Karen Sowa

I attribute my success to supporting and believing in myself and wanting to create a foundation for myself where I can be safe and comfortable in life. I've built my whole career on my own work, and that's important to me. My primary motivation is to take care of myself and my family. Beyond that, what really drives me is my genuine interest in learning about different topics - I love researching and doing deep dives. Although my output may be similar, like I'm always making blog posts or social posts, it's the research behind it that really gets me interested to come to work year over year and see how the industry is changing, what's new, and how things work. That's where it gets interesting for me and what keeps me motivated.

The best career advice I've ever received is to be very observant and to listen to the whole picture before making assumptions. In work, this helps me navigate all the nuances of how business works, the politics, and the complexities of technology. It's easy for anyone to say something confidently, so I like to really be an observer before I speak as an expert. That doesn't mean I don't want to speak at all, but I take time to learn - like if I came into a new job, I wouldn't start the first day saying 'this is our new plan, we're gonna do all these things right now.' I would take time to talk to a lot of people, get different perspectives on what's happening, and then make a plan based on that information. This also helps build respect, which is really important to me in work relationships, whether with teammates, clients, or people in my network. I don't want to just be telling them about me - I want to be hearing about them as well and having a conversation about the overlap. I don't want to just be talking at someone. This approach has been useful throughout my career at every level, whether I was junior or senior, because when you can feel comfortable with someone and they feel like it's a back-and-forth conversation, that's when the interesting conversations happen because you've built a little trust and people feel more comfortable talking.

Stay strong and believe in your gut feelings. If something feels right, then you are probably on to something - just make sure you look into it and feel confident, not just the feeling, but if there is a feeling, it's something worth listening to in yourself. The flip side is also true - if something feels off and doesn't feel right to you, you should listen to that too. Working in tech is a very male-dominated industry still, even though that's getting better every day. The way that business is run is very male-dominated usually, and as you rise in your career, it's inevitable you're gonna come across situations where you feel like a minority in the room. You have to pay attention to your gut the most, and just because someone's telling you something confidently, that doesn't necessarily mean it's true. Research and stay strong with your beliefs, as long as you have backed them in your head. There's nothing wrong with being confident and being contrary, as long as you're doing that in a respectful and intellectual way - you don't have to be a yes person. Sometimes it feels like it when you're sitting in a boardroom and you're the only woman at the table - it's really intimidating, but that doesn't mean you're wrong. In fact, you bringing a different perspective to the table is incredibly valuable to the organization in general. It's just whether that organization values that diversity or not, but whether they value it or not, it's still valuable.

I think some of the biggest challenges in B2B tech marketing are the transition of workflow from pre-AI to today's world, and how AI is influencing workflows, team structures, and overall business dynamics. Navigating that is kind of like the wild, wild west a little bit right now still. It reminds me of when I was first starting in my career with the rise of cloud computing - that felt like the wild, wild west too, and now that's just everyday tech life. I see a lot of parallels in how people are experimenting and adding AI in and talking about it, but it's moving a lot faster because of the AI support as well. It's interesting because on one hand, it's a tool that can be very helpful and valuable. On the other hand, there's a low bar to entry, so we're getting so much AI slop in channels that it really muddies the noise. I see it can diminish the perceived value of content marketing. It's a big challenge right now because yes, content marketing will never not be valuable - we're always gonna have business that we need to communicate what that business does and have people buy into it and learn how to use products and all of that. But how do we make that happen is all in transition right now, and there's a lot of strong opinions either way. There's a lot of unknowns of how it's gonna play out, what's safe, what's not safe. There's just a lot to navigate between humans trying to understand how to implement AI in a way that's beneficial and mitigates confidentiality risk, but also keeping the integrity of human thought and reasoning behind that context.

In both my work and personal life, I think kindness is important to me, and I think ethics is important to me. I also think building trust is important to me as well, which kind of goes along with ethics - when the ethics are right, the trust is definitely easier to earn.