Her Story
About Jesslyn
I've been working in marketing and design for about 12 years. I grew up in a very creative family - both my parents were in art school, and my dad was a designer who started the company I work with now. After graduating with my marketing degree, I was working for Plum Market, a grocery chain, which gave me valuable customer experience and interfacing skills. Throughout my college career, I was always bouncing ideas off my dad, and he encouraged me to give the family business a try. I started part-time in marketing and ended up falling in love with the design side, and I've just never stopped. My primary role is facilitating all the communication between customers, our whole design and engineering team, and suppliers to make sure everybody's staying on track and that the final outcome gets completed in the vision they have. I also educate our customers on the right pathway to take to get the final outcome they're looking for. What drives our design is usability - we're trying to solve current design problems and create something that's more user-focused. My customers call me the Jill of all trades because anytime they don't know how to do something or execute what they're imagining, they know I'll figure it out by learning everything I possibly can to become a subject matter expert.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Jesslyn
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
You don't have to act powerful to be powerful. You don't have to float the egos of men in the room or go to cocktail hours if you're not comfortable with that. If you're comfortable and confident with what you are talking about, speak up about that. Don't be afraid to voice your opinion. If someone in the room is saying something that you strongly feel is a poor direction to go, you are more valuable as an asset to them by actually speaking up and letting them know that they're wrong than trying to just pat them on the back and say good idea. I always speak up, and my customers do value that - I tell them I see why they're making this decision, but I don't believe it's the right path to go, and here's why, and I explain it to them instead of just padding them on their head. I want women to feel more like they have a voice because it's valuable, and not just because they're trying to sweet-talk their way up the corporate ladder. I'm very much in a male-dominated field, and I also get the immediate stigma of nepotism because I'm working for a family company. On top of that, I look way younger than I actually am, which puts a stigma in people's minds that I'm not qualified or that I only got this job because daddy gave it to me. Being a woman, it's really hard sometimes for people to take you seriously because it's very much a boys' club in a lot of industries. Design is very male-dominated, and engineering too. We often come across women who feel that in order to overcome that, they have to float the ego of the men to be able to climb the ladder on a professional level, or act bitchy to prove they are a strong and powerful woman. I very much advocate to every woman I talk to about their profession that you don't need to do that.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge is the current state of the industry with AI and how it's being introduced. It's really been a disruptor. A lot of design ideation is getting replaced with AI, and even in marketing, it's automating a lot of different simple day-to-day marketing activities. Before, it used to be an issue that we would have to try and convince our customers that their design decision wasn't the right design decision because of X, Y, and Z, and we would consult them on that. Now it's like we're having to argue against AI - we understand you think this is the right way to go, but is really AI the best way to build your brand? Because it's gonna too closely align with what a lot of other people are going to be doing. I think that it could be an opportunity - I'm still on the fence. I'm determined to find a way to turn it into an asset rather than a disruptor. Being a woman is also a challenge, not so much in marketing, but in design.
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