Sprinkling a little authenticity

A smart friend and former roommate at UVA named Jasdev Singh wrote a blog post about the "real Jasdev." In it, he found the following tweet that inspired him to shed a bit of light on who he actually is: 

This person is right. People on Twitter use the social site to project a vision of themselves that they hope people perceive well. That is especially true for people who work in, or want to work in advertising. People like me. We project our personal brands EVERYWHERE and we sometimes forget that what's more important than that vision is the real person behind the keyboard. 

On that note, here are some facts about the real me:

My name is Nitin George Dua (I won't tell you here why my middle name is George. You have to ask to know that answer). I'm an outgoing introvert; introversion and extroversion ARE NOT black and white. I won the Silverbrook Elementary School spelling bee in the fifth grade and came in second place in sixth grade; in the sixth grade I lost to the person I beat the year before. (I lost by slipping on the word 'accuracy'; judges thought I said 's' instead of c. Yes, I'm still salty.)  I like to build Lego sets as a form of stress relief and relaxation. I'm making an effort to get much healthier, but my love for candy and craft beer - at very different times of the week - is making progress slow. My daily complaint is that I don't have a dog. 

I want to try to keep this chain going. Now that you know about me, and maybe even Jasdev, tell me about who you are. Jasdev inspired me, and hopefully we both have inspired you to "sprinkle a bit more authenticity into this world."1
1http://jasdev.me/x-at-y-previously-a-b-c/

My Brain Lies at the Intersection of Creativity and Analysis

I recently started an Internship with an awesome software company called Lumiary. One of my responsibilities is to write blog posts for the company's website. While doing research for one of the posts, I stumbled upon an article that resonated with me personally. The title of the article is, "10 Things Creative People and Data-Driven People Have in Common." 

In the article, they show the following venn diagram: 

This is not only a venn diagram, but it's also my brain. 

If you've had a chance to look at my resume, you'll know I worked as a financial and accounting analyst at a financial software company before starting my career in advertising at the Brandcenter. Working in finance, and previously majoring in finance, made me use the part of my brain that makes me analytical. For example, at Primatics Financial I analyzed data in Excel documents that reached the last row of Excel (Yes, there is a last row, it is row number 1,048,576). But now that I practice advertising, I'm constantly working on creative solutions to brand problems. For example, I recently helped find the future strategy of Progresso. And sometimes, I get to mix both. Like when I was at Zeus Jones, I created an Excel platform to quantify and analyze supply and demand of web content, which helped create use always-on content for a global CPG brand. 

What does this mean for my future? Well, right now it means I have a direction to take my career that gets me excited for life after school. I plan to solve business problems with these combined strengths to provide brands' visions for years to come.