Faces of Nelnet: Emir Plicanic from Marketing Communications

Emir Plicanic, Interactive Art Director with Nelnet Marketing Communication

Dawn Knight:  What is your favorite thing about what you do at Nelnet? 

Emir Plicanic: That’s easy!  Absolutely – the people and the team that we have in Marketing Communications are my favorite things!  We have a variety of people with unique and exciting backgrounds…people who came from different advertising agencies with different experiences.  It’s fun to be able to bounce ideas off everyone – especially with such a diverse group.  It makes it easier to find solutions to problems that we are working on. 

Dawn: Please describe a typical day for you.

Emir:  Wow, that’s hard because there really isn’t a typical day.  It all depends on the product or products we’re working on and what goes along with that product.  Generally though, I have a bunch of meetings, could be immersed in writing code for one of our websites, spending time thinking about website or product usability, determining the feasibility of certain projects, and/or sketching things out.

Dawn:  What has been your biggest challenge work-wise over the past 12 months?

Emir:  I would say the fast paced industry I’m in.  The mobile technology exploded and everybody started pushing mobile products.  At Nelnet, we are always trying to be innovative and stay a step ahead of the competition.  The challenge is trying to implement everything you’ve learned and do it quickly.  I love it.  It’s a fun challenge.

Dawn:  If a school asks you what you do for Nelnet that impacts them, what would you say?

Emir:  Given the fast paced of this industry, I try to make our products easier for our customers to use so they don’t have to spend too much time navigating around our software.  There are a lot of products that have been created over time and the technology has changed.  My goal is to update those products and make them more current and user friendly.

Dawn:  I know that’s your goal because you’ve been working in the trenches ‘re-masking’ our school-facing website and Nsight – thank you!

Dawn: If you could rewrite your high school year book quote, what would you say?

Emir:  I would say getting out of your comfort zone is where the fun starts.  That’s the one thing I go by at work and in life.  That’s how we grow.  That’s why I did that bike tour and trapeze flying class.

Dawn:  (Snort-laughing) Seriously, a trapeze flying class?!  No?!  That is VERY cool and I have a greater respect for you now.

Emir:  Yes, I was afraid of heights and I did it – it was great!  Here is a video from my trapeze flying class 🙂

Dawn:  What is one habit you have that actually annoys even you?

Emir:  I don’t know…um….I need to think about that.  Might be little things…maybe chewing pens….I can’t think of anything else.

Dawn:  That’s it?  Don’t you do something that drives your wife crazy?

Emir:  No, not really.  She is a recovered pen chewer, too.

Dawn: What super-power would you like to have?

Emir:  Ironically, over lunch today we were talking about that.  I would love to have a photographic memory – then you could do whatever you wanted to do.  You could learn anything you wanted in a short period of time and just go do it.

Dawn Knight, Western Regional Director: AZ, WA, OR, ID, NV, CA, WY and ND