At age 15, Charlene Yang ’22 moved halfway around the world to soak up new culture and learn English. Growing up in Taiwan, she journeyed to Kentucky before settling in Seattle to finish high school prior to attending UC Irvine.
Although she wasn’t sure what career path to follow, she knew business and economics would be a smart foundation (and one her parents would support).
While she studied, she also interned for a nonprofit organization affiliated with the White House. The role took her from New York to Boston to Rhode Island and back to New York again as she met congressmen and senators and visited the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the New York Stock Exchange. She says the experience helped her realize how critical communication is in every facet of the workplace.
After graduation, Yang joined BOS Media Group, a media company that helps clients produce videos and websites. It’s where she first fell in love with marketing, and where the idea for her food blog was born.
Her boss believed that every accomplishment builds on a dream. His mindset even inspired the company’s slogan: “It all starts with a dream.” Client conversations often began with questions like, “What do you want to achieve?” and “What’s standing in your way?” Her boss also made a point to ask Yang about her own hopes and dreams.
“I told him I really enjoy cooking and taking photos,” she says. “And he encouraged me to start a food blog. He believed in me and my potential from the start.”
After explaining to her boss all the reasons she didn’t think she could make it happen (it would take too long to build a following, it seemed like a lot of work, and going out to eat for food reviews would be expensive), he proposed an alternative: start small with Instagram, and he would fund company lunches so she could document and share her meals.
That was all Yang needed to hear. With her boss’ support, she launched TaipeiEater, her Instagram food blog. Ten years later, she has more than 57,000 followers around the world.
Early Career Lessons Inspire a Return to School
Yang went on to work for brands like VIA Technologies, where she optimized marketing strategy and social media presence, and Chun Place Mall, where she led PR and marketing to promote events and collaborations. As she reached out to influencers and celebrities to engage them in campaigns, she often leveraged her own TaipeiEater platform to build credibility and drive engagement.
She also channeled her love for baking by creating a pop-up cinnamon roll company, selling 4,000+ cinnamon rolls to customers from East and Southeast Asia in just eight months. Her success later caught the eye of the Artisanal New American Bakery Heritage owner, who approached her about a collaboration. The result was a collection of treat boxes developed from her own recipes, giving people a unique way to enjoy homemade treats and experience a sense of connection during the pandemic.
As she continued to gain one-of-a-kind marketing experiences like these early in her career, she wondered: How could she keep growing professionally, increasing her salary along the way, to build the life she wanted?
“I was comparing myself with my peers, looking at how much education they had, their talents, and how much they were making,” Yang explains. “That incentivized me to go back to school.”
She was considering an MBA, until she spoke to a friend who had completed Northwestern’s MS in Communication (MSC) program a few years earlier. After hearing about her friend’s experiences, Yang decided to follow a similar path … and she’s thankful she did. Many of the concepts she learned in the MSC program a few years ago still guide her every day.
Yang is currently the marketing and promotions manager at SICOTAS, a furniture store in California. In this role, she creates and leads marketing strategies and plans, working closely with vendors, sales teams, and customers. “I need to be able to negotiate, communicate, understand the dynamics of interacting with people, and leverage my connections. And I learned all of that through the MSC program.”
Communication Skills that Lead to Career Growth
Change management is a concept Yang never thought much about until exploring it withProfessor Michael Roloff—but it’s something she now relies on regularly in the real world. His Change Management course helped her discover how to navigate and lead through change, and how to help organizations align with new practices and strategies.
In Public Persuasion, taught by Professor Jason DeSanto, she learned the power of building credibility and influence. From big-picture skills like preparing for public presentations to nuanced details like how to incorporate pauses to maximize impact, it all makes a difference.
One of the lessons that has stuck with Yang since earning her MSC is a team exercise she participated in during Professor Leslie DeChurch’s Leading Collaboration course. The goal was to deliver an effective message as a team. While one group had multiple leaders to follow, the other had just one. The exercise quickly revealed that, when too many people try to lead, communication becomes convoluted. “That was the first time I realized how having multiple leaders doesn’t always lead to productivity increases,” she explains. “There can be an overload of messages, and people quickly become confused about who to listen to.”
Yang also gained something she wasn’t anticipating from the program: the chance to reflect on her own motivations and values. In Professor Michelle Buck’s The Leader Within course, students explore leadership development, self-awareness, and maximizing the performance of others. In some ways, says Yang, it almost felt like a therapy session, as she and her cohort thought about answers to questions they had never asked themselves before. It also introduced her to the Five Whys method, which encourages deeper exploration of the root causes behind decisions and behaviors. Instead of stopping after the first “why,” Yang says she has learned to keep digging until she uncovers the underlying reasons for an issue.
The Journey to Building a Food Brand
As Yang’s professional career takes off, so does her entrepreneurial journey. TaipeiEater continues to grow, and her audience and influence are expanding. Recently, she was asked to join Season 7 of the Netflix series Somebody Feed Phil to introduce host Phil Rosenthal to some of Taipei’s best food stands
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“We explored local street food and hidden gems while we enjoyed authentic Taiwanese cuisine,” she says. “I was also able to talk about the history behind the areas we were visiting.”
All these experiences are helping her move closer to her dream of creating her own food brand. She wants to build on the success of the pop-up bakery she launched in Taipei—and the bakery collaboration that resulted from it—to reach even more customers.
“I want to make products that make people’s lives better, however I can,” she says. “I want to use the skills I’ve gained to make people feel loved, and my education will definitely help me do that. When people see that I have a degree from Northwestern, there is automatically a level of legitimacy and trust there. They believe in the education Northwestern provides.” |
