Shelbey Jo Gunter

I've always prided myself on working hard at everything I do. I've never "half-assed" anything, and I think that's a huge reason why I am where I am today. I'd also say my current supervisor has also been a huge piece of my success. As a young professional, sometimes it's hard to be taken seriously and be heard, but my boss has never made me feel less than. She's always advocated for me and my work and trusts me 100%, which is huge. Without her, I wouldn't have the confidence and success that I have today, and I'm truly grateful for her believing in me and continuing to do so.

The best career advice I've received is to work for people who care about you as a person. I think it might be hard for larger companies to care about you as a person all the time, but keeping the folks around you - your supervisor and colleagues that you work with day-to-day - working for those people that do care about you, and you care about them as people, has really helped me in my career. Even when working through the darker days in my career, having those people that you care about and you know care about you has definitely been some of the best advice that I've gotten and have seen play out in my career.

I would say don't be afraid to ask questions, but before you ask those questions, thoroughly do your research. I think that people are more than happy to answer questions, but they want to see some work on your side. They want to see that you have tried to answer that question yourself, and that you do care about answering that question. In a nutshell, don't be afraid to ask questions, but definitely do your research before you do.

I would say that AI is definitely taking over web marketing and web strategy. It's definitely helpful - there's a lot of power in AI for getting meta descriptions out there, getting headings out there, and making websites accessible, which is fantastic. But I think for authenticity, there's going to have to be that human touch, and that's going to be super important, especially in my field of higher education. The students coming in are Gen Alpha and Gen Z, and they've been on the internet since they were children. I think they're going to start piecing together if something was written by AI, and they're going to be looking for more of that personalization and that human touch. So while AI is great in filling in some gaps, I think it's important for web marketers and marketers in general to be cautious and make sure they're always having a human touch on whatever AI is spitting out for them, because that can really deter consumers and clients and whoever else their audience is. Sometimes your AI chatbot can't encapsulate a brand, and that's really tough.

I would say in a world that feels like we're constantly listening to people talk and talk and talk, instead of talking ourselves, active listening and empathy are most important to me. I try to find that humanistic aspect of people. I think at the end of the day, everyone is looking for a reason to fight against someone or agree with someone, so I think actually listening to someone's points and their views, and then taking that and having empathy with that - those are super important values that I look to do for myself, and I hope that people reciprocate that as well.