Natali Osadchin

Education

Bachelor of Commerce from the Ted Rogers School of Business Management, Toronto Metropolitan University; with a Major in Marketing Management.

Specialization

Digital Marketing Management/ Digital Content Coordination

Biography

I have worked in the retail, promotional, and hospitality industries, and have come to learn what they all have in common—everyone is beginning to pay more attention to what is being said about their business and/or industry online. While working for Target Canada, preceding their massive penetration of the Canadian market, I witnessed some of the most elaborate and successful guerrilla and digital marketing executed in Canada to date. When I moved to work for a small, family-owned, promotional product company, I learned the value of connecting to each customer on a personal level and the hard labour that is involved in gaining traction on the different social media platforms. Now as I work in the hospitality industry, in a major downtown hotel, I continue to be blown away by the amount of attention that is paid by leadership to every comment that is left on different ranking sites, such as TripAdvisor.

Why Digital Media?

I foresee the future of commerce as being completely digitized, both in a promotional sense as well as in access to products and services. Understanding what digital media has to offer, and the way in which it can be manipulated to fit different businesses' needs, is a valuable skill that can later be transferred to any industry. Digital media is an intelligent and effective way to reach both individuals and the masses at once, and I hope to build on the skills and knowledge required to do just that.

Research

Major Research Paper: "Accessibility and Digital Media: Exploring Economic and Social Opportunities for Inclusive Design"

This paper discusses the tensions between existing disability studies literature pertaining to the role of markets in the development of our understanding of 'disability', and the notion that markets can in fact be leveraged to further develop and improve the accessibility of digital media products and services. The research will explore existing web accessibility guidelines, assistive technologies, and their overall efficacy. The research will complement the autoethnographic accounts of my experiences whilst working on AccessNow, a mobile application aimed at lifting accessibility barriers, by providing reliable and up-to-date accessibility information in the community.