Seneca News

Marta Tryshak has a blog where she will let you know if it’s time to spice up your wardrobe with a jumpsuit, if it’s worth spending $100 on that concealer you badly want, if it’s time for a career change or if a Porsche can handle ice. She will take you on a cyber trip to Moët Hennessy’s suite for champagne tasting, to Jimmy Choo’s first store in Toronto and to a Louis Vuitton gala. Looking for skin care? Tryshak will gladly share her skin regimen, using the same creams as Jennifer Aniston and Kim Kardashian, with more than 110,000 followers of hers.

At Seneca, Tryshak, a professor of digital marketing at the School of Hospitality & Tourism, will teach you how to turn such passion for online-sharing into a money-spinner.

“Everybody puts out a perfect picture and everyday life is far from being that,” Tryshak said. “I think it is not the illusion of perfection that is beautiful, but the honest process of life itself. There’s no shame in sharing it. If I can have a positive impact on one person to pursue their dream and not be afraid to take one step towards what they want out of their lives, especially in their career, that is all I can hope for.”

Tryshak brings to students at Seneca her experience and expertise as a highly successful business woman. She is the co-founder and managing partner of Trymus Group, which helps clients adapt to social media in their digital marketing efforts. She has been named one of Marketing Magazine’s Top 30 Under 30 and she appears weekly on E! News Canada’s Celebrity Style Story as a fashion contributor. The former model is also a special correspondent on eTalk and a recipient of multiple awards that recognize personal branding and marketing excellence.

With an Instagram account that’s a slideshow of high fashion, career highlights and her passion for arts and travel — with nearly 60,000 followers to boot — glamour is second nature to Tryshak. However, when she first started writing her blog With Love Gabrielle 12 years ago, she was a  “frustrated” architecture student studying for an exam.

“I was stressed and feeling down,” she recalled. “Then I started reading about Blogspot, which at that point was similar to a diary, and I said, ‘I’m going to try this.’”

The blog was an instant hit as Tryshak’s writing resonated with women between the ages of 18 and 34. She soon captured the spotlight as one of Canada’s go-to influencers of fashion. Brands such as la Vie en Rose and Kate Spade sought her out for endorsements and her blog became a money-making business.

Despite her success, Tryshak is hesitant to call herself an influencer on social media. Instead, she positions herself as having fostered a community of like-minded people with whom she is sharing the journey of her life.

That community, these days, includes Tryshak’s students at Seneca.

“I realIy enjoy teaching,” she said. “I don’t think anything else is as rewarding. I’m very passionate about marketing and for me to be able to share the knowledge I’ve gained in the industry and then see students relate to the information and apply it, it is a very gratifying experience.”

While Tryshak admits to having previously said she’d never teach, she, in fact, comes from a family of teachers. Her mother was a professor in Ukraine. Her mother’s parents were teachers and her father’s parents taught chemistry and mathematics in college. Her aunt, too, is a professor. So, when the opportunity to teach digital marketing at Seneca came along this year, Tryshak didn’t just take it, she turned to social media for teaching advice.

“Through a Facebook group, I’ve connected with teachers that are also teaching digital marketing across the world,” she said. “We swap ideas and get feedback. I’m now part of another community and it is incredible to have 130 professors in the same field to share ideas with on how to make classes or assignments more engaging for our students. We live in a very connected world and exchange of ideas is key to growth.”

Even though Tryshak wasn’t sure if she could be “a traditional type of a professor” in the beginning, the well-dressed blogger, who looks as if she has stepped out of the pages of Vogue and into a classroom, hopes her students can relate to her more easy-going approach when she’s teaching.

“It isn’t too long ago when I immigrated to Canada or was in a class like them. I can relate to them,” she said. “Today, between the website, agency and teaching, I’ve never had a busier schedule. But also, I’ve never felt more fulfilled within my career. Teaching has allowed me to pursue a new challenge, one that I’m very passionate about. Hopefully, my class will come out into the world as responsible marketers with dignity and social responsibility.”