It’s About the Journey: Starting as an Intern with Merch and Incentives Production Specialist, Fatima Abbas

Across different years, locations, divisions, and teams, a whole host of our employees have experienced starting their careers on one of our Intern, Apprentice, and Graduate Programs (part of Emerging Talent & Careers at EG). We’ve taken some time to explore some of these amazing and interesting career journeys, to find out what these have experienced since the programs, and what they’ve learned along the way.

Fatima is a Merch and Incentives Production Specialist in the Dallas, TX, USA, office working in the Teal team. Fatima started as an Expedia Group Intern in 2018.

Tell us about your current team .

Currently, I am on the Teal team where I help the company create content for our exciting campaigns on Expedia, Hotels.com, Vrbo, and Portfolio brands. Our team works on landing pages, homepages, app tiles and emails.

Tell us about your current role.

As a Merch and Incentives Production Specialist, I work with different stakeholders to help create content for upcoming campaigns on homepage placements + app and I create/update landing pages cross-brand. Coming from a merchandising background I enjoy working with different teams to discuss the content creation process of new and exciting campaigns as well as our evergreen campaigns.

What has your career journey been like at EG? How has your role & team changed since you started in 2018?

I started at EG as a Market Associate Intern. After my internship I moved to Washington DC to work as a Market Associate for the DMV (the District, Maryland suburbs, and Northern Virginia) market. I studied Merchandising in college, so I was always passionate about the merch side of the campaign. I met with the Expedia Group merchandisers to learn more about what merchandising looks like for our Expedia brand. They had an opening a few weeks later and I was lucky enough to have a successful application, so I moved to Chicago to start the role. I learned a lot about the COMET/Portfolio brands. After that I moved to the Production team since I really enjoyed working on creating content. I’ve met a lot of people and learned a lot during my EG career and I’m so glad I was able to work on so many great projects.

How did the Intern Program help you in your career and professional development?

From the very beginning I felt that my team and co-workers always wanted to push me to my potential. I’ve learned a lot about marketing, merchandising and product development in my time at EG. I’ve become more confident and have really mastered my work. I remember being super nervous joining the company as an Intern, but I was welcomed so warmly. I feel like the program helped push me to my potential and it helped me a lot through my career so far.

What advice would you share with an Intern or Graduate starting at EG?

I would recommend to network and reach out to teams you are interested in! You never know where a simple conversation can take you.

What has been the highlight of your career so far at EG?

Creating fun and unique campaigns for Portfolio brands!

What do you think makes EG a unique place to work?

The culture for sure. The company really does value its employees and I’ve found that my co-workers became my friends, and we have made so many memories in and outside the office, together. Team dinners and happy hours really helped me network and meet new people. Overall, I’d say that I truly value the people, the culture & the fun campaigns I’ve worked on.