News Story

Blazers are a jacket you wear when you need to look professional. Blazr is a place to go when you are looking for opportunities to build professional skills.

Often, students scurry to find and land internships and scholarships, something Media School senior Megan Tackett is trying to ease with her website, Blazr, which provides access and links to resources. The site offers nationwide opportunities for college students and post-grads, most of them entry-level experiences.

“I noticed a lot of websites have only internship and scholarship opportunities, so I wanted to create something that had more than that,” Tackett said. “Something that had things like workshops, fellowships and case competitions because those are such a good way to gain more experience.”

Blazr has been launched for a month now and has had more than 400 views. It aggregates opportunities in a variety of media, such as available grants, internships, jobs, workshops and professional training. For example, the site recently featured leads to an Indy tech fellowship, a screenwriting workshop, newspaper internships and entrepreneurial competitions.

The idea to create Blazr came to Tackett after she completed a case competition in June. She had found the opportunity online. She and her research partner submitted their work and  were named finalists, earning an all-expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C., to visit media outlets.

“After I returned, a lot of my friends and fellow journalism majors asked me how I discovered the case competition and expressed interest in participating in things like that,” she said. “I found these opportunities through my own research and wanted to share them with others, so that inspired me to start Blazr.”

For awhile, she emailed links and opportunities to people, but soon realized the demand was strong.

“There were so many other people I was emailing these links to, and they were applying and being successful, so I wanted to expand it,” she explained.

Tackett is a journalism major concentrating in public relations, and she is involved in the Liberal Arts and Management Program because of her interest in business. With these skill building experiences in her toolkit, she said she was motivated to design a place where she could share these opportunities with her peers. Blazr also gave her a chance to put her interest in business into practice.

“I wanted to start something of my own, and I thought a website would be a good stepping stone if I eventually did want to start my own business,” she said. “I wanted to help my peers find those opportunities in one website.”

People interested in the arts, business, education and policy, media and journalism, or tech may find up to six new opportunities when they check out this site. Many of the opportunities are in the Midwest, but one of Tackett’s long-term goals for the site is marketing to different schools in the U.S. and creating a nationwide user base.

“The site does a nice job of putting lots of different media industry opportunities in one place,” said Media School career advisor Lauren Little. “Students who take advantage of multiple websites like this will be served greatly. ”

Finding the opportunities accounts for only a fraction of Tackett’s time when creating Blazr.

“I worked on it for 40 hours a week,” she said.  “Anytime I wasn’t at work, I was working on this.”

Creating the site took the majority of this past summer, especially because she had to figure out the process of website creation all on her own.

“YouTube tutorials were crucial,” Tackett said. “And Google was definitely my friend.”

But designing the site was fun, she said, and is what she’s most proud of.

“I really wanted something that was modern and appealed to college students, but that was also very professional looking,” she explained. “And I feel like I accomplished that with Blazr.”

Tackett is also hoping to expand the website so that people can create profiles, which would then allow them to save the opportunities they are interested in and easily find them later when they want to apply.

“I could definitely see it being a profitable business,” she said. “But right now, I just want to help students, especially IU students, and also expand it to other schools.”

The site represents a blend of her new-found tech skills, personal search for opportunities and a platform for a future business, perhaps.

“It’s great for my resume, but that’s not why I did it,” Tackett said. “I wanted to help people.”