Written by: Caitilin Hillman
There would be no EcoCAR without the various technical teams, but without the hard work of the Communications Team, there would be no social media engagement, outreach, or these blog posts! Or at the very least, these engagements would not be given the same amount of dedication that they are given. However, our UW Communications Swimlane would not exist if it were not for Sabreena Lauzon and Vera Drapers. Sabreena and Vera were the UW EcoCAR CMs for the last 3 years and when they started out, they were the only communications staff that UW had.
“We had to learn everything step by step. Learning how to do everything on our own was really difficult at the beginning, but having each other made the process so much better.” -Vera Drapers, former CM.
Over the course of their experience they successfully managed all the Comms division deliverables while also spreading awareness for EcoCAR with local policy makers to encourage STEM learning in our younger, local community. Despite their success, Vera and Sabreena knew that they wanted to expand the Comms team so that the swimlane could function independently.
“When Vera and I became Communication Managers, we were the sole members of the team. We knew that we wanted to bring more members on, but realized there needed to be a more concrete way to divide the wide range of responsibilities.” -Sabreena Lauzon, former CM.
This spurred the creation of the Sponsorship, Social Media, and Public Relations Writing positions and brought new people on to each team. The Sponsorship Manager would be responsible for outreach with potential sponsors as well as maintaining existing sponsors. The PR Writer would write the Green Garage Blog posts. And the Social Media Manager would post to all the UW EcoCAR socials such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. “The result of these divisions was increased efficiency in completing deliverables, more unique ideas, and overall a more concrete team structure,” commented Sabreena.
Thanks to their hard work, our swimlane has a strong team supporting each key facet of the communications operations, with each member having their own main focus. Blaze White is our current Social Media Manager, Morgan Golden works with our sponsors as the new Sponsorship Manager, Nathaniel Sanchez operates as a general support member to assist teammates with large tasks, and Liam Green as our new Communications Manager. Lastly, a big shout out to our new PR Writer, Caitilin Hillman who authored this post. With Women’s History Month approaching, we wanted to honor these two women for all the dedication they put into making the Communications Swimlane what it is now. Sabreena and Vera built the comms division here at UW from the ground up and placed 2nd among last year’s competing teams in the comms division.
“I’m so thankful for everything Sabreena and Vera taught me about being a CM. In all honesty, everything still feels so new and overwhelming at times so I can’t believe that these two were able to accomplish so much. The two of them did what my team of 5 people is doing right now, and that’s crazy to think about” -Liam Green, current CM.
