Brennan came to Greenwich from the US to study BA Business with Marketing. She'd never visited the UK before.
"London had everything I was looking for. The culture, the commerce, the opportunities. It all felt within reach."
She'd already made her decision before ever setting foot on campus. But when she did arrive, it only confirmed she'd made the right call.
Fast forward to now, and she's got a placement at Amazon on her CV, Prime Day and Black Friday under her belt, work trips across Europe, and she was named Greenwich Business School's placement student of the year.
Why Business with Marketing at Greenwich
Brennan always had her eye on marketing. But she didn't want to box herself in.
"I could've just studied marketing on its own, but I knew I'd have gaps," she says. "I wanted to understand how a business actually runs. Finance, operations, strategy, all of it. The BA Business with Marketing at Greenwich gave me that."
It paid off. When she started interviewing for placements, she could talk about business as a whole, not just campaigns and content. And when she got into the job, that bigger-picture thinking made her better at the day-to-day stuff, too.
The campus helped as well. Greenwich sits inside a UNESCO World Heritage Site, right on the Thames River in south east London. For someone landing in a brand new country with no connections, it mattered.
"I fell in love with the campus straight away. That was a big part of why I chose Greenwich."
The placement search
Here's the thing nobody tells you about placement years. They take graft.
Most students apply to about 10 companies. Brennan applied to 48. And she started early, sending out applications from August of her second year
Months went by with nothing. The week before her Amazon interview, she found out she'd been rejected by Disney after five hours of assessments across multiple rounds. She calls it "the Hunger Games." She was gutted.
She went to the Amazon interview anyway.
"Honestly, I just wanted to prove to myself I could do well in the room," she says. "I wasn't banking on getting it."
Amazon's process is built around its 16 leadership principles. You need real examples for each one. For Brennan, the way she already thought lined up naturally with what they were looking for. She cleared the first round, smashed the second, and had an offer within 24 hours.
She was later named Greenwich Business School's placement student of the year.
What working at Amazon actually looked like
Brennan joined the EU Promotions and Events team, a wider group of around thirty people running some of the biggest retail events on the planet. Prime Day. Black Friday. Spring Deals. The lot.
Within that, she worked in a sub-team of three, responsible for managing 90 Amazon partners across multiple countries. Her team ran campaigns across the website, app and email. On peak days, the sites she worked on were reaching 75 million customers.
"Half my job was making sure the font was right," she laughs. "I became obsessed with brand guidelines. Sounds boring, but when that many people are seeing the page, every detail matters."
She travelled with her team too. Sardinia, Amsterdam, Madrid.
Going in, she had a clear idea of where she wanted to end up. Fashion, beauty, that kind of world. Her parents come from that background. But Amazon changed her thinking.
"I started seeing how everything connects. Amazon Music, Amazon Fashion, commerce, and content, it all feed into each other. Now I'm more interested in companies like Meta or Amazon, where the scale is massive. I need to believe in what I'm working on. A big name isn't enough on its own."
Getting involved at Greenwich
Brennan hasn't just been turning up to lectures. She's been a programme rep every single year of her degree, all four years. She's an employability champion. And she's volunteered with Dress for Success since her first year, a charity that provides workwear and support to women preparing for job interviews.
She was also picked alongside three other students to enter a CMI competition. Her dissertation, titled "From GRWM to GPT: The Displacement of Influencer Authority by AI Recommendation in Beauty Marketing," explores what happens to consumer trust when algorithms, not people, start driving the trends.
"What happens when a chatbot decides red lipstick is trending?" she says. "It sounds like a Black Mirror episode. But it's already happening. And brands aren't ready for that conversation yet."
That kind of thinking, curious, a bit restless, always looking at what's next, runs through everything she's done at Greenwich.
What she'd tell her first-year self
"Just be in it."
Brennan spent most of the first year planning ahead. Mapping out her placement timeline, thinking three steps into the future, spiralling about things that hadn't happened yet.
"I moved countries. I travelled, I made incredible friends, and I found my feet in a whole new city. And I was still stressing about what was coming next instead of just being present for what was happening."
"I'd tell myself to stop worrying. It works out. It clearly worked out."
Her plan after graduating is to spend a couple of years working in industry, get a proper feel for how marketing is evolving, and then decide if a Master's is the right move. No rush.
Interested in studying Business with Marketing? Find out more about the BA Business with Marketing at Greenwich Business School.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Please note that course timetables, the availability of modules and opportunities offered to, and services for, students can change over time - i.e. things may not be available from one year to the next - and that some things may also not be available to you if you are joining Greenwich as a direct entry student. In the case of modules, please always check the 'What will you study' section of the course webpage for the course and entry year you are interested in. You can find an index of all our subject areas, within which you will find the individual course pages, at: https://www.gre.ac.uk/subjects
