Alumni Spotlight: Emily Boswell
Published July 9, 2026
Current Job Title
Digital Marketing Manager
Describe your current position.
I manage the social media sites for companies that make machines for food packaging, and food forming. For example, some make machines that form ground beef into burger patties. I also run the social media for Gaming Paper. They make grid paper and other such things for table top roleplaying games, like Dungeons and Dragons.
To what extent does writing relate to your current position? What type of writing/design do you do for work?
Writing plays a large roll in my job. My primary duty is to write and schedule content for the different pages and companies. When I'm not creating posts, I'm responding to comments and messages. Everything needs to be precise, error-free, easily understandable, and use a consistent, friendly tone. Occasionally, I will also make simple graphics featuring different machines from the food processing companies. Gaming Paper has an Instagram page, and I've had to brush up on some basic photography, and photo editing skills for that as well.
Please briefly describe your path from graduation at GVSU to your current position.
Before working as a Digital Marketing Manager, I worked in food service, mostly at Boardwalk Subs. I'm very lucky in that I work from home and might have the option to take my work with me to a new city. This will hopefully help me towards my goal of earning my Master of Fine arts in Fiction, and starting a career as a writing professor.
What parts of the writing major had the strongest impact on you as a professional?
I'm grateful that I chose to be a writing major because it forced me to take classes outside of my comfort zone. The fact that GVSU offers a writing major, and not a creative writing major, is an important distinction. Because of this, I had classes in professional writing, design, writing for the web, and magazine writing. These opened my eyes to the world of professional writing, and gave me tools to help market myself when job hunting.
What advice would you offer to current/future writing majors at Grand Valley?
My advice to current and future writing majors at Grand Valley would be to take classes outside of your comfort zone. Being a writing major is more than workshop, as wonderful as it is. It's design, technical/professional writing, marketing, journalism, rhetoric, and more. The skills you learn will help you not only become better at your craft, but will help you in your future professional life. My other word of advice is to be patient with yourself after graduation. You might not land a job or get into grad school right away, but that's okay. Keep working hard, and it will happen before you know it.