After Lisa Maskey completed her time as a surgical technician in the Air Force, she thought the logical next step would be to jump into a career in medicine. “When I left the service and moved to Orlando, I had initially thought I'd pursue a career in the medical field, but you know, my heart wasn't quite in it,” she recalls.

Upon connecting with a VA advisor, Lisa began to consider a career in public relations, something her extroverted personality was perfect for. While considering where to pursue a degree in public relations, Lisa came across Full Sail’s Public Relations master’s program.

“I was very fortunate to find that program because what's unique about the program Full Sail offers is that it's more focused on today's PR. It’s different than the PR back then, where it was a lot of writing press releases. Today, it's more focused on social media, and that was really important for me,” says Lisa.

Full Sail also gave Lisa the chance to engage with her creative side, saying, “I liked that Full Sail allowed me to kind of tap into that creativity a bit more and have some fun by doing things like creating a website. So now I have that knowledge from those courses that aren’t typical in some of the other more stringent PR programs.”

Completing her degree and moving to Nashville, Tennessee, Lisa hit the ground running by securing a position at a new and rapidly growing PR firm, Raven Public Relations. “A big reason that my bosses felt confident to hire me is that they felt if I could handle the pressure of the military, I could handle the pressure of PR,” says Lisa on how her military background made her a shoo-in for the position.

Starting as an Account Executive, Lisa experienced rapid growth in her role with Raven. Currently, she works with clients both nationally and internationally as an Account Director and Speakers Bureau Director, a position created specifically for her after taking initiative with clients looking for opportunities to engage in public speaking.

“Within about a year or so of me working at Raven, and as we started to build our client base, I noticed an eagerness from clients to get on stages, to speak, or be on a podcast.” says the grad. “So we started digging into it, but I was really, really interested in it. So I started reaching out to programmers at different events and podcast hosts and finding any way to get our clients there.

“I was locking in opportunity after opportunity for our clients,” Lisa recalls. “And now it's become a part of our offering to clients where it wasn't initially a selling point. Now it is a part of our whole holistic approach to PR.”

For those looking to break through into a career in PR, Lisa can’t stress enough the importance of networking. “I would encourage anyone who is looking to have the type of job I have to start putting themselves out there, attending networking events. I think if they do a quick Google search, they'll find that there are all these small group meetups within their city.”