Madhavi Saifee
Adjunct Professor
Schools: Fairleigh Dickinson University, State University of New York – FIT
Location: New Jersey and New York
Professor Saifee has over 30 years of experience in marketing, sales, and media — 25 of those years with internet companies. She “jumped the digital chasm” in 1995 when she came to NJ/Advance Internet. She joined the company as the third employee before they even launched the website. From there, she went on to work for several pure play internet media organizations including Lycos, the first search engine, and Tripod, one of the first community building sites.
She realized there weren’t many universities teaching what she did for a living so she started looking into becoming an adjunct faculty member at various institutions. Since 2016, she has been teaching digital marketing at undergrad level, and in 2017, she started teaching at the graduate level.
Professor Saifee’s courses provide in-depth and pensive curricula that incorporate a strategic overview with tactical experience in digital and social marketing skills. This enables students to compete in an increasingly complex, technological, and data-driven marketplace.
We asked Madhavi a few questions. Her answers are below.
WHAT STUKENT COURSEWARE HAVE YOU USED?
I teach as adjunct faculty State University of NY – FIT at the undergraduate level. The class is “Digital Marketing” and is a requirement for advertising, marketing, and communications majors for graduation. In this class I use both the Mimic Pro and the Mimic Social simulations. My students love them as they find they are more well versed in both SEM and Social Media Marketing after having executed the simulations.
I also teach at Fairleigh Dickinson University Silberman College of Business in the graduate program which is unique to the university’s Master’s of Science in Digital Marketing (MSDM). I teach a foundational course called “Digital Marketing Strategies” in which I cover many of the topics in the “Digital Marketing Essentials” textbook. This is only an 8-week course at this time and thus I use the Mimic Intro Simulation. It is a great introduction to SEM for my students.
WHAT TEACHING TIPS WOULD YOU SHARE WITH OTHER PROFESSORS?
The other course that I teach at FDU is the Capstone Course for the MSDM. In this course I use BOTH Mimic Pro and Mimic Social as key part of the course. Once the students finish both simulations, they present a final thesis to a panel of three faculty members.
This final thesis presentation is one in which they combine the marketing strategies and tactics used in both simulations and present an analysis. They pretend that the overarching company is one large retailer (e.g., Target, Macy’s, Walmart, etc.) and they are executing for different product lines (cameras and bags). This allows them to focus on the two strategies and not worry about the brand awareness of the retailer.
WHAT ARE YOUR HOBBIES AND TALENTS?
I live in New Jersey with my husband, and I have three daughters. My oldest is a college graduate and works for a bank in risk management. My middle daughter is a rising junior at northeastern university. My youngest is a rising junior in high school and much to her chagrin, she is the sole focus of our parenting!
We’re a pretty athletic family. We love to hike, ski, run, and of course have down time on the beach!
CONNECT WITH MADHAVI SAIFEE
Thank you, Madhavi, and congratulations!
