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 I 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.