UW Oshkosh Today
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Anne Enright
Outstanding Young Alumni Award Winner 2003
Distinguished Alumni Award Winner 2014
Many people around the world start their day with a cup of coffee from Starbucks. For UW Oshkosh alumna Anne Enright, not only does she start her day with a cup of Starbucks, but continues her day by working for the world leader in coffee.
As the vice president of marketing channel strategy and management at Starbucks, Enright leads the overall vision and strategic role for marketing at Starbucks through social media, their website and paid media advertising. The UW Oshkosh Alumni Association Distinguished Alumni Award winner was recently promoted to that role in February 2017 after serving three years as director of media and measurement.
Enright spent 17 years on the agency side leading the media efforts several companies before joining the Starbucks team. She has worked for Kraft, Coors, United Airlines and Kelloggs before going to the client side.
“Agencies are great places to start your career,” Enright said. “It gives you exposure to a range of clients, different business challenges and philosophies, exposure to different marketing functions and the ability to develop a network of peers.”
Besides landing her job with the iconic coffee brand and working at multiple Fortune 500 companies, Enright said her greatest career defining moment was sitting down and having lunch with a famous journalist at her home in Santa Barbara.
“Having lunch at Oprah Winfrey’s house [is my career defining moment],” Enright said. “I mean, it’s Oprah.”
When Enright looks back on her time spent at UWO, she said she thinks back to her involvement in different clubs and organizations in the journalism department. In particular, the American Advertising Federation’s National Student Advertising Competition was one to help Enright excel in her advertising skills.
“The AAF competition is by far the most valuable experience,” Enright said. “It gave me the opportunity to apply the knowledge I learned from the various journalism classes, push my understanding of the material and truly need to collaborate on a project. It was the best, most challenging experience I had in college.”
Enright said she tells students from UWO’s journalism department to not be afraid to take chances.
“Listen, apply what you learned and then put your own spin on it,” Enright said.