If enthusiasm is crucial to success, then 22-year-old White Plains resident Olivia Ecker is a shining example of how far it can take you.
Ecker interned in Tarrytown-based biopharmaceutical company Regernon’s Corporate Communications Department for 11 months in 2010 and 2011 while double-majoring in Communications and Political Science at Manhattanville College. Her spitfire attitude helped spin that internship into a part-time paid position in August 2011. After graduating that December, Ecker was promoted to full-time communications liaison within the Facilities Department, subgroups of which run the gamut from engineering, maintenance, and administration to space planning, AV, and environmental health and safety.
Her passion was evident on day one. “I was the person with her hand up and saying, ‘I want that opportunity,’” Ecker recalls. “So, while I was helping Corporate Communications, I was also writing content for different departments, helping with a party in another department, and saying, ‘Wait a minute—there’s another opportunity here.’”
That gung-ho attitude drives Ecker to regularly pull 12-hour days. “Olivia’s insatiable desire to make things happen makes her a perfect fit on the fast-paced facilities team,” attests Joanne Deyo, vice president of facilities.
One of Ecker’s major successes has been developing a new digital signage program that communicates content about everything from training seminars to work with the community for both visitors and the nearly 2,000 employees at Regeneron’s three sites. (The other two are in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, and Rensselaer, New York.)
Speaking of success, she expanded the firm’s 2012 Earth Day into a much bigger event than 2011’s—which had a few presentations and a giveaway—by organizing a green vendor show, arranging green tours throughout the company, and connecting the event to the company’s spring fling party. Ecker has also led many Regeneron in the Community initiatives (the firm’s volunteer steering committee), including assisting the launch of R-Unit, a program that provides support to an Army Civil Affairs Unit stationed in Iraq, sending them off with a farewell barbecue, collecting goods (cellphones, clothing, non-perishable food, etc.), and fundraising for them.
“There is nothing I do daily that, when I am finished, I don’t ask, ‘How can I do that better the next time?’ I’m always looking at where the next step is, what I can do next, how I can improve.”
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