Success Story: Samantha Trabattoni ’19 earns Barneys internship

Success Stories | Oct 11, 2017 | admin

When Samantha Trabattoni, BS ’19, received a call from an unknown number one day, she questioned whether she should pick up. But she decided to answer the phone.

That call, from Greer Jason-DiBartolo, senior assistant dean for undergraduate studies, led to Trabattoni’s internship in the Barneys New York Foundation Summer Intensive program.

“If someone had said to me a year ago Barneys was looking for me, I would have never believed it,” Trabattoni says.

For one reason, she hadn’t been specifically targeting fashion.

While it’s one of her two passions—the other is sports—Trabattoni admits the industry’s reputation for turning people “catty and mean” made her wary.

So when she started the program and found everyone she met at Barneys to be genuinely nice and eager to help, Trabattoni’s concerns quickly faded.

She says it was “so refreshing to see you can be in a high place and have a really impressive job in a cool industry, and still be kind.”

During the program, a social media takeover project required Trabattoni and her team to collaborate to launch a product. Trabattoni’s team focused on finding creative ways to advertise a new lipstick.

“Of course it was fun to text my friends and say, ‘Look at Barneys’ Instagram; I’m on it.’”

It was also gratifying to find that many of the topics discussed by high-level executives in the “real world” were ones she’d already learned about in class.

“People at Barneys wholeheartedly trusted us and wanted our opinions,” she recalls.

That’s why Trabattoni says the best advice she can give to Gabelli School students is to take advantage of the opportunities that already exist.

“I think half the battle is getting the opportunity, and every single person at Fordham has it,” she says. “We’re given so many resources … all these professionals who want us to succeed, teachers who actually care.”

The other half? “Putting in the work and surrounding yourself with good people.”

After surrounding herself with a whole new set of people during her fall semester studying abroad in London, Trabattoni hopes to dip her toes into the sports industry, though she says she’ll be happy as long as she’s with a “company that does something interesting every day.”

One thing’s for sure: when the next opportunity calls, she’ll answer.