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Serving as UIF since: Fall 2016

School: University of Alabama at Birmingham
What she does now: content marketing and writing for an education company
What that means: she helps connect teachers to the resources they need to teach at their best
Contact her about: marketing, startups, traveling, art, coffee, makerspaces, and designing your life after graduation!
Email: jeniweber19@gmail.com

Jeni Weber earned her Bachelors degree in Marketing from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).

She is now a marketing specialist for an education company that focuses on unlocking the collective wisdom of teachers. Previously, she was the social media and digital marketing manager for an education technology startup that used AI to read and grade student handwriting -- offering teachers deeper insights and bridging the digital divide for students. She helped lead that startup to acquisition. She's worked on implementing marketing campaigns, creating content, customer support, and product quality assurance. Being able to wear many hats is what she loves most about the startup environment.

Jeni's introduction to startups was in 2015 when she joined the first student-created startup company of UAB's Innovation Lab, Satterfield Technologies. She worked on business models, branding, and outreach. This work allowed her to rapidly learn through the Innovation Lab's mentors and hands-on experience. It was her initiation to the world of innovation and entrepreneurship. Jeni became a University Innovation Fellow in the Fall of 2016, and attended the Silicon Valley Meetups in March 2017 and November 2017. Her work as a Fellow while in school involved creating and maintaining the UAB Makerspace, a hub for innovation and entrepreneurship on campus.

But most of Jeni's work as a Fellow happened after graduating. For five years, Jeni has annually interviewed candidates for the University Innovation Fellows program. She's supported new fellows at seven schools across the world through their 6-week UIF training. She helped host the Silicon Valley Meetup as a "FAB" in March 2022. She also wrote the article "A Guide to Sharing Your Work" for the first edition of Change Forward, a UIF publication. Jeni once took a personality test and discovered that four out of five of her strengths are about empathizing with and supporting other people. She realized two things after taking that test: 1) what makes the UIF program so special to her is the human connection, and 2) being a supporter is its own kind of superpower.