Today we’d like to introduce you to Hannah Abbott
Hi Hannah, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, where my older brother was a huge influence on my life. Whatever he was into, I was into. He basically founded all of my passions by introducing them to me, like Youtube, video games, baking. Growing up, I combined two of my favorite things, video games and Youtube and started to make Youtube videos about different video games I played. This started my dream of working in social media. My interests slightly shifted as I grew older to be more focused around trends and pop culture. I would attend different conventions and concerts or just events in general that focused on pop culture and trends to immerse myself into social media. When applying to universities, I discovered that Savannah College of Art and Design had a social media program and applied during the summer before my senior year of high school. I accepted my offer and attended for Social Strategy and Management, but switched majors after a day to Video Game Design. After a year in that program, I realized my true passion was for social media and switched back in Social Strategy and Management.
Some other things that make up who I am is animals. I am a huge animal lover and believe in another life, I am a zoologist or a vet. Animals have also been a driving factor in the things I do and I hope to care for many when I am older. Another thing that makes me who I am is winter, which is very broad, but growing up in Canada, winter had a huge effect on the culture and what we would do. Skiing was an important part of my childhood, along with snowboarding. It was an activity I would do with my family to bond and connect over. As mentioned earlier, social media makes up a lot of my personality. I have always been into influencers and seeing what life is like through other people.
My core values that I have developed over the years are integrity, growth, equality/justice, creativity and balance.
I currently feel like I am still at the beginning of my life and I am waiting to hit that moment in my life where I feel happy or satisfied with what I have done. Moving to a different country for college was huge for me, but it also felt like I had to restart my life in a way because it was something completely new where I knew nothing.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
When I was in kindergarden, I was a huge social butterfly. Got invited to the other kid’s birthday parties, I would talk to everyone, but that slowly went away as I got into grade school. By grade 3, I could already tell I was being treated differently by my classmates around me, and this was mainly due to my interest in video games since I was a girl. I constantly was made fun of and treated differently because of these different interests. It didn’t help that I was falling behind in school with my reading and writing skills, which my friends and classmates would pick up on. I also was finding it hard to maintain friendships. My parents got learning assessments done for me, but nothing came out of them at that time. Later on in grade school, by grade 5 and grade 6, that’s when I really felt like I was starting to struggle socially. The other girls in my classes weren’t wanting to be friends with me, no boys were interested in me and I started to feel alone. When I was in grade 6, in February of 2015, my mom was diagnosed with cancer. Sharing the news with my classmates, all of the sudden, everyone wanted to be friends with me. (Looking back it was some hero complex that now these girls were friends with the misfit girl who’s mom has cancer) I started to make more friends, but it was still hard to maintain friendships. I ended up deciding to switch school for middle school (middle school in Canada is grade 7 and 8) and high school. That summer between grade 6 and 7 was really hard because my mom was sick the entire summer and I was alone with a relative who wasn’t exactly the nicest to me (I’ll spare the details) This caused issues that 11 year old me couldn’t understand, and that ended up with me taking everything out on my mom because she wasn’t around. I began going to therapy to help understand what was happening, where I was diagnosed with ADHD and some learning disabilities relating to reading and writing fluency. It was a weight lifted off my chest and explained some of the challenges I was having. At the beginning of grade 7, my mom had beat cancer, but still needed some follow up treatments. One of these treatments took place on the day of my classmate’s birthday. I had to stay at the birthday late because my mom and dad were at the hospital. When I stayed late at this classmate’s birthday, I ended up getting sexually assaulted, but I didn’t understand or realize what I had happened until grade 10. Years went by of me not understanding until I got to the age where I could realize what had happened. It was a lot for me to take in and I ended up telling a few people, but then a few people turned into several, and soon enough, my entire grade found out. I was made fun of, asked invasive questions, harassed by people, which all resulted in me switching schools. I switched schools for grade 11 and grade 12, which started off amazing, but then Covid-19 hit and I was left alone with nothing, but my thoughts and the untreated trauma I went through. I ended up getting fairly sick with an eating disorder during this time and had to go to therapy and miss classes due to my mental health. It was really scary because I wasn’t close to anyone, so I found video game communities online to cheer me up. A lot of healing from these situations happened once I got to university where people understood and accepted me and I didn’t need to be known for anything that happened back home, part of the perks of going to a school out of your home country. Sometimes it is hard to remember things that happened to me when I was younger, however, they did lead me to where I am today, which I am happy about.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I have always been a creative. Right from when I was little, my favorite activity was art, my favorite class at school was art, everything about being creative, I loved. My major at university is Social Strategy and Management, which to sum it up quickly is social media advertising. This major allows me to create unique forms of advertising on social media for brands to connect with an audience. Social media is growing so quickly and consumers really connect with brands that have creative strategies to keep them as a customer and I love developing tactics for brands on social media to create those connections. On top of my major, I am also minoring in Painting. Painting has always been something I loved and I wanted to take my skills to the next level by adding it as a minor. Being able to paint anything helps me destress and I love being able to make others happy with what I paint. Recently, I have been most proud of my concept developing for both social media related topics and painting. Developing concepts driven by my personal experiences has made me thrill.
I am super passionate about early child development and teaching art fundamentals, so in the summer time I teach youth (ages 4-15 years old) art. The programming I teach ranges from clay, to drawing, to painting. This past summer I taught 4-6 year olds art, but the previous 2 summers before that, I taught 10-15 year olds.
Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
I am on LinkedIn and I am always looking out to make new connections and possibilities to work with people. Along with my LinkedIn, I just launched my website which contains some of my work, about me, and more information with my resume. I plan to add a commissions section on my website for painting very soon.
www.hannahabbott.com
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.hannahabbott.com
