Emilia Totzeva
Emilia Totzeva
Bachelor of Business Administration 2015, Marketing
Emilia Totzeva is currently a User Experience Designer working for a healthcare company in the DC area. She works on researching, designing, and testing products that help people manage their health insurance. Within User Experience, she focuses mainly on user research, user interface design, and information architecture. Her company’s products are used by thousands of people throughout the country every day. Prior to her current job, Emilia worked at two digital agencies, where she helped build websites for her agencies’ clients that were accessible and easy-to-use. She was also responsible for managing website projects and executing digital marketing campaigns for dozens of nonprofit, for-profit, and e-commerce clients.
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What excites you about the work you do? As a UX Designer at my company, my job is to help our users understand the complicated and confusing world that is their health insurance. We build applications and tools that help people find doctors, understand what benefits they're eligible for, see how much their medical services will cost, and so on. It's really fulfilling to work on products that impact people's lives in such an important way. We do a lot of research and testing throughout the entire product development process, and it's really exciting to obtain feedback from real users and use it to improve our products.
What is the most significant career experience you've had so far, and what made it meaningful to you? In my career, I've had the opportunity to work with many nonprofits - both on their websites and through digital marketing campaigns. I've really enjoyed helping these organizations advance the work that they do by helping them get more donations, raising awareness for their cause, and recruiting volunteers. It's been an honor to help these nonprofits grow in some small way.
How did GWU and the UHP prepare you for your professional journey? In what ways has your career evolved since you graduated from GWU? I came into college undecided with no idea what career to pursue, so I tried to join as many organizations as I could to see what would interest me. I quickly got involved with Camp Kesem, a nonprofit on campus, doing PR and communications on their e-board. At the time, I was also really interested in psychology and had taken a few psychology classes. From there, I naturally fell into marketing, which was the perfect intersection between communications and psychology. GW helped me find multiple internships in the field to help me hone in on what specifically I wanted to do (and equally as important, what I didn't want to do). I talked to GW alums in the field and went to networking events on campus. I also talked to my marketing professors for professional advice. I found my internship during my senior year through GW's job portal, and the company luckily hired me full-time when I graduated.
Advice for current UHP students: If you don't know what you want to do career-wise, I would advise getting involved in as many organizations and extra-curriculars as possible early on. Getting involved will help you find something you are passionate about and typically, you can tie that passion to a career path. Try to serve on the e-boards of these organizations, if possible, to get some experience for your resume. Apply to internships in fields you think might interest you. GW has a great network of alumni, so leverage it and set up informational interviews in fields you might be interested in.