Michelle Zhao | Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) Coordinator
Michelle Zhao joined The Henker Group as a marketing intern in the summer of 2014 and was promoted to marketing assistant in January of 2015. In late 2015, she was further promoted to the position of integrated marketing communications (IMC) coordinator. She led the efforts of The Henker Group's 10th anniversary rebranding initiative and currently manages all aspects of the agency's brand. She assists the agency's president and senior management in developing and executing various integrated marketing communications campaigns for clients; manages all search engine optimization projects; and leads The Henker Group’s marketing and public relations presence and strategy. Zhao is also well-versed in high-level marketing analytics to include social media and web (i.e. Google Analytics) and is the supervisor for many analytics projects.
Zhao graduated from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY in 2016 with a BA in psychology and Chinese. She is utilizing her psychology degree in the marketing field to better understand why and how certain products or brands appeal to their target audiences. As a student at Vassar, Zhao quickly rose to become a leader of one of the largest student organizations on campus, the Asian Students’ Alliance. She started as a council member, then as publicity and media chair, and held the position of president in her junior year. Zhao was also the Class of 2016’s event coordinator for Vassar’s student government as well as publicity team member and project manager for HYPE, Vassar’s student hip-hop dance team. She continued to be very involved in student organizations up until her graduation, serving as the senior consultant for the Asian Students’ Alliance; a style/photography/blog editor and treasurer of Vassar’s art and style magazine, Contrast; and the social media and public relations assistant for Vassar's student government.
Zhao was born in upstate New York and raised on Maryland's Eastern Shore. In addition to English, she is fluent in both Mandarin Chinese and the Fuzhou Chinese dialect. She is especially passionate about fashion-related marketing and launched "The Henker Group's LifeStyle Blog" in addition to creating her own fashion blog series for the LifeStyle blog. She led the styling and art direction for the home page of The Henker Group's new website as well as partnered with her colleagues on all aspects of the rebranding initiative. Her work on the new website garnered a W3 Silver Award for the agency, which is sanctioned and judged by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts, an elite invitation-only body consisting of top-tier professionals from a "Who's Who" of acclaimed media, advertising, and marketing firms.