A risk taker and path maker

Valencian Gema Acevedo encourages students to create the career they want

By Tomas Cabezas

Your country is in the midst of a financial crisis, and you’ve been laid-off from work. You have very little money to go back to school, but you need to gain a competitive edge against other people looking for jobs. You decide to diversify your resumé by learning a new language, and you decide to get an education in business and marketing. Your university: Netflix, Hulu, and Google.

Such was the case for communications and marketing strategist Gema Acevedo of Valencia, who has been a guest speaker in the Editing, Writing, and Media (EWM) Program in Valencia for four of the past five years.

An economic crisis hit Spain starting late 2007 partly due to the global recession affecting other Eurozone countries. The crisis lagged on, and as a result, Acevedo lost her job as a reporter for a Valencian news station when the station closed due to financial issues in 2013.

“When I got fired from the TV station, I cried a lot, but I thought ‘OK it’s time to make it on my own, to be a journalist by myself,’” she says.

Born and raised in Valencia, she didn’t want to leave the city she loved. Thus, she began her journey toward molding a successful future. She taught herself English by watching popular shows in English like Lost and continued to practice with shows such as The Walking Dead and The Handmaid’s Tale. She achieved her goal by listening, reading English subtitles, and conversing with native English speakers.

“I couldn’t pay for a master’s, and my parents were also affected by the crisis, so they couldn’t help me either,” Acevedo says.

I improved my English every day by listening and watching the subtitles; I don’t have time or the money to go to a class with a native speaker.

Acevedo looked to online learning as a vital educational resource, given her situation. She took online marketing and communication courses through Google Academies, where she studied online marketing and communication.

FSU Valencia Dean and Director Ignacio Messana met Acevedo at a teaching event in 2013 organized by the US Embassy in Spain and the Polytechnic University of Valencia in which they were helping people improve their resumes and teaching them about public speaking, social networks, and personal branding. Acevedo impressed Messana right away.

“She’s a combination of a professional person with good communicating and teaching skills, and at the same time, she has a good personality,” Messana says.

After Facebook emerged, social media wedged its way into the field of communication and journalism as users began utilizing social media to distribute news and to build brands. Acevedo saw this as an opportunity. Sifting through potential clients’ social media pages and websites, she realized the clients could improve the way these platforms were used. Acevedo made her talents known by direct messaging potential clients on their Instagram accounts or by showing up in person and explaining how she could boost their image. In the old days, this was known as cold-calling, and Acevedo admitted to the EWM students that it was difficult.

Meanwhile, a woman that worked in health marketing gave Acevedo her first client, after Acevedo met her at a networking seminar.

“I gave my card to a woman journalist and talked with her for a while. I told her that I can write and edit,” Acevedo says. “She called me a few months later, and I started to work with her.”

During her presentation to the EWM students in summer 2018, she talked about her journey to find a job and regain financial stability. Her energetic personality meshed well with the students.

She relates very well with the students in terms of social media and the idea that today’s work ethic is not about having just one responsibility,

EWM program instructor Jack Clifford says. “Her enthusiasm for speaking with the students has not changed at all since the first year she visited the classoom. She really cares about the students and that shows in how she speaks to the class as a group and, at times, to individual students.”

Acevedo, whose clients are in the medical field, specializes in health communication. She showed EWM students how she manages two of her clients—one a dentist and the other a cosmetic surgeon—on social media and through their websites.

“I like to show a lot of before-and-after pictures—the clients and patients love seeing those photos on Instagram,” Acevedo says.

These are before-and-after photos of crooked teeth corrected to whitened smiles and graphic videos of plastic surgery procedures that might seem too intense for a picturesque platform like Instagram. However, Acevedo realized that she could use Instagram to advertise for her clients.

She taught herself and gained all this experience, and then decided to go up to businesses and say ‘Hey, you need me,’

EWM student Alejandra Guzman says.

Turns out, prospective patients (and EWM students) like seeing images that show results, no matter how medically graphic they are.

After showing students these images and the high rankings her clients received in Google searches, Acevedo told students that stable job opportunities within social media were possible; you just have to put yourself out there.

For EWM students seeking job security, this meant hope.

“When she explained what she did as a career, I hadn’t met anyone who did that,” EWM student Erin Groves says. “I felt a sense of reassurance that it actually existed.”

Groves works as head of social media for the Florida Podiatric Medical Association, where she is in charge of all social media accounts.

“I struggle with my job sometimes because I don’t know what to post, but she showed me real examples,” Groves says.

Gema Acevedo (right) shows EWM student Lauren Martin the Instagram account she manages for one of her clients. Acevedo gives her clients a calendar each month telling what she will post and when.

EWM student Allison Notari plans to go to law school once she graduates, yet she still found Acevedo’s insight applicable.

“A lot of what she talked about was about interacting with people and connecting with people, and you can’t be an attorney without being able to interact with your clients,” Notari says.

On top of managing six clients, Acevedo now owns her own business, La Ratita Sibarita. An e-commerce business and blog, La Ratita Sibarita offers a variety of gourmet food products shipped throughout Spain, combining her love for writing, social media, and entrepreneurship.

“I think with technology that we have now, work needs to evolve,” Acevedo says. “It doesn’t make any sense to be in the office writing if you can go somewhere else. It is important to me to be a freelancer because I get to make my own time.”

For students looking to get into social media or go toward a path of entrepreneurship in competitive times, Acevedo’s perseverance through grim circumstances offered hope.

Yet she had one final bit of advice for the students.

You must remember, though, that work is not the most important thing,

she says. “The most important thing is your family, your life, and your time.”