Waltham resident launches business to address the generational divide in the communications industry

When Kristina Markos graduated from Ohio’s Bowling Green State University in 2006, she was ready to launch into a career as a journalist.

Unfortunately, the journalism world wasn’t ready for her.

“I was like, ‘Nobody told me that I’m going to have to be living at home or having a second job,’” Markos said. She remembers applying for journalism jobs that paid $16,000 a year, hardly enough to cover rent, groceries and her encroaching student loans.

The experience pushed her in the direction of marketing and public relations — a “switch pitch” — but it also fostered a disappointment in higher education.

“I went to journalism school and it was like, ‘Oh, you can win a Pulitzer [Prize], you can work for these major news organizations.’ But the truth is it’s very difficult to break into the [journalism] industry,” Markos said.

That feeling followed her from job to job, from Ohio to Waltham, from positions at Bentley University to Lasell University, where she is a communications professor.

Now Markos is working with fellow consultant Rachel Gans-Boriskin and management firm Novl to help the next generation of communications and media professionals manage their work expectations and bridge the divide between employers and newly degreed Generation Z workers.

That’s how GenSpark was born.

Generations at odds

Within higher education Markos sees a lot of disillusionment and misplaced anger as students become workers. 

For example, as college seniors, Gen Z students are doing the best, most interesting work of their academic careers, Markos explained. So it confuses a lot of Gen Z employees that they have to work their way back up to the fun assignments at work. 

On the other hand, she said many employers do not understand the distance between expectation and reality for their youngest workers.

After researching the points of tension between employers and Gen Z workers, Markos and her team developed a report focused on the intergenerational challenges facing these workplaces leading to low retention rates, high turnover and general dissatisfaction. They found that generation-defining events, such as climate change and COVID-19, have shaped how society’s newest employees work. And it doesn’t always align with their employers’ expectations of professional behavior.

Phone use, for example, is a prime example of misaligned conceptions of professional behavior, Markos said. For many Gen Z workers, who went to school online during the pandemic, remaining on their phone during conversations or texting while working is a measure of productivity. For many employers, the same behavior is unprofessional and rude.

Markos helps employers understand these new norms. “You’re almost like a therapist,” Markos said.

When a company signs up for the service, Markos and her team come into the organization, survey everyone anonymously and put together a data-driven report about the pain points and the patterns they see. From there, the GenSpark team creates modules, workshops and content that can help them with those points of contention, such as employee retention.

Markos teaching the next generation

They also coach individuals through new situations, such as asking for a promotion or raise for the first time.

“It’s a lot of breaking down assumptions about the media field or about different generations or clients or audiences,” said Markos.

The service is also about maintaining a level of passion and excitement for the communications and media industry, something her PR students know very well.

Nate Hillyer was a student in Markos’ PR classes until 2021.

Hillyer was a communications and media studies and marketing student at Emmanuel College when he heard of the impressive program at Simmons University. Markos was then among those at the helm of the program, and Hillyer was excited to learn from her through the Colleges of the Fenway exchange program. In the class he learned how to draft an effective pitch, write concisely and love PR.

“I don’t think it was until I took [her] class that I realized that that might kind of be my niche,” said Hillyer, who now works for The Castle Group as a senior account executive in public relations.

For Markos, GenSpark’s aim is to make the communications industry and its future path more accessible and bring the areas of growth to the next generation. She cites the PR and content creation realms as areas of distinct growth.

“There’s a huge market for communication professionals right now,” she said. “It’s just we have to rethink where their talents are going.”