What inspired you to pursue a career in ad tech/marketing, and how did you get started in the industry?
I was an English major, set on becoming a famous novelist. But, I didn’t want my first book to be a coming of age book (YA wasn’t quite as well a developed category as it is now), so I thought that going into advertising would help me develop stories that would inform The Next Great American Novel. And the agency that hired me was a B2B direct mail shop, which set me on the trajectory of being a list broker and then on to digital. My first digital agency developed IP which we sold to DoubleClick, and the rest is history.
PS I’m only now working on my first novel, and it has nothing to do with advertising.
Can you share a pivotal moment in your career that helped shape you as a leader?
Years ago, the agency I worked at was hiring someone to build out their paid search practice. The person we wound up hiring had been at an early company in the space, which had many years of glory before it slowly fell apart due to the rise of Google. I asked this person why they stayed at that company for so long after it peaked. And they said, “I was there when it grew, and that was fun. I learned something and I made money. And then when it started to lose ground, I still was learning something, and that was interesting, so I stayed. Now, I feel like I’ve learned what I can, and now I’m ready to move on.”
I think about that a lot, because some of the biggest opportunities I’ve had to learn were in the failures: when my agency lost an anchor client, when an ad tech company I worked for was losing business because our tech was not meeting our client requirements, when I had a bad client meeting. Failure is when growth happens.
I’ve taken up gardening in the past couple of years, and it’s the same thing: pruning encourages new shoots.
What do you believe are the most important qualities of an effective leader in the ad tech/marketing space?
Curiosity, willingness to understand the technical nuances of our industry (pick at least one place where you go really deep), collaboration. And now, I’m finding that a much deeper respect for neurodiversity is critical. Not everyone needs to be able to “read the room” or be “client ready” to have an important role on the team It’s up to us as leaders to seek out and develop diverse teams especially as our industry has become more technical while requiring a great deal of creativity.
What advice would you give to young women looking to enter ad tech or any other technology-driven field?
Get a mentor. There are so many of us out there, willing to share our mistakes and cringe moments, and to listen when you say it’s hard. Don’t be scared of showing vulnerability, or see that as some kind of gender normative thing that you/society need to get past. Vulnerability and its partner, empathy, are both things our business world desperately needs.
If there’s a woman who has inspired or mentored you in your career, can you share that story?
JoAnna Foyle. She was my first real mentor and coach, and I followed her twice over the course of 15 years. She showed me how to be strong and also vulnerable, taught me the value of integrity in the workplace and in life, and has a wicked sense of humor. I still look to her for advice and perspective, even though it’s been almost 10 years since we’ve worked together.