In My Own Words

Interview Transcript

Hey, you! Yeah you. So you're interested in learning more about me? Well, let's get started!

Talk about your career path

I’m a multi-disciplined creative strategist and versatile generalist with over 10 years experience in graphic design, 5 in digital marketing, and a lifetime of creative writing. Currently I’m winding down an aggressive timeline in CareerFoundry’s UX Bootcamp and will be starting my frontend web development specialization shortly.

Much of my career was spent in traditional print design until mass layoffs created an opportunity for entrepreneurship which began my transition to digital marketing—web design, non-coding development, social media marketing, and copywriting, to be more specific. It was an unpaid invoice that returned me to the traditional workforce and the most exciting, versatile, and educational experience of my career.

Hired in the subordinate role of content creator and publisher, my manager resigned the day before I started and made her exodus in the middle of my would-be training, creating an opportunity for me to do for my new company what I’d done for my clients—enhance their digital presence.

Within 6 months I had my first promotion and all of digital marketing was mine. That’s when I realized I love doing it all and the more knowledge I had in the digital marketing and tech world, the happier I would be in my career.

What single project or task would you consider your most significant career accomplishment to date?

A minor part of the aforementioned role was to send out an email a month. I agreed to help my team out by doing that after that job owner was laid off. Now this was something I had no prior experience with and was accomplished by duplicating old emails and updating the copy.

Never content with mediocrity, I took this as a challenge—a self-assigned project and an educational opportunity. I got financial approval from my VP to take an email masterclass at Digital Summit that summer and returned on that investment by researching and switching our CRM, saving my department over $10K a year while adopting a platform that allowed me to easily create my own automated workflows, segment communication, build out an API to connect our database allowing me access to our more than 50K leads and student population, create new email journeys, A/B and subject line test, just to name a few.

The outcome of this undertaking was the creation of an email strategy that actually rendered results. It created a 7% increase in our online enrollment, a 15-20% average open rate that helped improve connections between prospective students and admissions, while contributing to a 25% compound annual growth rate for our team.

What have you done professionally that is an experience you would not want to repeat?

I twice unwittingly accepted a role that promised diversity but, unfortunately, didn’t deliver. Though the circumstances were quite different, the results were pretty much the same. Both claimed to want me for my broad experience but in reality what was asked of me was truly basic. Both paid very well and used about 40-60% of my skills. Easy money—but oh so boring. I want to travel and be able to enjoy the superficial things in life, so a 6-digit salary is kinda important but with an expectation of spending more than 90K hours of my lifetime working, enjoyment is a requisite.

Is it better to be perfect and late or good and on time?

I strive for perfection in everything that I do. Always. I’m constantly aiming to better at work, at play, in my personal life. I want my name to be synonymous with impeccable quality.

So I strive for perfection at all times.

But I never achieve it because it doesn’t exist. So if my goal is to be perfect and late, I’ll never show up and who does that serve? To be good and on time benefits all involved. It allows for growth. It creates space for iterative improvements and baby steps toward that ever elusive perfection which, by its nature, generates continued advancement, be it in myself or in a product or service.