Abby Choice, the face behind the school’s Instagram account and associate director of digital and brand communications, uses her past job experiences in fashion to aid her current work.
Choice has worked at the school for six years. She spent her first three years of college in Buffalo before moving to New York City, and did her last year at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
She got her first job at Brioni, a luxury menswear brand. However, she had to make a change.
“I didn’t love the fashion industry in general. It’s a little bit cutthroat. I just didn’t like the environment,” Choice said.
Her boyfriend at the time, and now husband, was working at a school and said that she would really like working in the same environment. So she ended up getting a job in communications at a K-12 school in the city.
“I loved school growing up,” Choice said. “I used to think I wanted to be a teacher, but then that didn’t happen. So I was like ‘oh maybe I would like to work in a school.’”
While short-lived, Choice gained a lot of valuable knowledge about marketing and communications in the fashion industry.
“I had to work with a lot of high-end customers, so I learned how to engage with people in a professional way,” Choice said. “The marketing side was a little bit different, but it is still all about our brand and how people perceive us. So a lot of that still applies.”
Sometimes Choice will get approached with things to post on the Instagram account, but that is not always the case.
“Other days I’m like ‘Oh, I have nothing to post’ so I have to work for it a little bit more,” Choice said. “A lot of times I’ll just walk around school and peek in classrooms to see what’s going on, or if there’s anything cool hanging on the walls that I didn’t know about.”
Choice really enjoys how her work helps keep people bonded to the school.
“I think it’s really just cultivating community on Instagram and sharing all the amazing stuff that you guys do here at school with a wider audience,” Choice said.
She also stresses the importance of the account, as parents do not always know what interesting things their kids are up to at UPrep.
“So for them to be able to see inside the school, things that they wouldn’t otherwise know are going on, I think that’s really fun,” Choice said.
Outside of the school’s campus, she enjoys thrifting around twice a month.
“That is my hobby outside of school. I can spend hours at Goodwill looking for stuff,” Choice said. “Now that fashion is not my job anymore, I can do it for fun as a hobby. So I love doing that.”
Finally, Choice urges students to participate in the content creation process.
“I would love for students to be more involved in creating content for Instagram,” Choice said. “So if a student has an interest in content creation, or taking pictures, and they want to share something, I would love to work with them.”