Refinery29 Article

“Unfortunately, due to COVID happening, a lot of peoples’ offers got rescinded, a lot of people were thinking about taking a gap year because a lot of schools aren’t being very good about room and board,” says Maia Ervin, chief of staff at JUV Consulting. JUV is the biggest and most popular Gen Z consulting agency — it’s entirely run by people under 24 and it’s worked with brands like VSCO and Jansport. According to Ervin, the company got twice as many applicants this summer. “The interest was very high and I hate the fact that it was very high due to the pandemic.”

So, what kind of work is Gen Z consulting, actually? Ervin admits, “We get a lot of TikTok inquiries.” But mostly, JUV places consultants with brands, companies, and teams looking to understand Gen Z. They want insight into the data collected about young people, they want to know how to use certain social media platforms, and they want more information about Gen Z's interests. Sandra Salvatierra, 20, works on JUV’s creative team and while her days have been full of meetings and emails, she feels confident she’s doing more than just giving big companies the tools they need to squeeze money out of her generational peers: “Not only do we want people to understand us, we want them to understand us so they can empower us, so they aren’t just using us as a marketing ploy or just another target audience. We’re people, at the end of the day, and people deserve to be understood.”

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