The Hofstra Graduate Marketing Association hosts executive speaker event
Hofstra Graduate Marketing Association members and faculty advisor Luke Ng welcomes executive speakers Raz Choudhury and Gary Kreissman. // Photo courtesy of Vishwa Mehta
On Wednesday, April 17, the Hofstra Graduate Marketing Association (GMA) organized an executive guest speaker event at the Sondra & David S. Mack Student Center. At this semester’s event, Gary Kreissman and Raz Choudhury discussed pivoting your career in the era of artificial intelligence.
In the hub of Hofstra student life, the multipurpose room was buzzing with motivated undergraduate and graduate students from an array of diverse disciplines, racial, religious and career backgrounds.
Featured speaker Gary Kreissman, the managing partner of Group PRM and ex-president of Remy Martin, always dreamed of a career in advertising. After five years in the industry, he decided it would be more interesting to be “on the other side of the coin,” finding the perfect overlap between marketing and technology. In the last few years, Kreissman has been involved in advising companies that use AI.
“[AI] is not going to replace people, but it will change how people work,” Kreissman said.
Growing up in Queens, New York, featured speaker Raz Choudhury, the founder of SAM.AI, began his undergraduate career as a finance major and later transitioned into information technology. Finding inspiration from his entrepreneurial father, he founded SAM.AI in 2016 with a vision to create an AI company that is more human-like by creating a program that you can use to talk based on conversational intelligence.
“Be resilient, learn how to talk to other people, and have a sense of humanity,” Choudhury said.
Kreissman and Choudhury emphasized the importance of getting hands-on experience with different types of technology, especially AI.
“Today, the major takeaway was to hop on AI,” said Anna-Maria Lampe-Önnerud, a first-year business administration in marketing student. “If you want to start learning now, start small. Start by asking the right questions and then citing where you are getting the information.”
“I think I learned a lot of things today, like AI is not the enemy,” said Poojan Patel, a first-year business administration in marketing student and the vice president of GMA. “You have to work with it, not against it.”
Through the diligent efforts of the GMA, under the leadership of club President Muhammad Maaz, the executive board and faculty advisor Luke Ng, Zarb students were able to truly engage with the executive speakers and leave the event ready to take on the ever-changing global business world.
