Texas Strategy Student Highlight: Kimberly Fulton Wiggins

The Stan Richard’s School of Advertising and Public Relations’ Texas Strategy program is a program that was “designed to allow students to observe, interpret, and integrate consumer intelligence.” The program focuses on formulating strategies that drive results and developing creative solutions to problems. I had the opportunity to interview Kimberly Fulton Wiggins, a second year graduate student, about her experience in the Texas Strategy program. 

Kimberly decided that Texas Strategy was right for her after her first semester in the graduate program. “I loved advertising because it combines left-brain and right-brain thinking, but I wasn’t sure how that would translate to my actual work.” She said she always considered herself to be creative, but not necessarily “a creative” and knowing this about herself made choosing Texas Strategy feel like the obvious choice because it allows her to be both analytical and imaginative. 

Kimberly is currently taking two strategy focused courses: Advanced Analytical Tools for Marketing and Graduate Campaigns. In Advanced Analytical Tools for Marketing, she is learning different software and analytical tools that are used to derive consumer insights from data. In her Graduate Campaigns course, she is getting a realistic, hands-on experience by creating a product launch campaign for Amazon, in which she is the Strategy Director. 

When asked about what her favorite part of being in Texas Strategy is, Kimberly stated that she enjoys how applicable everything she is currently learning is to her future career. “You’re learning practical tools and processes that professionals use. You really get to see how much science goes behind creating great advertising campaigns.” She spoke about how every decision that is being made comes from research. “Nothing beats the moment when your research reveals something unique about your audience that you can tap into.” 

For anyone considering joining the Texas Strategy program, Kimberly says to be prepared to look at a lot of spreadsheets, graphs, and articles. She emphasizes the importance of enjoying the process and not just the results because it can feel like the majority of strategy is digging through data. Lastly, Kimberly said to give it a chance even if it sounds intimidating because you might enjoy the work more than you think. “You don’t need to be a math genius or science guru to be good at analytics — you just need to be good at connecting the dots.”