Her Story
About Rachel
I've been in the marketing field now for about 10 years, starting full-time right after I graduated from Boston College in May 2016 with a double major in Political Science and Communication. Before moving into the talent management space, I was working directly with brands. I worked at a company called Epsilon doing cross-channel consulting for social media, email, SMS, paid and organic search. Then I moved to Attentive, where it was specifically email and SMS. As a consumer myself, I have a strong understanding of being able to position your brand. I moved into the talent management space because I love working with people and understanding how actual creators and talent are able to secure brand partnerships, and it ties in with my background because I have a firm understanding of how brands are actually marketing with their schedules and the annual planning of it. Now I'm on more of that creator talent side of it, understanding how they come into play with what brands are doing to sell their products. It was an interesting leap into the talent management space, but working under the Whaler Group, which is the parent company that I'm at, has been terrific. I started working with them in November, and I love my role. I love being able to speak with different talent managers and understand what creators need in the space. In my previous role, I received a perfect manager effectiveness score managing a team of 10 direct reports, where my team anonymously voted that I had achieved this. I definitely have experience within the people management side of it, and within my new role, I'm not directly managing a team yet as it's more considered a startup underneath the parent company of the Whaler Group, but I plan to build out my team at some point.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Rachel
01What do you attribute your success to?
I would say that my success comes from the mentors that I have had along the way, both from my existing role and from the connections that I've been able to build professionally. I think that I have been really fortunate to have strong familial mentors, but then also expanding professionally as well. I would love to highlight my current mentors within my role, Simon Moss and Hilary Risley Mason. They've been extremely supportive, and they have strong communication and expectations within my role. Moving into this new position, I've pivoted into a different field than what I was working on before on the brand side, now being on more of the talent management industry. They've been extremely supportive, knowledgeable, communicative with clear expectations, and I think that that's really helpful. So I would attribute my success to the support that I've received across the board.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
I think the biggest piece of advice is to network and to take opportunities that are presented at you seriously. I like to try to involve myself in different groups and projects where I can, and I thrive in environments where it might be unknown to me, but learning through that and continuing to learn. I think really being open to new opportunities and taking risks is important.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say always, always be willing to invest in yourself and push yourself to take these risks and to challenge yourself. I don't know how to say it without being cliche, but to invest in yourself is the greatest piece of advice I would give.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The market of talent managers isn't as broad of a market as working with brands where they have limitless consumers. There's only so many talent managers within the space. So working to build the trust of talent managers because you are the tool that they're using daily to make their lives more efficient, and retaining that trust is probably the biggest challenge right now. Getting people to buy in on the product when it's a smaller market is different than what I was working with on the brand side.
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