Staff Spotlight: Andre Mark

My favorite travel memory was simply doing a road trip from San Jose to San Diego on a 12-hour drive. In between the drive, my friends and I would stop at farms to buy strawberries and avocados as cheap as $5 per basket. Our route destinations were to go from San Jose, Gilroy (outlet shopping), Six flags (LA), Las Vegas, Disneyland, and finally San Diego.

Coming from a tech and finance industry, TaF.tc was a whole new world for me. I definitely wanted a fresh new start where I could expand my knowledge and skills in technology and digitalization, but through a different channel.

When I first came to TaF.tc, I was appointed to be a team leader for the Marketing Team. Being a team lead, I was able to deep dive into social media marketing using both Facebook/Google ads, which I had no experience doing either apart from the basic campaign setups. Through many trial and errors, my team and I managed to come up with a working strategy in campaigns which resulted in an exponential growth in our sales and presence online.

TaF.tc also gave me an opportunity to build our own tech division where we could run multiple technology projects with the goal to go digital and enhance all our processes to help ease the administrative work. TaF.tc is a great place to work if you are looking to learn on the go and have a never stop learning attitude. I truly appreciate the opportunity and culture that the company has built to truly maintain its goal towards "being a global fashion school without boundaries."

The best story I've heard from a returning student is from one of our graduates, who has a startup called Kerbside. I remember meeting the founder Fahmy at our Open House 2019 to sign up for our digital marketing programs when he first started his e-commerce store just after he ended our Diploma in Merchandising and Marketing. Meeting Fahmy gave me assurance that TaF.tc is providing continuing education for our students, even after they have completed their Diploma and started their own business.

If I would have to go into any program, it would be the TaF.tc's Diploma in Footwear Design and Product Development. The reason why I would take this Diploma is that it is so unique in every aspect. I started my footwear journey with TaF.tc's Athletic shoe class and I was hooked from there to improve my workmanship and craft by taking on more construction series classes. Plus, I got to create my own bespoke shoes!

TaF.tc has an extremely fun and exciting place to work at. With its ever-changing environment, the company aims to move along with the country's goal towards digitalization and still maintaining its authenticity to train the industry.

I am extremely proud of my team as everyone is willing to quickly adapt when a new development has been implemented. All staff has the joint mentality of the "pebble movement": always start laying the path one pebble at time and adjust along the way.

I believe that, for a company to be successful, it has to first align its people to the company's goals and direction. The company also has to build a culture where it encourages experiments and errors, as only through these instances it will allow for growth in developments.

I believe it is also important to also get people who are constantly hungry to work towards creating something meaningful and have ownership towards what they have created.