Jacqueline Aguirre

I'm going to be honest with you, I attribute my success to myself. I haven't had it easy since I started. I graduated during the recession, got a job, but then had to fight tooth and nail to get that bigger corporate comms role at a big company like I wanted. I remember being so tired from interviews, just interview after interview, trying to get in the door. There were definitely happy moments and accomplishments, but I had to push myself because there were no mentors for most people. You're lucky if you get promoted. It has been a tried and true experience of the female experience in corporate America since I've gone through my career. I've gone through it all, and that's one of the reasons I have Work Well Club, because we talk about these real conversations about what you do when you have a female boss that won't promote you just because, or how you get around the nuances of work when you're ambitious and don't allow these experiences to diminish your ambition. My career progression has been completely mine, standing up for myself, advocating for myself, asking for things, learning, staying late, getting in early, and the people that took a chance on me.

A big challenge right now are layoffs. People are really being affected by layoffs, because communications and PR roles, especially those higher-paying jobs with great benefits, tend to be at bigger companies that are the ones doing the layoffs. So I tell people to network as much as you possibly can, because you never know, you might leave and then pick up another job right away because you knew somebody at a different company. In terms of communications as a function, I think we're really up against AI right now. Not in a bad way, but in understanding how to utilize it properly. There's not a lot of best practices around how to use AI for your benefit. I'm a big proponent of AI and understanding how to use it ethically. As writers, I think using it as a thought assistant or editor is a good idea, but not allowing it to take over your work. Still challenge yourself to sit there and write the piece, write it well, and then use AI to fact-check, do grammar, do style, help zhuzz up what you're trying to say, but ethically, not allowing it to zhuzz it up so much that it's not you anymore, because you need your voice still. I just don't think companies have caught up yet with streamlining ethically and really teaching communicators how to use AI efficiently, effectively, but also ethically. I also think PR specifically is changing a lot. People are getting away from old-school public relations like getting featured in a magazine or online article. People want short and sweet now, so publications are already ahead of the curve, posting and doing features on social media like TikTok, where we all are and get those quick snaps.