Her Story
About Mariam
I've been in field marketing for over 15 years, and I've been at Confluent for the past four and a half years. What I do is help connect sales to the customers they're trying to get in front of, whether it's through account-based marketing, through events, through digital campaigns or demand generation. I work primarily in public sector, which is such a niche world - getting in front of accounts like the Army, Navy, and other civilian accounts. It's a little bit different, a little bit more challenging, but in a fun way. My role is interesting because even though I am a marketer and report into the marketing team, I am super ingrained into sales, so sometimes I almost have an identity crisis - am I in sales or marketing? I've worked for different companies over the years, mostly medium-sized, and I did do a startup which was super fun because we were able to do a million things, try different things, and fail fast. Since COVID, I've worked at bigger companies like New Relic, which got me into observability, then Automation Anywhere, and now Confluent. Confluent has been the hardest product to market for me because middleware is really complicated and technical. It's not sexy, it doesn't have a sexy UI - it's like the boring plumbing, but everybody needs it. Marketing that has been a lot more challenging, but in public sector, there have been mandates for data streaming and getting things cleaned up, so we've been able to do well. I'm so glad I did something so technical that I feel like any other product is gonna be easy now - I can market anything.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Mariam
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I ever received came from a mentor years ago when I was newly married and had just had my daughter. I was feeling horrible about not knowing how to cook, and my boss sat me down and told me something that changed everything. She said, 'No matter what, you are never gonna have a wife. Your husband has you. Every man that's married has a wife who takes care of 90% of the things - from everything from the child, from the house, from the family, from all the things, right? Your in-laws, and events, and all the things that you need to be involved in.' She told me if I could take cooking off my plate for the rest of my life, I could do a million other things for my job, for my life, for my kids, and be there 100% of the time. I was like, you're right. Why am I worrying about these traditional expectations? The other career advice I love is to do what comes easy to you, not what you have a passion for. Sometimes you don't have to go into what you're super passionate about, because if you're doing it and it's work, it might take away from that passion. But if something comes easy to you and it's a great field, then that makes the most sense. For me, marketing came very easy, so I was able to really do well in this field.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say assume positive intent in all things, and just keep learning. It's hard - there's so much on us as women, so many responsibilities with family, work, friends, everything. But I think keep learning is super important. I've been thinking about what Reese Witherspoon was saying lately about women being behind in AI. I don't think we're behind in AI, but we're using it to lighten our load without taking the time to truly get trained and get certified and do things the right way. We're just doing it like we always do - we have a little bit of time, we're gonna get in Claude and learn something quickly. For AI and for where we're headed in the next 20, 50 years, I think we actually need to stop, put dedicated time on our calendars, and say on Tuesdays from 3 to 5, or whatever time works, I'm gonna dedicate time to get a certification. There's so many free ones - Google AI, everybody has one. Just learn and be very focused. Take the time away from all the things, because it's changed so quickly. Just in the past 3-4 years, things have changed, and I don't want us to be left behind. I want it to be intentional about how we want to do it. Take the time, learn this, and understand how it's going to improve your life, your business, your work, and all that stuff. We haven't prioritized this kind of learning, and we can't do that with AI.
03What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Integrity is super important to me, and being able to show up fully as yourself. It's really important to me not feeling like I can't be who I am every single day and have to have a fake personality for work. I am this way at work, I am this way at school, with my friends, with my kids, with everyone. I just can't be fake, I don't know how to do it. So showing up fully as who I am every single day, integrity, and being a kind person - not just a nice person, but a kind person. For me, that means if I can take something off of someone on my team's plate because they're going through whatever they're going through, I jump in all the time to help. Whatever I can do to help people and be kind, showing up in a kind way. The other thing I've really focused on, especially the past few years, is assuming positive intent. There can be drama and weird craziness and politics at work, but I've taken that completely out of my life. I assume positive intent, I assume we're getting on this call, we all want to solve this problem, everybody is on the same page, there's nobody out here trying to get anybody or throw anybody under the bus. That has been groundbreaking. Going into a call and being like, okay, we're all gonna try to solve this problem together, nobody's doing anything with bad intentions - that's been huge for me. I'm trying to put this in the minds of my kids and also my team who reports to me to make sure that they know I'm coming from a place where I want to help you, and I'm super positive, I want the best for you.
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