minors in Spanish and finance. This spring, she earned the first-ever Penny Todd Scholarship from the Houston chapter of the American Marketing Association, an award that emphasizes leadership and philanthropy.

“Volunteering really humbles you,” Corales said. “It reminds me of my background and how far my family has come and in a way, what I’m fighting for.”

She’ll rely on her background as a creator when she realizes her dream to one day run an orphanage in the Philippines.

“Even though the Philippines is a small country, there are millions of ‘street kids’ there,” Corales said. “I want to provide them with the experience of things we take for granted in a developed country, like food and access to bathrooms.”

She’s getting experience that will serve her goal by volunteering with the Houston Food Bank, Sunrise Senior Living and The Beacon, a local homeless day shelter. She also plans to launch several startups after graduation to secure the capital needed to build an orphanage.

“What drives me to succeed is wanting to be better than I was last year,” Corales said. “It sounds a little tricky, but I think you should always try to improve yourself. It’s your creative mind working — you don’t always have to create something new, but you should always be thinking about how to improve and grow.”