Thanks to my early realization of my love for marketing, I took as many communications technology classes as I could at St. John's High School in Perth, ON. (Side note: I seriously couldn't get enough! My teacher had to create assignments for me because I kept finishing everything too quickly LOL!) Once I graduated, I enrolled in a Bachelor's degree of Communications and Media Studies at Carleton University and once I finished my degree, I entered the corporate world.

My mind was blown. I was used to being a one-woman show — coming up with the campaign and doing all the promotion for it myself (three or four people on a project being the most I'd ever worked with). Suddenly there were dozens of hands in a single campaign. Bigger teams, bigger budgets, multiple channels running at once. I seriously learned so much — how to think about strategy from the top down, how to keep a brand consistent when that many people are touching it, how to actually listen to a client and build something that helps them. Those years made me a much stronger marketer than I would have been otherwise.

But alas, somewhere along the way, the people on the other end of the work started to feel pretty distant. In corporate marketing, the goal is often the metric — the open rate, the pipeline number, the conversion. Which makes sense at that scale. But I kept thinking about the customers who came in because they saw something on Instagram. I wasn't getting that anymore — that feeling of truly connecting directly with a human being and helping them find exactly what they were looking for. I missed the version of this work that was based more on community than numbers.