Marian Spencer Scholar Marcus Elliott graduates as a leader

As a teen, Elliott didn’t like interacting with individuals he didn’t know. He remembers asking his mom to do the talking for him at the counter when they would visit a McDonald’s. Now he’s just weeks away from graduating with a bachelor’s degree in marketing from UC’s Carl H. Lindner College of Business and starting a job as a sales agent with Whitehorse Freight, a transportation services company in Crestview Hills, Kentucky.

During his four years at the University of Cincinnati, Elliott has figured out how to be a leader, experienced the importance of friendship, benefited from the gift of mentorship and ultimately determined why scholarship and knowledge matters. He credits a life-changing pathway offered at UC — the Marian Spencer Scholarship program — for the transformation.

Elliott was part of the first cohort of students who were awarded the scholarship which covers undergraduate tuition, housing, living expenses, service-learning opportunities and more for high-achieving Cincinnati Public Schools graduates. The students formed a living-learning community and were housed together on campus for their first year in Marian Spencer Hall, and they traveled abroad for a service-learning project in Tanzania.

“Coming in with those friends was amazing for me and just being able to learn and have that support was crucial,” explains Elliott. “I mean it’s literally been my entire foundation as a scholar offering just everything: friendship, mentorship and leadership.”

Two of his best buds — Jalen Tucker and Maxwell Lawson — are also Marian Spencer Scholars. Tucker is a senior majoring in cybersecurity and Lawson graduated with a degree in accounting in December and is now working on a master’s of business administration degree at UC.

The trio was dubbed “the Three Musketeers” by one UC administrator during their service learning trip to Tanzania after their first year at UC because they were inquisitive and inseparable. So it’s no surprise Tucker and Lawson are among Elliott’s biggest supporters.

When Elliott, a first-generation college student, entered UC’s Carl H. Lindner College of Business, he turned to friend Lawson for advice.

“It’s not hard for me to make friends, but it’s hard for me to reconcile the idea of going out and making friends,” explains Elliott. “It’s more likely, if I am in a room with you we will eventually have a conversation. But having Max available for that mentorship was so helpful. He taught me about LinkedIn and how to get started. He told me that it’s all about connections and that I needed to talk to people.”

“And Jalen is one of my closest friends,” adds Elliott. “He’s teaching me how to drive. When you have a community like that, it’s powerful and is as important as the financial support in terms of opening doors. If you have four people in your life and three of them are rock-solid and have your back, you have someone to go to when times are tough.”

When Elliott first entered UC he couldn’t decide on a field of study so he was an exploratory studies major. It was a chance to learn about different disciplines and he discovered that marketing and sales suited him best. His classes that emphasized professional selling, sales management and strategic selling appealed.

He spent one summer working as a ticket sales representative with FanGate Solutions at the Kentucky Derby. He sold tickets to fans face-to-face and posted to social media to build hype for upcoming and current events the company handled.

Another summer Elliott handled marketing and fan engagement as part of an unpaid internship with UC Athletics. Elliott worked 20 hours a week.

He was a jack-of-all-trades, conducting pre-game and in-game entertainment such as trivia contests, fan cams and interactive games along with posting photos of videos to social media of an event. “That was a pretty nice internship. I was working football games, helping to set up halftime shows and handling a lot of stuff that happens behind the scenes.”

UC's nationally-ranked cooperative education program (co-op) opened the door to several real-world learning opportunities for Elliott.

Elliott currently works in UC's Office of the President as a student worker. He usually dresses in a shirt and tie to welcome visitors to the sixth floor of University Pavilion. Lots of important people visit that suite, and Elliott is also perfecting the art of connections.

“The way that it’s set up now is that there’s always two students at the front desk, and we basically greet everyone who gets off of the elevator,” explains Elliott. “We handle a lot of the logistics, like answering the phone calls, or if there’s an event coming up and we have to coordinate parking. It’s just been great working at the President’s office and meeting so many people.”

“You are who you surround yourself with, so being around those high-value and high-achieving people, you know, it just pushes you even further.”

Aleque Sobkowiak, senior director of planning and operations in the Office of the President, says Elliott has made an important contribution to her office.

“Marcus has been a valued member of a vital team of students who support the President’s Office,” she explains. “Over the course of four years, we’ve had the opportunity to witness his growth. It’s been rewarding to see him develop his confidence and take on new challenges academically. We’re proud to have supported him as a Spencer Scholar and wish him all the best as he begins the next chapter of his career.”

Success in the business world is important to Elliott but so is making a larger contribution to society. He credits that lesson to his two week service-learning trip to Tanzania with Village Life Outreach, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting poverty, improving education and making health care and clean water more accessible in northern Tanzania.

Elliott and a dozen other UC students were part of a cultural awareness and fact-finding mission. It took him on a 16-hour flight — his first time on an airplane — from Cincinnati to East Africa. He was high-fiving schoolchildren, interviewing Tanzanian educators about their school system and visiting medical facilities within the region. Those insights and collaboration with his fellow Spencer Scholars were the basis of a report Elliott presented to a UC supporter at the summer’s end.

The experience motivated Elliott to take a course at UC on modern Africa and understand how forces like colonialism, independence movements and current events shape the continent.

“I think that was a really beautiful journey, and it also has inspired me to want to give back to the world,” says Elliott. “I want to be a philanthropist. I want to be able to change lives on a greater scale than we were able to when we went to Tanzania. That’s what I want to be able to do some day.”

In the future, Elliott hopes to write an autobiography.

His journey from shy Cincinnati teen to Marian Spencer Scholar and sales professional shows how the University of Cincinnati’s full-ride scholarship and support system can transform first-generation students into confident leaders and global citizens.