Keeping up with Kelli: Learning the In’s and Out’s of Entertainment PR

By Tahni Justice

April 19th,  2017

Living in Los Angeles, many of the students here at CSUN hope to one day to be involved in the glamorous lifestyle of working in the Entertainment Industry. Last Tuesday, CSUN PRSSA was fortunate enough to have a very remarkable young woman named Kelli King speak about her personal trial and tribulations working in the Entertainment field of Public Relations. As a former CSUN PRSSA alumni she was able to give us insight and advice on how to survive and thrive in this field. Kelli currently works as a Social Media assistant to executive accounts at Netflix,  in Hollywood, CA.As the questions from CSUN PRSSA members started flowing in, Kelli began telling us how she was able to get her foot in the door of the Entertainment Industry. “There’s some luck, but you also have to make your own luck!” Kelli was referring to the fact she made it a point to tell everyone she possibly could about her passion for Entertainment PR. “People respond to passion”, she explained, that if you are able to show someone how passionate you are, they are likely to help. She told us the reason behind this was because you never know who could be listening and how that person can drastically affect your career. It just takes that one person to create a domino effect to take you to your dream job. Something that stood out to me was how open and vulnerable Kelli King was talking to us about missteps she’s made in her career. Kelli told us about how sometimes you take a job that just isn’t the right fit for you. She explained how she took on this “mistake” job because she was blinded by the money offered for the position and didn’t dig deeper into what the position actually offered. She told us how she was able to learn exponentially from this experience about what kind of workplace environment she flourishes in. “Do your research”, she clarified,  when interviewing you should ask as many questions as possible to avoid being stuck in a position that isn’t right for you. Overall, Kelli King showed us how we too can take ahold of our path to our dream job by creating our own luck instead of depending on it. Also not to look at a mistake as a failure, but instead, as a learning opportunity that will help shape the future of your career.