For the Spring 2025 semester, the USC Career Center hosted the “Personal Branding: Establishing Your Professional Presence Online with AI,” workshop as a part of the AI Career Series.
On February 25th, we welcomed two distinguished panelists: Nila Makhfi and Luis Tun. The panel was moderated by Ella Rae Columbres, a Career Advisor, and Princess Vaulx, a USC student and Graduate Intern.
Meet the Panelists:
- Nila Makhfi brings a global perspective, having lived in three different countries and explored diverse cultures. With marketing experience from internships at Snap Inc., AXS, and Beats by Dr. Dre, she combines creativity and strategy to connect with audiences. As President of REACH’s USC Chapter, she leads a network of influencers, digital marketers, and social media enthusiasts across the U.S., sharing her passion for storytelling and innovation in the digital space.
- Luis Tun is a creative marketer, content creator, and founder of Tu Creative, a marketing agency built on the mission of empowering individuals and businesses to achieve their goals through impactful storytelling and data-driven strategies. As a USC and Society 53 and Goldman Sachs alumnus, Luis blends technical expertise with creative innovation to help clients realize their full potential.
Key Insights from the Personal Branding Panel:
Q: How do you define personal branding, and what key steps can someone take to start building their personal brand effectively?
- Nila: On Instagram, I’m more of a personable person and present myself to friends and family, whereas on LinkedIn I showcase myself more professionally. I think it really depends on who your audience is and for you to be able to build your personal brand effectively, it’s really understanding first who you are and who you’re presenting yourself to. And also how you want to present yourself. So what do you want at the end of the day for them to think of you?
- Luis: Every different company has created a marketing strategy to be top of mind and whatever the consumer is. Whatever it is, like you want to be known for something and developing a personal brand is essentially doing that. And it’s thinking about it backwards. What do you want to be known for? Do you want to be known in the fashion industry? Then work backwards to know, like, “Okay, What do I want to be known in fashion? Is it sustainable fashion?” Whatever your end goal is, you work backwards to get to whatever you want to get to.
Q: What advice would you give to someone who’s just starting to use AI tools for personal branding, especially if they feel overwhelmed by the technology?
- Luis: You first need to do the work and ask yourself some questions. One, what do you want to be known for? Two, what is the value that you have and what are people coming to you for? What comes naturally to you and feels like play? Once you answer those questions, then you can use AI to either refine those answers and give you ideas in order to be able to pivot into it.
- Nila: A lot of us are using AI, but also AI is so easily detected. It comes down to making sure you’re not using AI entirely because that will let you lose your credibility, which can really hurt your personal brand. I would say really just make sure to give proper instructions and ask it to like give you multiple ideas. Feel free to even use different adjectives for it to kind of match your personal brand and energy as well.
Q: How can AI be leveraged to enhance content creation and personal branding without losing authenticity? And are there any cautions that you’d like to share with respect to building their personal brand?
- Luis: You have to have the ability to tell the story and be able to know what the story’s core messaging is and why it’s important, in order for the AI tool to polish it and to make it even more succinct and more direct and however you want it.
- Nila: I also wanted to mention, just like a personal experience, watching AI not do the best for some people. I’m sure when it comes to recruiters and even people providing job opportunities, this is something that they’re always alarmed for because if you’re putting that much effort and just generating your whole resume or a cover letter with AI – that means that when it comes to your actual work in the workplace, you might not also be putting your 100%. So these are just some things to be cautious about. It’s definitely very important to use AI, but make sure it’s very aligned with yourself and it feels personal.
Watch the workshop recording on our Youtube Channel as well as the rest of our 2025 AI Career Series Workshops.
