Major(s): Environmental Studies
What is your current role? What was your journey in arriving there?
I oversee our long-term investment in brand, a chief communications officer. My route was circuitous: degrees in E&ES from Wesleyan, master’s in journalism from Columbia, reporter and editor for newspapers and magazines for about 7 years, then transitioned to marketing and communications, mainly for scientific and technical organizations. Geology gave me comfort and confidence to move easily between spatial and temporal scales – from micro to giga – and journalism gave me some facility in truth-centered storytelling, which is the essence of marketing.
What do you enjoy about your work? What do you struggle with?
Greatest joy is collaborating with colleagues to solve challenging problems and to stay several steps ahead of the competition. Our industry, like so many, is undergoing consolidation, which presents both opportunities and challenges for a mid-size firm. While we cannot compete on price with mom & pop operations, and we cannot compete on turn-key solutions with global masters of our universe, we can compete on value and expertise.
How did your time at Wesleyan influence your career choice/journey?
I was lucky to have open- and renaissance-minded professors who were less interested in cultivating clones of themselves and more interested in teaching us how to think, how to cultivate good judgment, and how to manage risk. In some ways, the enlighten environment at Wesleyan spoiled me since great thinking at that level was in short supply early my career.
Do you have any advice for students thinking about entering your industry?
Every industry, and every company, has explicit and tacit rules (mores might be a better word) for who advances, who is listened to, and who is viewed as “one of us.” Learn in detail, how the company makes and loses money and to best understand what is valued, study the behavior of its top leaders. Pay more attention to what people do and less to what they say or claim. Heed to old cliché: culture eats strategy for lunch.
Updated February 27, 2024
