BGSU’s American Marketing Association Goes Above and Beyond in the 2020-2021 Academic Year

Written by Madison Bannister, Schmidthorst College Communications Intern

Over the past school year, the BGSU Chapter of the American Marketing Association (BGAMA) has made great strides in professional development, diversity and inclusion, and growth for the organization as a whole. Led by its president, Ryan Olee, BGAMA finished in the Top 15 Chapters of the Year, competing globally against over 320 other chapters.

“This year we achieved an incredible feat by placing as the #11 chapter in the entire world, roughly within the top 2% of chapters,” said Olee. “This is something that we have not done in many years and goes to show how dedicated our chapter members and leaders were!”

Olee and his executive board provided their members with a variety of professional development events. They hosted workshops on skills like personal branding, LinkedIn, team building, behavioral interview preparation, and much more. BGAMA members also participated in the AMA annual case competition and received the Commendable Award for their work, a great accomplishment and a continuation of the same status they received in the previous year. 

Doug Ewing, BGAMA’s Faculty Advisor, commented on the success of the organization this year. “Chapter President Ryan Olee and his team of Executive Board members performed brilliantly this year,” said Ewing. “In the face of many obstacles, including needing to meet virtually for regular meetings as well as major international conferences, the students running BGAMA distinguished themselves as adaptable professionals.”

Last year, BGAMA made a commitment to actively promote diversity and inclusion, which they started this year by creating an executive board position, Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion, held by Giovonni Colantonio. BGAMA worked closely with the Dean’s Advisory Council on Diversity and Inclusion (DACODI) by helping to create and provide feedback on a training course aimed at student organization leadership. Olee, Colantonio, and other chapter members also helped to actively promote DACODI events and even held a diversity and inclusion workshop for their own organization.

“This year we took strides to better BGAMA in the future by tracking our own internal diversity and inclusion statistics along with our normal membership survey,” said Olee.

The Schmidthorst College wants to congratulate BGAMA on all of their success and growth this year. We look forward to seeing the good work president-elect Colantonio will continue to do with the organization. 

“We are very proud of our students in BGAMA and their Faculty Advisor, Doug Ewing, for their outstanding performance this year. This is one of the highest rankings ever achieved by BGAMA, placing BGSU above most of the elite universities in the nation” said Mo Zolfagharian, Chair of the Schmidthorst College of Business Department of Marketing.