Her Story
About Nikki
I started my career in the corporate world before going to college, working in website and software development and support. That's where I began, and then I fell in love with marketing. I graduated high school in 2004, which was literally the year that the Google search browser came out, so I grew up on the cusp and got to see where we came from and where we were headed. When I was young and working in software support and development, we started bringing more people in from marketing - folks from Disney and Pixar. When we hired our marketing director, she came over from Moose Jaw. It just gave me a new perspective, and I didn't realize how much I paid attention to marketing my entire life. I might not have remembered the name, but I remembered the logo, the colors, and how it made me feel. For me, marketing wasn't only a passion, it was just something that was always a part of me - how can we make something better? I fell in love at that point in my career, and it's just a part of me, my heart and soul. This is who I am.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Nikki
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to being surrounded by so many talented people in my life and my career. I think what makes us level up is the people that we surround ourselves with, not only with diversity but different phases of life. We all have different experience, different perceptions, different strengths and different weaknesses. What has helped me in my career is the people that I've surrounded myself with, or that have asked me to surround them. We've really learned from each other, and every day is a gift.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I've ever received is to fail forward. You know, we miss 100% of the shots we don't take. Worst case scenario, you fall or you fail. Best case scenario, you fly. That's the only way you're gonna learn.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
One of the biggest challenges in my field is education and understanding. Marketing is no longer about throwing a message out there and hoping the right person sees it, like it used to be 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. Marketing has become a science. The biggest struggle is truly understanding what the KPIs are that we should be paying attention to, and are we measuring them effectively. And if the answer's no, why not? Getting people to really understand their business goals and think through what they want to achieve is one of the biggest challenges in working with different clients.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
For me, integrity is everything. Integrity is the way that we treat people and the decisions we make when nobody is looking. That is probably the biggest thing for me. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what someone said or what they did, it's how you made them feel. It's a quote from Maya Angelou, and I've had this framed quote probably for 15 years, at least 10. Every office I've had, even at home, I take it with me, because sometimes we just need to remember that. How I live my life, both personally and professionally, is it's God, family, and then business. Work-life balance was something that, as a mom, a wife, and a mother, was something I had to learn, and that's hard. But the older I got, that's how I live: God, family, and then business.
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