So, once upon a time, I was a scientist.
I graduated from THE Fisk University in Nashville, TN with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and Bowman Gray School of Medicine at Wake Forest University in Winston Salem, NC with a Masters of Science in Biomedical Sciences with a concentration in Chemistry and Cancer Biology.
In other words, I am a HUGE nerd that loves learning about science and how the world around us works.
I ALSO love music, dance, and fashion. And while being a scientist was literally paying the bills, I had to find another way to fund my extracurricular habits. Furthermore, as long as I was a paid grad student, I was not allowed to take on another job meaning that I had to find something that was paying money but not considered to be a “real job”.
I have dabbled in music performance and modeling almost all of my life because I have a deep love and affinity for it so I decided to Google “Promo Modeling” and do some research about independent modeling from there. One of the first sites that popped up was ATN Modeling. I signed up and created a profile on their site as well as a few others. There were not really a lot of events in NC so I figured it was that avenue was a bust and got into studio vocalist recording.
One day, I get an email from ATN asking if I would be available for team lead for an event in Greensboro, NC for March Madness. It was paying $18 an hour for 6 hours…..and I didn't even read the rest of the email after that because that was all I needed to see. I agreed and get the booking confirmation and everything.
The day of the event, I am looking at the instructions of what I needed to do and that is when it crossed my mind that it was a scam. I was basically watching people play a college drinking game at Hooters for the chance to fly to New York and play the same game on a late night talk show all in the name of March Madness. My brain couldn't wrap my head around the fact that they would pay me more than TWICE the state minimum wage (which in 2013, was $7.50 and in 2024 is $7.50) when I was making way less than that per hour while researching and creating cancer drugs (in 2013, I was being paid $2400 a month as a graduate student).
I go to the event, everything goes smoothly, and I have a lot of fun. I absolutely love it….and that is when I was SURE I had just been scammed. It was all so easy and while I knew this was a major brand, not understanding the point of the entire thing made me feel like I had just been had.
Then the check showed up. And CLEARED.
That was when I knew this was REAL and started applying to work more events. And thus starts my career as an experiential brand ambassador.
