Fernanda Verdugo

An Empathetic & Hard-Working

Individual
A Little Bit About Myself
Growing up, my parents always told me to follow
my heart and do what made me happy. When I first
came to the University of Arizona, I believed a career in
STEM was my calling, but I quickly realized that it wasn't
really my passion. Taking my parent's advice, I persevered and eventually found my
way to Marketing. Although business was never part of my original plan, I have
found a sense of satisfaction in learning about the ins and outs of the field.

My Professional Persona
As a Marketing major, I've learned that whether you are presenting yourself to future
employers or simply networking, your personal brand is very important. Thus, it is
significant to know and understand how I present myself to others. To gain a better
understanding of this, I sent out a survey to my peers with questions regarding their
own perception of how I am within professional settings. This document will outline
my current professional persona and how I plan to further my brand in the future.

How I'm Perceived

The word cloud to the left contains words that
my peers used to describe me in the survey.
The size of each word depended on how often
they showed up within their answers. As for
the color of each word, those that are in a
darker shade of green are words that both my
peers and I selected. When describing myself, I
only chose those 7 highlighted words, as they
are what I hope to showcase the most and I
believed the other words may not have applied.
Fortunately, my peers almost always selected
those same words and included many other
positive descriptions as well.
PeopleStyles Results
According to the PeopleStyles
assessment, I identify as an
Analytical. This means that I am
reserved and tend to be cautious
when it comes to making
decisions. However, 50% of my
peers identified me as an
Expressive, meaning that they
perceive me as someone who is
emotional and vocal about their
opinions. Although these two
personalities are on completely
different sides of the spectrum, I Myself Network Average
believe that I often exhibit traits of
both, especially more recently. When it comes to being in professional setting I do
tend to overthink my own actions and opinions. Nonetheless, when I believe that I
am correct or have something meaningful to say, I vocalize my thoughts as much as I
can. I do this because I know that I tend to be on the quieter side but should still
make the effort to communicate with my peers and teammates.

What I Learned
In analyzing my survey results, I have concluded that for the most part my current
professional persona does line up with how I want others to perceive me. This was
especially proven in the PeopleStyles portion of the survey as I used to be extremely
quiet and reserved before I was accepted into the Eller College of Management.
Going in, I knew that I was going to be taken out of my comfort zone so I made it my
mission to speak up more. Thus, seeing that more and more people are starting to
perceive me as an Expressive has shown me that I have improved a lot.

Moving Forward
Although I believe I have improved, I will continue to keep making an effort in
furthering my professional persona. As I mentioned earlier, I overthink a lot due to a
lack of confidence, so one way I plan on doing this is by believing in myself more.
This will only become easier as I continue to gain reassurance from my peers and
professors, like the comment below.
"You have improved so much from the first presentation to now! It has been awesome to
see!" - 360 Evaluation Feedback