CHS alumna, Danielle Watkins, recently visited Corinth Elementary School as a guest speaker. Her post-graduation accomplishments are very exciting and we asked her to share more about herself to inspire current students and recent graduates. Read more about Danielle in this edition of ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT:
“After graduating from CHS, I went to Elmira College on a full Valedictorian scholarship. I studied international business and marketing, joined several dance clubs, attended a summer internship at the Atlantis hotel in the Bahamas, studied abroad in South Africa, and completed my Open Water scuba diving certification as my gym class. After graduating from EC, I felt a pull to see more of the world, so I became an au pair (live-in nanny) for a family in Barcelona, Spain. I taught their children English, utilized the Spanish I learned from Señoras Siano, Mullen, and Wells, and traveled to 13 countries throughout Europe.
When I moved home a year later, I got my first corporate job covering the maternity leave for an Executive Assistant in Schenectady, but the travel bug never went away. When she returned a year later, I took the opportunity to meet my college roommate in Southeast Asia. We explored Bali, Indonesia and southern Thailand together for 2 weeks. While in Bali, I made friends with an American girl my age who was managing the social media for a local resort through an internship called Paradise Interns. I pursued the internship myself soon after returning from my trip and was accepted into the program!
Paradise Interns was the perfect way for me to build on my marketing degree while continuing to travel. I spent 1 month in intensive social media marketing training (a fairly new concept in 2018) followed by 5 months living on the island of Gili Trawangan running the social media for a Resort called Tir Na Nog. After completing the internship, they hired me full-time and I worked as their Marketing and Hotel Manager in the months leading up to and throughout the first year of the pandemic. Living on this tiny paradise island was truly a dream! I completed over 75 scuba dives, climbed the second tallest active volcano in Indonesia (Mt. Rinjani), learned about sustainability and ocean preservation, and participated in the island's turtle nest tracking initiative where I would walk 3 miles around the island at sunrise to look for turtle nests to protect and monitor for hatchings.
Indonesia was seriously impacted by the lack of tourism caused by Covid travel restrictions, so I started my own remote digital marketing company completing one-off social media management, website design and resume rewriting services. After a year and a half of isolation on the tiny remote island of Gili T, I moved home to build on my resume writing services and began my career in recruitment. I now work as an executive recruiter for a fully remote, woman owned business called M3 Placement & Partnership. I live on Sacandaga Lake with my partner and my cat Cosmo where I enjoy boating, swimming, and hiking. I'm also an assistant coach for a youth hip hop program, newfound lover of skiing and I continue to travel as often as I can - most recently to fun places around the Northeast including Cape Cod, central Maine, and Woodstock, Vermont.
I recently had the absolute pleasure of visiting my mom's 3rd grade students who had been learning about Jacques Cousteau to talk to them about the ocean, scuba diving, and conservation and sustainability. I encourage every Corinth graduate to get out and explore the world, but you don't have to go all the way to Indonesia and fish trash out of the ocean yourself to make a positive impact on the environment. You can make small sustainable choices everyday like reducing consumption of single-use plastic, shopping locally, and supporting local conservation groups like Sustainable Saratoga or the Healthy Corinth Coalition - both of which lead trash pickup events and share ways to contribute towards a greener future!”
