#MyUBEducation: UB alum outlines his journey from CAS student to Twitter exec

Twitter brings the world together. And it brought Joel Lunenfeld back to Buffalo for the first time in 17 years.

Lunenfeld is vice president for global brand strategy at Twitter and a member of the UB Class of ‘99.  He was invited back to his alma mater by the College of Arts and Sciences to connect with students, faculty, staff and alumni to share insights about the path that led him to work for one of the Top 10 social networks in the world.

In one of several talks he gave last Thursday at UB, Lunenfeld — an engineering-turned-anthropology major — said he had an “obsession with culture” and that obsession provoked his curiosity about how much people have in common, regardless of their backgrounds.

While at UB, he held a part-time job as a student admissions recruitment specialist, an internship with the Buffalo Sabres and membership to Sigma Alpha Epsilon, all of which, he said, provided him with the building blocks to begin honing his marketing and entrepreneurial skills.

Reflecting back on his UB education, Lunenfeld said three things — storytelling, culture and creativity — were his greatest takeaways.   

 But at the time, there was no way to predict what lay ahead.

“Someone showed me the internet,” he said. “I was preparing for a career that didn’t exist yet, so what are students studying today that will be foundational for careers in the future?”

His college self would have needed to study ethnography and symbols of culture over time to understand what today Twitter can capture in a second. “Now, you literally get to look in a window and see culture moving at the speed of light,” he said.

After graduation, Lunenfeld led the digital agency Moxie as CEO for 10 years and then started his career at Twitter, where he’s been for five years. As vice president for global brand strategy, he has worked to bring the advertising campaigns of some of the world’s top brands to the Twitter platform. More recently, his brand marketing mastery has turned internal, focused on Twitter’s own look and messaging.

Though it boasts 340 million monthly users, Twitter is still often misunderstood. “A lot of people think Twitter is a social network for family and friends when really it’s a global platform for news and information,” Lunenfeld explained. He said that conversations take place there between celebrities and fans, politicians and voters, and even between embassies around the globe. Twitter is now breaking into live streaming capabilities that allow users to watch world events — and converse about them — interactively in real time.

Lunenfeld characterized the Twitter work environment as fast-paced, collaborative and addicting. “It reminds me of being on campus. It’s a collection of really smart people immersed in conversations about ideas,” he said. And though he’s modest about his contributions, his accomplishments earned him a spot in the American Advertising Federation’s Advertising Hall of Achievement, recognizing professionals under 40 who have made a mark on the industry.

Leaving Buffalo to head back to San Francisco following his appearance, Lunenfeld tweeted, “Thanks for the incredible day @UBuffalo @ubalumni @UBCAS... and for teaching me how to take the bull by the horns!”