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Jackie Coleman '08 Applies Art History to Event Commerce

If you’re interested in the inner workings of an event commerce company — and especially if you’re interested in a great way to use that liberal arts degree — check out this interview in the Chicago Tribune with Jackie (Neilson) Coleman, a 2008 graduate of Washington and Lee University. She is the senior product manager at Eved, in Chicago.

Jackie explains in the interview that Eved buys and sells events for companies like Dell and Eli Lilly, and that tech and pharma corporations make up a lot of their business.

As for her work, she said, “The biggest piece of my role is being the person who sits between all of our clients as well as all of our internal teams, whether that’s sales, marketing, the client account managers themselves and the development team. So I’m the one that sits in the middle, takes all the feedback from everyone and says, ‘Here’s the roadmap. Here’s the item we need to prioritize.’ ”

While her previous professional experience came in event planning, where she handled everything from weddings to art installations, her W&L degree was in art history.

“I got a lot of critical thinking out of that field,” said Jackie, “and seeing things from different perspectives, and that helps my job now.”

She and her husband, Dr. Johnathan Coleman (W&L Class of 2006), have a 2-year-old son, Alden.

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