Brooke Blankenship
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Entrepreneurship Major Learns the Business of Starting Her Own Venture
The skills Brooke Blankenship ’22 has learned as an Entrepreneurship and Innovation major make her confident her future work won’t feel like a job.
In high school, Brooke Blankenship was sure of two things: She wanted to go to college far away from her home in Maryland, and she’d never wear anything green. Then she visited York College of Pennsylvania. “I just felt very at home,” she says. “From the moment I stepped on campus, I felt welcomed.”
She fell in love with York College, joining clubs and working as an Resident Assistant (RA) welcoming new classes of students the way she’d been welcomed. Now a senior, Blankenship ’22 says being close to her parents is actually really nice.
And the green? Her closet is full of it. “I make a point to wear some York College thing every time I go home,” she says. “I’m so prideful of where I go to school.”
Embracing the unknown
The first in her family to go to college, Blankenship gets a lot of questions about her major, Entrepreneurship and Innovation. “I wanted my major to be something I loved,” she says, “and I knew that having something I could grow on my own wouldn’t make work feel like a job.”
Through the program, she’s learned how to run her own business—marketing, management, and networking. “But it’s about much more than that,” she says.
Blankenship’s life isn’t stuck to just one possible trajectory when she graduates. She can apply her skills to anything that interests her. Her dual minors in Professional Writing and Marketing only add to her skill set.
“There’s a beauty of not knowing what you’re doing,” she says. “It’s comforting to know I’ve learned the skills to be a viable participant in the business world.”
Sharing the love
On move-in day almost four years ago, both Blankenship and her mom were in tears. But, all around them were professors greeting new students, and current students helping the incoming first-years move in.
To this day, she remembers how welcoming everyone was and how much easier that made her transition. “York quickly became my home,” she says.
She’s made it her mission as an RA to pay that experience forward—meeting parents and helping students move in and answering all the questions they don’t even know they have.
During her time at the College, she’s been involved with the dance team, Student Alumni Council, and loads of other clubs. “There are a billion things to do,” she says. “There’s a place for almost anyone at York College.”
Seizing opportunities
Blankenship’s major doesn’t require an internship, but she wanted one anyway. She worked with her advisor, who connected her with the start-up company Home Vision AR through the J.D. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship at York College.
She became the company’s first employee, running their social media and marketing. “Being able to grow with this company is very exciting,” she says.
She’s immersed herself in the internship and has seen firsthand the successes and challenges of starting a business from the ground up. And it’s looking like her internship will turn into her first full-time job when she graduates.
“This is exactly the experience I was hoping for,” she says. “I owe a lot to my professors and advisors.”