The Field Report: Shannon Yu
The Field Report is TRMA’s interview series where we sit down with marketing professionals to go beyond the job title, asking them about their career journeys, experiences and lessons learned along the way.
For this edition, we spoke with Shannon Yu, a Ted Rogers School of Management Marketing alum and 2024-2025 TRMA President, about her journey from student to marketing professional. Today, she works as an Integrated Marketing Manager at Intuit Canada, working across QuickBooks and Mailchimp.
Shannon began her career as a co-op student at Intuit before gaining experience at companies like Unilever and American Express. These experiences helped her explore different areas of marketing and ultimately led her back to Intuit full-time.
How did you first land your co-op at Intuit?
“Honestly, I feel like a little bit of it was luck, but another big part was having a resume that stood out.
Someone from TRMA introduced me to the role, and I applied online. I had my resume reviewed by a lot of people and worked on making sure it was polished while still showcasing who I was. My involvement in TRMA was important because it showed that I was passionate about giving back to students. I also had prior internship and professional experience, which helped.
Then, when I got to the interview, I focused on being myself. I think especially for internship interviews, employers aren’t just asking, ‘Can you do this?’ They’re also asking, ‘Are you going to be a good culture fit?’ It’s a little bit of a vibe check.”
What do you think helped you turn that co-op into a full-time role?
“I kept in touch with my manager after my internship, and we were very close during my internship because I was the first intern on the team.
It was kind of perfect timing. I had reached out to catch up and we chatted about our future, what school looked like, how she was doing at the company and everything in between. Later, when the role opened up, she texted me saying they had an open role and wanted to gauge my interest. We had a few calls and interviews, and I signed the contract about a month later.
You have to keep in touch with your manager, but it needs to be genuine. Sometimes you vibe with people and sometimes you don’t. You want to work with people you vibe with and work well with because that’s when you can do your best work. I was genuine about wanting to see where she was at and wanting her mentorship on how to navigate my early new-grad career. It wasn’t just, ‘I want a job, please give it to me.’ That genuine connection really helped.”
Can you tell us a bit about your role at Intuit and what a typical day looks like?
“As an Integrated Marketing Manager at Intuit Canada, I work across brand, content and partnerships.
On the brand side, I manage creative assets and content. Everything from digital billboards and YouTube ads to TikTok ads and website banners falls into the work that I touch.
I’ll concept the work and develop the strategy, give the brief to the agency, go through the feedback process and then send the final asset over to the media team so it can be distributed across different platforms.
On the content side, I work on blogs, articles, eBooks and gated content. I’ve written blogs featuring customer stories, where we leverage our customers within the stories.
It’s also very cross-functional. I work with development and technical teams to get everything out. There’s a much bigger process and ecosystem behind it than simply submitting something and having it upload.
And then there’s partnerships, which involves working with external partners and brands. Earlier this year, when we still had our NHL contracts, I worked on stadium DEDs and ads that appeared around NHL arenas and games. So it’s a lot of different things under one role.”
A campaign that Shannon worked on!
Is there a campaign or project you’ve worked on that you’re especially proud of?
“The NHL campaign I worked on while I was a co-op at Intuit was probably my favourite.
I got to see what it looked like to be on such a huge set and work with multiple different teams. We had hockey players Cale Makar and William Nylander involved, and I also got to see what it was like to film for TV broadcasts, social and photography. It was a full-day shoot, from around 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., but getting to see how everything came together was so cool.
I think my favourite part was seeing the production come to life. Going into corporate, I was scared of having a job where my entire day consisted of sitting at a desk with my laptop. I want to be in meetings. I want to walk around. I don’t want to hide behind a screen forever.
Being on set gives me that hands-on experience. You get to see what you wrote on paper come to life, and then you get to see it go through post-production and eventually into the real world.
And it’s also something tangible that you can put in your portfolio. You can actually show people what you worked on.”
Check out the NHL campaign that Shannon worked on here:
What skill do you think every aspiring marketer should develop?
“Learn how to use AI. I think being at a tech company has given me a lot of training around AI, and I feel like I’ve been able to get ahead because of it.
Learning how to effectively use tools like Claude, ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Copilot is so important. You need to learn how to use these tools and master them. I use AI every day. It helps me build briefs, communicate, build decks, format my work and even flag mistakes in articles so I don’t have to manually review everything.
But I don’t use it to replace my own thinking. The beauty of creativity and the human brain is that we can take one thing that has never existed and combine it with another thing that has never existed. AI builds from things that have already been put out into the internet. So I use AI to help fuel what I do rather than saying, ‘Hey, AI, do this for me.’ I come up with the idea and then use AI to refine that idea.”
What advice would you give to students looking for their first internship or co-op?
“You just have to apply. Apply to everything. Don’t hold yourself back because you think you’re underqualified. If you think you’re underqualified for something, that can be a reason to apply for it. Never let qualifications intimidate you, especially when you’re looking for your first internship or co-op and get involved outside of school.
Join student groups, go to networking events, attend external events. Don’t be the student who goes to school and then goes straight home. Academics are important, obviously, but what you make out of your university experience matters too. Student groups, networking events and experiences outside of university can give you a competitive edge when you’re looking for your first internship or co-op. Above all, build genuine relationships.”
Here's some BTS photos of Shannon's work at Intuit!
And that’s the report from the field. Thanks for sharing your story with us, Shannon!
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