Her Story
About Jessica
I started my career right out of school as a broadcast reporter, working as a weekend reporter and breaking news reporter, covering stories at all hours of the day. My husband used to be a college basketball coach, so we were both on the same track of moving around a lot. We started out in West Lafayette, Indiana together, and then moved to Missouri State in Springfield, Missouri where I worked as a morning anchor, getting up every day at 3 a.m. and covering the morning news from 5 to 8:30, then coming out and reporting the rest of the shift. I was there when the Joplin tornado happened, which was probably one of the bigger stories I ever covered as a reporter at that time. That reporting background experience was really critical for what I do now, because so much of our work centers around making a reporter's job easier. We do a lot of crisis management work too, so understanding what the reporter wants to know, how to prepare information ahead, and what the visuals are going to look like is essential. When I started at BAM Marketing, we didn't have a public relations division - it started with me as a team of one, and now we've grown to a team of five. Our day is really evenly divided between writing stories, doing interviews with clients, talking to clients, and working through strategic communications efforts. We have over 25 clients that we work with, in addition to Shriners Children's where we do national PR for them in all 20 of their markets. We work with a wide variety of clients, from gardening and home topics to doctors about scoliosis treatments to horse racing and casino clients. A lot of our work is about getting free media opportunities, but it's also about overarching strategic communication goals - what are we trying to say, how are we trying to say it, and how are we positioning the brand to the public. Crisis communications is always something I'm there to help with when it comes up, and when you have 25 clients, it happens probably more frequently than we'd all like.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Jessica
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I ever received was to make sure I stay in contact with the strong female leaders and mentors I've worked with, because you never know when they'll come back around. I remember someone telling me this along the way, and I have seen that really be true. Some of my former colleagues and my former news director, I still work with her now - I'm sending her stories and she's trying to make sure the stories get coverage. So it's great to see how those connections can build on each other.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
The most important thing I look at, even when I'm hiring people, is to always be very curious and always be willing to learn and dig in hard. I think in the beginning, you always have to be willing to grind a little bit, and when you're young, you do have to be willing to really put the time in. You have to really be curious, you have to be willing to learn, and just open yourself up to any opportunities that come your way. Always look at everything as a learning opportunity, especially the setbacks. I would also say finding mentors and finding people that you do look up to, that you can learn from - I think that's been one of the biggest benefits for me at this company. I've been very lucky that along my path, I've always had some really strong female leaders. Being at a woman-owned company, there's a lot of great female leaders within our company, and I'm lucky to now be one of them.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
As the media market continues to change over the next 10 years, I think really developing more ways to have owned content - meaning content that you're creating for the clients - is going to continue to be important. I think just always trying to be on the cutting edge of what's next in the world of PR and in terms of social media and marketing is critical. We're looking to grow and be of value to our clients still.
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