Tessa Zastrow

I've been in communications since 2018, working in communications, marketing, advertising, and public relations. I recently stepped into a senior manager position to lead our digital communications and creative services team at Black Hills Energy, a regional energy company spanning over 8 different states. In my role, I have that people leadership aspect, which I most enjoy, but I also help drive the strategy for our digital communications and advocate for our creative services that supports all those communications. I've been at Black Hills Energy for a little over three and a half years. I started as a specialist in the digital space doing a lot of paid media, and then I grew into an analyst, leaning in on some of those skills that I had gathered from paid media, where I was able to really understand what was working for our communications and what was driving positive sentiment amongst our customers. Then I moved into a manager role where I led the digital team and the digital strategy. This position now really helps expand my scope, including that creative work. Prior to my experience here, I worked at a couple different marketing agencies where I did get to hone in on more of that paid media strategy, start some people leadership, and did the whole suite of communications where I wrote and helped inform decisions through analytics. I've always really enjoyed communicating and the technology piece, where things are constantly changing and we have to know how to reach the right audiences. When I was in high school, I was super involved in all sorts of different organizations and extracurriculars, and public relations was kind of the direction I was going because I had practiced a lot of the core skills in that. When I got to college, I explored that field a little bit more broadly, and that's where the social media strategy piece came in, and I started to really enjoy the advertising side of things.