Our 2017 Scholarship Winner is …

Drive is something that is nurtured over time — and that begins with investing in the young individuals who will be the entrepreneurs, business owners and hard-working professionals of the future. The AWeber Developing Futures Scholarship helps to do just that. AWeber grants a $2,500 scholarship to one college student each year to help in that student’s educational and professional goals. This year, we posed these two questions to applicants: 1. How do you think digital communications (social media, email marketing, etc.) have affected the way businesses communicate with customers? 2. How can businesses improve upon their use of digital communications in the future? We are so excited to announce that our 2017 AWeber Developing Futures Scholarship winner is … Simran Parwani!

Meet Simran

Simran attends New York University, and there she heads an Operations team at a student-run startup. She says of the startup, “I’ve loved this experience because it allows me to combine all my various interests and influence the direction of the company, which has been so empowering.” She works on marketing and business intelligence efforts, writes blog posts about inspiring entrepreneurs and is currently redesigning the UX of the startup’s website! Is there anything she can’t do?! In her scholarship submission, she seamlessly weaved in information about her startup responsibilities to answer the essay questions:

“The speed of digital communications have facilitated personalized B2C interactions and have also produced a stronger customer community. The social media team I manage uses various platforms to connect with customers and build a community surrounding our app. We use Instagram to show off the capabilities of the app and email to keep in touch with our customers and showcase members of our community. All of these actions help to strengthen our customer base and reach new customers. By creating a community, businesses are able to establish brand loyalty which is essential for distinguishing their products/services from the competition.”

Simran is seriously inspiring. Her favorite quote is from Hemingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro": “Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well.” To her, that quote is a lesson that means we need to make the most of the opportunities we have or make our own. “We need to stop getting in our own way and just implement the change we want to see,” Simran wisely suggests. [bctt tweet="“We need to stop getting in our own way and just implement the change we want to see.”"] Simran is always looking for new opportunities, and hopes to have her own company someday. There is no doubt in our minds that she will do exactly that. We are so excited to award this scholarship to Simran, and know that she will continue to do brilliant things in her amazing endeavors.