I’ve always been fascinated by marketing and its ability to influence our buying behaviors and perceptions. While other young people were watching commercials for the entertainment, I was dissecting them to figure out the strategy (e.g. why certain types of actors were cast, the psychology behind colors, etc.).

The internship with Ogilvy & Mather was very attractive [to me] because of their reputation and eclectic client roster. During my time there, I learned the ins and outs of the creative process but, most importantly, found my niche in production and operations. Great ideas die quickly without a solid plan in place.

What sets me apart in my profession is my keen focus on and interest in “the business.” I want to create an environment that not only drives delivering initiatives on time and on budget, but also produces great work that moves the needle. The traditional scope of “project management” is to guide the execution. As my career has evolved into managing overall programs versus individual projects, I've challenged myself to look at the bigger picture and contribute to strategic discussions.

I’ve always been passionate about education (self-driven and institutional). To stay relevant, I actively seek out development opportunities such as classes, training, and books. My time at UCLA was part of my master plan to move back into the advertising agency world. I still pull from those core principles today when interacting with various departments.

My advice for someone looking to continuing their education would be to document your goals before signing up for those extra hours. You will need a source of motivation when your studies and work life collide and start competing for your attention.

I decided to move from the agency world because I wanted to take my career to the next level. The startup environment allows you to spread your wings and get involved in various aspects of the business.

A colleague actually introduced me to DSC. We worked together at Saatchi & Saatchi and, when he made the move to DSC, he encouraged me to look into the program management position. The ability to build a department from the ground up was very appealing to my brewing entrepreneurial spirit.  

I like that at a startup, you don't have an outside client. Yes, we have approvers and people who own specific projects, but there isn’t a client you’re trying to please. At an agency, you deliver your work to a client and things inevitably get tweaked or watered down from the original idea/concept. At a startup, we are all invested in producing great work. When an idea/concept wins, we all win. 

The move to DSC was one of the biggest gambles in my career thus far. I’ve found it very rewarding. 

DSC employs more women than you’d think. As we transition into a grooming company [rather than solely a men’s shaving line], women bring a unique perspective because we live and breathe in that space.

I actually do have a morning routine! I usually get up fairly early, and I do a once-over of emails and things I need to react to quickly (because sometimes I’m working with people who are on different schedules). And then I do my Hit List. In my phone, I write down the top five things that I want to walk away from that day with finished. I get ready, and then depending on when my first meeting is, I may take it from home—because sometimes it's not worth sitting in traffic—or I go right into work. 

There's nothing typical about my day once I'm in the office. I balance my time between meetings, roadmap planning, and supporting the project managers. Right now, I manage a team of three, including myself. It’s small on purpose because I want us to be super lean and mean. To be effective, we must manage up, down, and across.

The end of my day is all mental because I know that I hit this wall when it’s like, "OK, I know I’m not being as efficient as I want to be.” Sometimes that’s 5:30, sometimes it’s 8:30, but once I hit that wall, it's time to wrap up.

I usually end my day in the same way I started it. I go through my things that I wanted to get done. Then, I look at my calendar for the next day and, because it’s often so hectic, I block out time to actually do my work. I look at meetings to see if I’m prepared with agendas or if I've missed anything I should think about before I go.

I do keep myself available [after hours] because I would rather know early on that there's an issue so I can walk in prepared rather than people waiting until the next day to tell me. But I do a decent job with turning off. I've gotten better with that as I've gotten older.

The best part of any day is seeing an idea come to fruition. I spend most of my days thinking about the next big thing, so it brings me joy to celebrate our wins in real time.

There hasn’t been any massive evolution, but I do see a slight shift in our focus. I think that when I first started, we were strongly a startup, and we were churning out new features and getting our feet wet. We were setting our foundation. Now that we are a fairly established startup, we’re focusing on efficiency and seeing the best way to go about doing things. It’s more about, “Are we being as productive as we could be? Are we looking at other ways of doing things? Are we stepping outside of our box?”

[On a personal level,] this unique startup culture demands that you leverage your past experience but remain agile and open in your approach. DSC offers competitive career development and a playground for all my opinions, so in the past year, I’ve learned the art of negotiation, the principles of product development, and flexibility. 

The best piece of advice that I can offer a woman interested in a career in marketing is “perception isn’t everything but it definitely counts.” As a woman in marketing, you must learn your communication style and voice quickly and continuously adapt based on your audience to showcase your skills, passion, and character. I would tell my younger self that adversity always comes with an opportunity. 

Throughout the years, my leadership skills have definitely evolved. Early on in my career, I was more focused on leading the team through the execution of a plan. In recent years I also focus on developing soft skills to build relationships across disciplines. I believe breaking down communication barriers is a foundation of good leadership.

Actually, I would say that creating super clean communication lines is the biggest challenge for our team (or any team). Things move so quickly at a startup and, obviously, I’m not doing everything myself. So [leading] involves creating routines and check-ins and relationships to make sure information flows smoothly as you’re moving really, really fast.

Oddly, there are a lot of personnel-related responsibilities that go with my job. My end goal, my accountability piece is to make sure we’re delivering on time and we’re delivering the best product. But in doing that, I’m also dealing with different personalities [and] addressing personnel issues. That might surprise people given my title, but I work with our HR team often to optimize the DSC team and make the most of our people and our resources. 

Definitely. My most memorable mistake with clients involved not going with a “gut feeling.”  After bumping my toes several times, I now always find a venue to express my concerns, so I can champion success.

I’m a self-proclaimed nerd. I wake up in the morning looking forward to learning something new and adding it to my bag of tricks. Just this week I researched regulatory requirements for various consumer good products to prep for a product development project. As for the next step in my career, I want to continue to learn and add to new skills to my toolbox so opportunity will continue to manifest.