For the past 9 months, LUISS graduate Flavia Marcocci has been working in the Berlin offices of Houzz, the leading platform for home remodeling and design. Starting with a six-month internship, Flavia was then offered a full-time position with the company.
Completing both her bachelor’s degree and master’s degree with the Department of Business and Management, Flavia graduated in July 2016 with a degree in Management and a major in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. At LUISS, Flavia found several opportunities to prepare for the startup scene. “The courses in my major helped me develop my passion for the startup world and study it from different points of view.” Flavia continues, “I also found group projects where you create a startup from scratch really useful. In the beginning, it can be hard to assign tasks and coordinate with other members of the team, but once we understood each team member's strengths, it was wonderful to work together and build team spirit. This helped me to have an open mind when resolving problems and various issues that can come up as quickly as possible, something that fully distinguishes how we work at Houzz.”
While at LUISS, Flavia was able to explore more than her interest in startups, but in international experiences as well. During her third year, Flavia spent one
semester at the Copenhagen Business School through an Erasmus program. “It was an experience that helped me meet students from around the world and discover different ways to study and learn. Living in an international environment really motivated me to choose a master’s program in English.”
Before Houzz, Flavia completed two marketing internships, one with Tunué publishing house, and another with Rai Com. “I discovered Houzz and the internship thanks to an ad on the LUISS website a few weeks before I defended my thesis. I sent my résumé to Career Services and was then contacted for a phone interview with my team leader at Houzz. I then had two more interviews over Skype with our manager and the managing director of the Marketplace, Houzz’s e-commerce department.”
Flavia then joined the Marketplace Product Coordination team. “As a product coordinator, my job is to collect product information from vendors to be uploaded to the site, check it for quality issues and act as an intermediary between vendors and our copy and logistics teams. I really like working at Houzz, it has a young and informal atmosphere, with people from several different countries and a company culture that focuses on collaboration and mutual support. I love working in an international team and I find it so exciting to be able to contribute to building and launching the British shop. Flavia continues: “Being directly involved in a startup is much more complex but also much more exciting than I could have ever imagined from our textbooks.”