Faces of Nelnet: Emir Plicanic from Marketing Communications
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.