Top-of-the-funnel Marketer

Social Media Expert + Content Creator + Witty Copywriter + Storyteller + Google Ads Guru + Cocktail Connoisseur + Marketing Strategist + Founder + Yelp Elite + Bollywood Fanatic + Ambivert + Dancer + Multilingual + Deadline Slayer + Micro Influencer + Meme Maker + Therapist + and so much more.

How Did I End Up Here?

I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. From first grade onwards, I told everyone and their mothers that I’d be the next best criminal justice lawyer. That dream died in high school when I botched my 9th and 10th grade mock trial debate tryouts. Yes, I tried out twice and still never understood what I was supposed to do. Turns out I was supposed to audition as a lawyer, a witness, and a defendant but I only learned that by the end of junior year.

With my immigrant parents who started with nothing to give me everything, and my sister who became a nurse, the pressure I put on myself was abundant and intense, especially in senior year (2014). In November 2014, I was in Thailand for a family wedding, but worked on college applications each jet-lagged night. While I was being encouraged to follow my sister’s footsteps, I didn’t feel right applying to schools with nursing in mind. So, I followed my gut and swapped my intended major to marketing before submitting my last few applications, and I’m so happy I did. As someone who never followed her intuition at the time, this was a big deal. I was expected to explain why I switched majors so unexpectedly (without having the words to explain it) but I had 0 doubts about it.

Fast forward 4 years later, I’m graduating Baruch College with a BBA in Marketing and Advertising Communications, and a minor in Psychology. This is a pretty common major/minor combination, but I’m grateful for my creativity, analytical skills, determination, work ethic, my ability to connect with people and knowing what I want. I turned down several job offers because I wasn’t passionate about the work I’d be doing.

I was hellbent on joining an industry that appealed to me, with a job that I know I could contribute and learn a lot from. One of the industries I wanted to work in was travel, so I did some light LinkedIn stalking, connected with the CFO of Context Travel, and managed to get a fully remote paid internship. I was so happy with this internship because of the flexibility, industry, and potential. I wasn’t aggressively applying to jobs during my internship, even though a full time position wasn’t guaranteed. During this time, a Senior VP at Tzell Travel Group saw my resume, noticed a new social media position at Tzell, and put the two together. When I visited the office, I interviewed with 11 people and accepted the position 2 weeks later.

In my free time, I work on my henna business and I create zodiac content. Henna by Aanchal is a side hustle that I started in 2015 after teaching myself how to do henna. I design candles, plates, shoes, and glass, while offering henna services at corporate events or private parties. Some corporate clients include WeWork, Pernod Ricard, Squarespace, and Buzzfeed - Nielsen - Spotify (joint event). As for zodiacsbelike, I believe zodiac signs speak well to many personalities, so I combined my social media and content creation skills to create a relatable meme account in December 2019. 2 months after creating an Instagram page, I reached 2000+ followers organically - with no paid ads or purchased followers. 1 month after launching my content on TikTok (March 2020), with 41 videos - I’ve reached 1.1k followers and 22.1k total likes, organically.

As of January 2021, I’ve been working on another passion project - Aayka. While contributing my time and efforts through content creation and social media management, my main responsibilities mimic one of a COO of a start up. I’m responsible for setting up and maintaining the website, user experience, e-commerce, project management, content creation and more.