The Transfer…

My experience to this point has been widely varied. My initial college experience was as a music major at Northeastern State University in Oklahoma. After a year and a half, I transferred to a tiny private college in Lakeland Florida called Southeastern College (now, Southeastern University). I received my Bachelors and promptly entered professional youth ministry for close to three years, working at churches in both Oklahoma and North Carolina. I returned to Oklahoma from Charlotte and went back to college, this time to be an educator. Three years later, I emerged and began teaching English and Yearbook at my high school alma mater in a very large, progressive district in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Five years into teaching, I began pursuing my Masters at Oklahoma State University. I made the decision to return to a previous interest that had been quietly hibernating during my years as a high school English teacher: marketing. Three years later, I completed my MBA with a concentration in Marketing.

After a couple of marketing internships, it became time for me to “transfer” into the corporate world (hence, the title of this blog). After eight years of teaching, in July of 2008, I made the decision to accept a position at the PennWell Corporation in Tulsa, Oklahoma as the Online Editor for one of their trade publications (Power Engineering magazine). While was not in the marketing department per se, my position included many marketing responsibilities. My primary, title-oriented duties included producing a weekly e-newsletter (a companion piece for the magazine), maintaining the home page of the magazine’s website, creating podcasts and webcasts, and participating in company trade shows. I would also trendwatch, compile usage reports, write copy, take part in search engine optimization, read and review press releases, and create banner ads, among other things. I would use a content management system daily and I regularly used PhotoShop, Clickability, and the Office suite. I would also occasionally use Adobe Acrobat, InDesign, and InCopy.

My most recent stop on the career path has been as Web Content Strategist for PennEnergy—a web-only PennWell product. The site is a portal for PennWell’s power and petroleum properties. I help decide on site content and placement of that content. I also provide input on site initiatives, products, and services. Ambiguous title, ambiguous duties. The job is project-oriented, and I may be working on two completely different things in successive weeks. It’s a young site (and a young, progressive group), and I like it.

My specific marketing focus (as you may have noticed in my blog posts) has been that of services marketing as it pertains to a company’s brand. However, my previous experiences position me to contribute with some expertise in church marketing and in marketing to teens. Social media (if that term is not already outdated) is also a particular interest of mine.

I’ll just leave it at that for now.