Inside Our Annual Career Exploration Day with Value Schools

Career Exploration Day is one of the most rewarding days on our calendar. Our annual partnership with Value Schools—a network of tuition-free public charter schools serving communities across Los Angeles—brings 8th through 12th grade students into our Long Beach office for a full day of hands-on marketing and creative exploration.

For one day, our team steps away from client work to do something equally important: showing the next generation what a career in marketing actually looks like.

Students work directly alongside our team, divided into groups led by our creatives and strategists. Together they dive into real-world branding and marketing exercises by designing logos, developing campaigns and learning how to think strategically about storytelling and brand identity. At the end of the day, they present their work.

And every time, we leave impressed.

25 Years of Value Schools. One Notable Brief.

This year carried extra weight. Value Schools celebrated its 25th anniversary, and that milestone became the creative brief. Students were tasked with building out a full suite of anniversary assets—logos, social posts, videos and websites—all centered around honoring 25 years of the Value Schools mission.

Watching students conceptualize, create and present a real brand campaign in a single day is something that never gets old. The ideas were bold. The execution was ambitious. And the enthusiasm in the room was the kind of energy that reminds us why we do this every year.

Why This Initiative Matters to Us

Marketing has the power to open doors, but only if young people know those doors exist. That’s what this day is really about. It’s not just teaching design or website building, but broadening horizons and showing students that creative careers are within reach.

At Gunn Jerkens, we are storytellers first. And every year, Value Schools reminds us that the best stories are still being written.