Career Path Of A Partnerships Manager At Paradigm Strategy

Absolutely. I'll give a disclaimer that my path might not be the most traditional in sales, but I'm happy to share more background on it.

I started off attending college at the University of Arizona, where I studied public management and policy. Going into college and throughout, my plan had always been to become a lawyer, as there are quite a few lawyers in my family.

During my junior year, I chose to minor in business administration. I started chatting with more people about their majors and people in the business school. Business always stayed in the back of my mind as a possible alternative career path, but I still thought law school was the route I would go.

Like many people, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do after graduation. I didn't feel completely set on law school and didn't want to take on more student loan debt if I wasn't 100% sure.

So, I decided to move to San Francisco during the height of the tech industry's growth. There were certainly a lot of jobs and opportunities, so I started looking for work there. I began my career as a technical recruiter at a large recruiting company.

My role involved finding folks to fill software engineer roles for large companies like StubHub and McKesson across a variety of industries. While I learned a lot, I realized recruiting wasn't exactly for me, and I wasn't wanting to be in such a large company at that time.

I really wanted to capitalize on being in San Francisco and the startup culture there. So, I joined a small startup and decided to focus on sales. The aspects of recruiting I enjoyed were connecting with people, building relationships, and helping them through a process.

I joined a company now known as Copper, which sold customer relationship management software, similar to Salesforce but on a much smaller scale, if you're not familiar with CRM software. That was my first entry-level sales role. We were a small company, and I was employee number 50, one of the first SDRs.

I learned a tremendous amount in my time there. Joining a smaller software startup without many built-out processes, where the company was also learning as it went, presented many challenges. However, it really lit a fire in me and instilled the mentality that you have to be a self-starter, ask questions, and put yourself out there.

I worked hard and was promoted into an account executive role. My role shifted from setting up calls for account executives to take to conducting demos and closing business myself. I felt I grew a lot in that role and outgrew it before the company was ready for another position for me.

Life also brought changes, and I ended up moving to Southern California, which was quite a different job landscape than San Francisco. I bounced around a little bit from there. I joined a financial technology company, which was again a big challenge and outside my comfort zone.

I realized I wasn't super passionate about the industry I was selling in, which made it challenging. A recruiter approached me about joining a company in the fitness management space, which was more up my alley.

I decided to join Glow Fox and was one of their first account executives focused on expanding into the enterprise market. They had primarily sold to small and medium-sized businesses, and I was going to help them move upmarket, which was something I wanted to grow in and was ready to tackle in my sales career. I really loved it and was excelling there.

Then COVID happened, and as you can imagine, the fitness industry was severely impacted. There was a shift in my role, which ultimately led me to look elsewhere. This was the biggest pivot in my career, moving from selling a product in a traditional SaaS sales role into joining a company called FlockJ.

FlockJ was more service-based and in the diversity, equity, and inclusion space, which is what I'm also in now and incredibly passionate about. I followed my passion and things that mattered to me, which has led me to my current role at Paradigm.

What's cool about Paradigm is that they have software products, so I'm still flexing that side of my brain that I grew in sales. They also have a service and consulting component. They are a full-service DEI strategy firm that supports companies with their DEI efforts through products and services.

I've also grown from having more direct sales experience into my current role, which is more partnerships-focused. So, that's a little bit about me and my background and how I got to my current role.