Where Is the Next Generation of Print Talent Coming From?

Greg Young, Head of Customer Experience at Infigo:
Printing United day two, lunchtime. Special guests. This wasn’t part of the schedule. This has gone rogue, and we like it. So I am joined today by…

Mackenzie Griffin:
Mackenzie.

Tara Seth:
Tara.

Emalyn Nelson:
And Emalyn.

Greg Young:
Who are clearly the biggest advocates of Infigo, because they’ve got their lanyards and their coozies and they’re ready to chat today about everything. Passionate print. So, girls, where are you from and why are you here?

Tara Seth:
Okay, so I am from a small town in Michigan called Coopersville. Currently studying graphic media management, which is a fancy way to say print management, at Ferris State University. I’m a senior in the programme, so I’ve been through all the production classes, and now we’re just taking business classes, minoring in project management.

Mackenzie Griffin:
I’m from Grand Rapids, one of the bigger cities in Michigan. Also a senior in graphic media management. I’m done in December, so anybody looking to hire, hit me up. We’re just really excited to be here.

Emalyn Nelson:
I’m Emalyn. I’m also a senior in the programme, and I’m from a small town in Michigan called Manistee.

Greg Young:
And all three of you are at Ferris State University? And I had the pleasure of meeting you earlier this year at DSCOOP. You had quite a lot of fun. Everyone knew who you were by the end of it. And you were on the stage…

Mackenzie Griffin:
That was crazy. It was the Monday right before the conference, got a call from Peter Van Teeseling saying, hey, we have this really exciting announcement for a grant that’s going to be specifically for students that we want to announce. HP was also matching their donation, so there’s a huge amount of grant money now available for students through DSCOOP.

That was a really awesome experience to be able to announce. We were super lucky to get the honour to do that. But we got to see you at DSCOOP, where we had a really great time, with our glasses.

Greg Young:
You did. Tell the camera all about your glasses.

Mackenzie Griffin:
So it’s become a tradition. At each DSCOOP, we have branded glasses. This year it was Cali with the year. We went around pretty much every single booth, any person we could find, and said, hey, can you put these on and take a picture? So we found you, obviously.

Greg Young:
I had my skateboard.

Mackenzie Griffin:
You had your skateboard. Which was a really good addition.

Greg Young:
Tony Hawk hadn’t signed it at that point, but he did later.

Mackenzie Griffin:
So, at the after dark party, we saw you talking from across the room. I go, guys, wait, I have to find this picture. And then I ran up to you and said, you’re on my phone.

Greg Young:
I think there’s a different version of this story. I think you were stood behind me with a picture of me, slightly creepy, and there you were. It was like the matrix was going on or something.

Mackenzie Griffin:
I could have made it weirder.

Greg Young:
Now go back to your pictures. Emalyn, tell us what happened with the pictures. What did you do with them?

Emalyn Nelson:
So I run the social media for our graphic arts association, and we made TikToks both years. They’re on our graphic arts association LinkedIn. We should have brought them to Printing United, we would have had a lot more fun.

Greg Young:
Went quite viral?

Emalyn Nelson:
Quite viral, I think. Kenzie posted it on her TikTok as well, so.

Mackenzie Griffin:
It did pretty good.

Greg Young:
Last night we arranged this, but you invited Sam and I to join your podcast. Tell us about this.

Mackenzie Griffin:
So this started a little less than a year ago. Kelly Mallozzi, one of the heads of Girls Who Print, recommended that somebody young in the print industry needed to start a podcast, because so many companies are really struggling with how to adapt to a younger market, and they don’t know how to relate or what students are looking for. That has been the biggest drive of starting it. So we were both like, why not? We’ve done seven episodes so far and now we’re working on some more, which is why we had so much fun with you guys last night. We need to have an episode with you.

Greg Young:
Get the Brits on there.

Mackenzie Griffin:
That’ll be so much fun. We’re going to play a game. It is a tradition with our episodes. I’m very excited to have you guys on.

Greg Young:
We’re looking forward to it. We actually launched The PrintPod at Infigo about 18 months ago, you can find the full playlist here, and it’s just so good to be able to casually and openly talk about so many different facets of the industry. So of the seven episodes, what’s your favourite that you’ve delivered?

Tara Seth:
Speaking of our executive board, I think that was my personal favourite episode so far. All five of us spend so much time together. We spend a lot of time at Ferris building up our graphic arts association, it died after Covid and we were all on the executive board. We started it back up, and we’re all so passionate about this industry. We just want to share that and make sure the future students coming through our programme have the same passion and are willing to keep it going. And it was a fun episode because we got to reminisce, we’re seniors now, talking about how we first met, how we got into it.

Mackenzie Griffin:
I’m going to be very unoriginal, I think that’s also my favourite episode. I do cry in that episode. It was the last week of classes, we were all feeling very emotional, running on not a lot of sleep because it was exam week. These really are my best friends, and getting to spend that time in college with them has been an amazing experience.

We’ve built up such a great community, and then going into the print community, which is also incredibly amazing. We actually had a student at one of our recruiting sessions ask us what our favourite part about this industry was. And I said, there aren’t many industries that feel like home.

Greg Young:
Wow. That’s powerful.

Tara Seth:
I also just want to add, it’s not released yet, but we have an episode coming out real soon that I’m super excited about. We did a collaboration with She*t for Brains, and that’s just such a big movement right now. We need more of that. So I am looking forward to the final cut of that episode. Keep an eye out for that one.

Greg Young:
They’re doing some great stuff. Infigo was part of the original founding group of that, and the work the team are doing is fantastic. It’s needed. It’s addressing a really important topic, and I’m glad it’s in the forefront.

Greg Young:
One of the things we spoke about last night was looking around the room and seeing the majority of people were middle-aged white men, not very many young people, not very many females. You guys are obviously bucking that trend. To go back to my passion point, it’s amazing to see the three of you, at the age you are, making your way in the industry. Have you found it challenging?

Mackenzie Griffin:
I think we’ve been lucky enough to have so much support from the women who have worked so hard to get where they’re at. We’ve worked with Girls Who Print, we’ve worked with the Women in Print Alliance, Rosemarie Breske Garvey from Blooming Color, one of our absolute favourites.

Greg Young:
Shout out to Rosemarie. Infigo customer as well.

Mackenzie Griffin:
Being able to have those mentors and those people who can really give you great advice, I think has helped a lot.

Tara Seth:
I agree. I don’t want to say they struggled so we don’t have to, but they fully understand what it was like. And so they didn’t want us to have that same experience. We have a lot of people we were able to look up to. And I also think it’s starting to be more mainstream now. Our programme is majority female, which is so exciting to me.

This year I had the opportunity to be on the All-Star team, which I was a little worried about because I thought I’m going to be the only student, I’m the youngest on it. But there’s a great group of people. Yes, there are older white men, but there are also a lot of women on it and some younger members. I’m the youngest. But it’s just a great group of people. And I think that’s great for it being the first team, just having that support from everyone. It’s not like, we need women like you in this industry in a tokenising way. It’s genuine. It’s great.

Emalyn Nelson:
Like Tara mentioned, our major is mostly women, but a lot of other colleges have a lot of women in them as well. We have a female professor that just joined last year, replacing our old professor who retired. So we have a lot of female influence for sure.

Greg Young:
So what is the future for the three of you? Where do you want to go? What’s next, once you walk away from college when you graduate?

Emalyn Nelson:
I’ve been looking at sales and marketing. I would like to go into equipment sales, but the future is bright. I like to be creative, so.

Greg Young:
Use the camera, come on. Sell yourself here, Emalyn.

Emalyn Nelson:
I don’t really know. Sales and marketing for sure. I like to be creative, so.

Tara Seth:
I’d like to say that in this industry, there are so many options, and it is easier to find what you don’t want to do than what you do want to do. For me right now, because I don’t have an exact direction, I like sales, I like marketing, I like project management. I have a lot of great skills. I just feel like it’s important which company I’m in, which sector I’m in. I love retail, signage, and expos. I love coming to these. I love travelling. So I’m open to anything. Whatever I find, whatever falls in my lap.

Mackenzie Griffin:
I’m the sales girl!

Greg Young:
I’m surprised!

Mackenzie Griffin:
I get that a lot. I’ve been working in sales for the last couple of years in the print industry, and that’s really where I want to stay. Specifically, I want to sell print for marketing solutions. I’ve lately been getting really into purchasing, which is the other side of sales. So I think that’s also really fun. But definitely that area, and like I said, December.

Greg Young:
What is the most important piece of advice for the next generation coming into the industry? What’s stayed with you the most?

Emalyn Nelson:
Try everything. Absolutely everything. My freshman year, I would have never come to something like this. This is my third Printing United and it’ll be my third DSCOOP if we go to the Rockies. It has grown my confidence so much. I would have never gone into sales. I wouldn’t have talked to anybody. It has helped me so much to just go and do anything I can.

Tara Seth:
Mine is basically the same thing, but I’m going to build on it: going to events, big or small, company tours, the networking is so important. Everybody always says it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. And you’re not only going to know things, you’re going to know a lot of people. Just meet people, talk to people. You’re going to be scared. But the more you do it, the less scary it is.

Four years ago, I never would have been doing this. I never would have had a podcast. I never would have been on stage at DSCOOP. You couldn’t have paid me to be up there. And I just had so much fun. Everybody was asking, are you scared? And I was like, no, I’m just excited. Four years ago, that answer would have been so different.

Mackenzie Griffin:
This is what I wish someone would have told me, I wish someone would say, it’s all going to be great. Everybody says college goes by so quick, and it does go by in a blink. Don’t take any moment of it for granted, because it is the absolute best time ever. Say yes. Just say yes. If you really don’t like it, you don’t have to keep doing it. But it’ll be worth the experience, worth the learning. It’s always a good experience.

Greg Young:
How can viewers get in contact with you, if they’re interested?

Mackenzie Griffin:
We are all very active on LinkedIn. We post pretty often, so I would definitely say look up our LinkedIn. We would be more than happy to chat, send you a resumé if you would like.

Greg Young:
We’ll make sure we tag all three of them in the post as well. So if you’re interested in exploring their skillset and whether they can add something to your company or organisation, get in contact.

Emalyn Nelson:
Also, our Graphic Arts Association covers our entire programme at Ferris State across all years. If you want to do anything with that, company tours, anything we can get from this industry, absolutely reach out. We love any support.

Greg Young:
Awesome. Well, thank you very much for joining me today. I’m glad we made this happen.

You can find Mackenzie, Tara, and Emalyn on LinkedIn. Their podcast, Talk More Print, is available now on Spotify. If you’re a print business curious about what the next generation is looking for in the industry, it’s well worth your time.

Want to hear more conversations like this one? Check out our other Fireside Chats with industry experts, operators, and integration partners, and see what’s driving print forward.

Infigo provides web-to-print automation solutions for Print Service Providers, helping them streamline order capture, file preparation, and production workflows. The Infigo platform integrates with leading print industry technologies, including Enfocus PitStop, to deliver seamless end-to-end automation.