Career Path of a Director of Marketing at Hedley and Bennett

I went to school in Connecticut at a small liberal arts college. Initially, I thought I wanted to go into psychology and majored in Neuroscience. However, it was a very pre-med track at Trinity, so I decided to pivot into economics and a bit of math, minoring in French. Economics is great because it's generalized and provides a good way of thinking through the basics of business. This felt like a good foundational place for me, and it started a very generalized journey that's always been a theme throughout my career.

Throughout college, my internships were pretty random, based on relationships I had in Boston through friends and family. I started out as an accounting intern for my mom in her office, just because I needed a summer job. In previous summers, I'd worked in retail, so I wanted an in-office job. This was an easy transition into administrative work and figuring out what it's like to go to an office.

Right next door to her office was a creative agency that did video production and filmed ads. I'd always been into marketing, so I thought it would be a fun internship. I did that the following summer, and it was great. We had a branding competition in Boston, and we won. It was a nice introduction to the creative world, showing me it was more interesting to be in.

The following summer, I stayed in Boston and worked with startups. I really wanted to go into advertising and marketing, so I applied to a ton of internships during my junior and senior year. I made creative applications and videos that went high profile. I applied to the best ad agencies in New York and Boston without knowing anyone in those fields. I just applied and didn't get any offers, though I got some leads and second rounds. I didn't realize how competitive those spaces were, especially without connections and a background in them.

I didn't end up getting an internship and rushed to AngelList. I thought maybe some cool startup was in the Boston area and found Museum, an AR museum-based app that helps you navigate cultural institutions. It was an awesome experience on a three-person team, much more focused on business development, sales, and being on a small, scrappy team. That was from junior to senior year.

Going into my senior year, I decided to apply to marketing agencies again. This time, I would really do my research and start early. I found an internship or fellowship at Catch & Round, a PR agency that's part of the broader Omnicom group. I loved that these types of internships at media agencies have very structured application processes with clear deadlines and requirements. They even gamified it that year, where you anonymously compete with everyone on a creative brief, and there's a chat room.

I ended up getting the internship, and that was my first job out of college, working in PR. This involved everything from sending out media requests and contracting influencers to packaging gifts and seeding for influencers, and also brainstorming bigger creative ideas and campaigns. It was a fun start, but thinking back to my economics background, it didn't feel quantitative enough or robust from a business perspective.

I was then recruited onto the 2020 Census campaign as part of an advertising agency, working in a project coordinator role. I helped manage the budget and our 17 contractors for the campaign. This was a huge, half-a-billion-dollar government campaign. In DC, if you're there, they'll find you and pull you into a government campaign. This started my jack-of-all-trades marketing background: I had PR, exposure to different sides of putting together an advertising campaign, business development, organization, project management, and finance.

By that point, I felt a little too generalized. I saw the industry going toward digital marketing. My fiancé, who was my boyfriend at the time, was trying to figure out which PhD program to go to and got into Emory University. This gave me an opportunity to move from DC to Atlanta. About a year into my role, I felt I needed to niche a bit, aligning with where the industry was going.

I applied to a digital marketing consulting role at Boston Consulting Group. They were still building out their digital marketing practice, so I came in at ground level as a core member of their marketing practice. I consulted specifically for digital marketing and did these very buzzwordy, agile test-and-learn programs. We'd go to bigger clients as part of big digital transformations and set up experimentation processes. This was basically to take existing teams and make them cross-functional between marketing, sales, and finance organizations, having them work towards sprint goals. It was a bit like how tech figures out all the variables and things that will help them unlock a strategic objective.

That was sweet and awesome. I moved with that role from Atlanta to Los Angeles, where I am now. My fiancé ended up switching his PhD program in his second year. That gave me a ton of amazing skills and expertise, which I can call digital marketing, at least at that point. I also gained experience in client management and strategic management consulting, working with big clients and incredible partners at BCG. It was such a wonderful strategic business experience.

It was great for two years. I feel like a lot of people in consulting have a goal of what they want to get out of it and then plateau. That's how it felt for me. I specifically wanted to get digital marketing experience and exposure to different types of clients, as I wasn't sure what industry I wanted to land in. That's why I stayed in client service for so long.

Now, I'm at Headley & Bennett, an apron manufacturing company. Actually, as soon as next week, we're launching a new product and becoming a bigger kitchen goods brand. I'll say I started as a lifecycle marketing manager, a senior manager, focused on email, SMS, and customer insights. Through a recent restructure in June, I was promoted into leading our marketing team. That has totally expanded and allowed me to leverage a lot of that generalized skillset. That's been my career path so far. I'm still navigating new management experience, but my role is equivalent to a marketing director.