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About Alexander Mintz

I am Alexander Mintz. I am currently a third-year undergraduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, pursuing a double major in Communications and East Asian Languages and Civilizations (EALC) with a concentration in Mandarin Chinese. I love languages and am a polyglot, speaking Spanish, English, French, Portuguese and Mandarin. I have a passion for all things media related on an international platform, and am up-to-date on international pop culture tendencies. I interned for NBCUniversal last summer for content distribution and digital content, and am excited to see what this summer will bring.

“Work like you own it”: not-so common sense in the service industry.

Last Wednesday, the Biltmore Hotel hosted Dr. Bryan K. William’s workshop and keynote speech concentrated on bettering the service industry. Albeit the keynote speech was engaging, it shed light on the not-so common-sense tips that help raise a company’s customer service and overall service, highlighting the loss of humanity in today’s corporate and cold business environment. Mr. Williams outlined 6 habits to enforce in the workplace in order to better service: for an employee to ask him/herself how and who he/she will “wow” today, to identify customer preferences, to give fellow teammates recognition, to be an ambassador of their workplace and company, to sign off work/personal service standards, and to acknowledge, resolve and own complaints and help avoid them in the … [Read more...]

Jet.com blasting into e-commerce

Last Thursday’s event, hosted in Brickell’s Building & Co., brought Jet.com’s Director of Program Management Rick Paster to inform the Miami tech-scene about the company and some key strategies being implemented. Jet.com is an e-commerce site where adding a product to the checkout cart unlocks discounts for other similar, complimentary products, almost on an endless pathway; the user sees savings go up as the quantity of goods purchased also goes up. The company has been coined the “Amazon-killer”; however, Paster made the important point that the company does not consider itself a killer or competitor to Amazon, as there is room for many, diverse players in the e-commerce industry. It was refreshing to hear an executive reminding the public that competition and … [Read more...]

The State of UrbanTech – MIA 2016

Last Tuesday’s event The State of UrbanTech – MIA 2016 gathered a small but dedicated group to discuss the present and future impact of urban technology in cities, specifically Miami. The presentation began by asserting two interesting figures for future cities: 2 times population increase and 5 times decrease in greenhouse gas emissions. Cities are now being redesigned to fit more people while using less resources. Edward Glaeser’s book Triumph of the City assures this by emphasizing the fact that clustered cities are more productive and economically viable given the ease in flow of the new information economy and creativity. The problem, however, arises when cities are being re-imagined to a scale that is just not seemingly plausible. For example, the speaker at the event said … [Read more...]

IMA event: Terry B. Jones on innovation

Last Thursday, June 9, I had the pleasure of attending a discussion on innovation and shifting business strategy, led by Terry B. Jones. After a cocktail hour hosted at the NSU Art Museum in Ft. Lauderdale, the talk commenced in the auditorium across the breezeway. I must admit I did not know who Mr. Jones was, but I assumed he must be a marketing magnate, as the talk was organized by IMA. To my mistake and surprise, Mr. Jones is actually one of the founders of Travelocity and Kayak; so in a sense, he has developed businesses that market travel. Mr. Jones is in the business of facilitating the where and the when behind consumer choices, but he discussed the increasing importance for businesses to assess the self-reflexive why that drives consumer decisions. Businesses must break down … [Read more...]