Marissa Castle

I attribute my success to so many things, including how I was prepared through college and all the mentors I've had throughout my career. But not to be sappy, my mom has always really inspired me, and I think that my personality and my drive and all of those things, she really instilled in me. She has also worked in the marketing field her whole life and owns her own consulting firm now, but she's been at the agency level too, and I kind of took after her. Apple doesn't fall far from the tree. She never made me think there was anything that I couldn't do. She always supported me. I always tell people that she thinks the sun shines out my butt. She's my number one fan, and seeing her have a really successful career my whole life, and then her encouraging me in my career and giving me advice and things, I definitely attribute a lot of my success to her and the foundation she laid for me.

Something that has always stuck with me since my very first job when I worked for Sinclair Broadcast Group is what our Director of Promotions told me. I was 22 at my very first job, had only been there for 3 months, and now I was effectively trying to manage people, and I felt a little bit out of my depth. I was hesitant to follow up on things, and I felt like I was annoying people. Our promotions director kind of took me under his wing, and he said, 'Marissa, if you're not annoying people, you're not doing your job.' That's stuck with me for my whole career. When I start to think, oh, am I following up too much, or should I be overstepping here, I always think, if you're not annoying people, you're not doing your job. Building on that, it's making sure that you have a good relationship with your team members, so that doesn't become an issue. It's more of a support annoyance. To make the entire unit work as it should, there are so many different cogs, and we all work together. We have writers, and designers, and strategists, and we're all working on different pieces of the whole, so you do have to follow up with people, but we're all on our own timelines and have our own projects, so you do feel like you're annoying people sometimes. I always remind myself of that, and make sure I have good relationships with my team members.

Speak up. Don't be afraid to put your ideas out there, and not just speaking up in meetings, but speak to people throughout the office. Go talk and build relationships with people that aren't in your immediate circle. I think that it helps you not only gain a greater understanding of what the whole group is strategically moving towards, because everybody has their own roles and their day-to-day is their own roles, but the more you understand and talk to everybody else, you understand what your unit, your company is strategically moving towards. It also can help with visibility too. I think that visibility is important in a career, just in general. People speak up about ideas and speak to people about ideas, even if it's just in a friendly way.

There's always opportunity to advance your education, especially working in higher ed, so I might one day go on to a master's program or something like that. There are definitely opportunities for growth just within the unit, maybe moving up to higher titles, maybe one day I'll be a director, VP, and I feel like there is a lot of growth here for me. Also just taking on new projects and new areas of marketing, partnering with other communicators in colleges on campus, expanding duties, those kinds of things. The biggest opportunity on the horizon for me right now is getting to grow my team. I'm really lucky to be led by two very wonderful, influential women, my current boss Carissa and our VP of Marketing Heather. They have a lot of great plans for the future of advertising and marketing for the university. A very on-the-horizon opportunity is growing the advertising team, expanding it out, looking at new ways that we can reach other markets, and stacking the team so that we have the bandwidth to do that. That is definitely more of a leadership opportunity for me to expand my team and be able to mentor more people under me in the same way that I've had so many great mentors.

Integrity is definitely number one. Integrity is to me what you do when no one's looking, just making sure that you're always doing the right thing by people, by the work, and that's a big value in both my personal and professional life. I think loyalty and relationships goes along with that, especially at work. You spend more time with your coworkers, your boss, your team, sometimes than you do with your own family. So having that trust and a good relationship really makes it go a long way so that you don't get the Sunday scaries and you have to go into work on Monday. It makes the work easier too, because you enjoy it, and you enjoy the people you're doing it with. We use Clifton Strengths here at the university, which is like a personality test that lists out about 30 or so strengths, and what your top ones are, and what your bottom ones are. My top 5 are all influencing and relationship building, and I think that just shows how important that really is to me.