01:20:00 with Jennifer Everett
Throughout her life, Jennifer (Jenn) Everett has followed her curiosity and trusted her gut, which has resulted in life-changing decisions that have lent Jenn various perspectives. In fact, Jenn is determined to travel and experience exotic cultures as she has always had a thirst for adventure and discovering new places, and to this day, has resided in China, Chile, California, and Pennsylvania. Jenn strongly believes that by working hard you may have the opportunity to travel the world independently while supporting yourself.
Aligning Passion With Purpose
Outside from working in her day job, Jenn manages multiple side hustles with an entrepreneurial spirit and passion for spreading joy and giving back to her community. Rina Patel, a long-time friend of Jenn’s, is the founder of a virtual community called The Thinkers Global, which provides young minds with the tools to uncover their infinite potential, develop self-awareness, and think critically and independently, and has inspired Jenn, along with her blossoming interest in community management, to found The Break-Up Committee which has spurred from her personal experience with a past harsh relationship break-up. Motivated to share her love of the game of tennis for generations to come, Jenn has returned to her hometown of Leighton, Pennsylvania, to reopen a tennis club called Valley Royale, where she grew up playing tennis. Jenn emphasized that for initiatives that heavily impact the local community, you must be creative in methods used for organically spreading the word and treat every step of progress as a major event through amplifying messaging on local news outlets, social media, web, email newsletters, etc. Jenn emphasized that passion is the key to success with any endeavor, explaining how she is passionate about the subjects of International Business and Economics, Marketing, and French when asked if, having the ability to rewind the past, she would choose to study a more “technical” subject.
Diverse Marketing Perspectives
Over the course of her career, Jenn has transitioned from marketing as a freelancer, to startups, agencies, and finally in-house at Uber. Having worked in a variety of organizations, Jenn touched on the differences in freelancing, agency, startups, and in-house. Freelancing is entirely independent as you are in charge of every step of the process, from acquiring clients to managing project compensation. Freelancing can help force you out of your comfort zone by teaching you to confidently pitch your skills while not selling yourself short, Jenn mentioned. In an agency, you tend to have more creative freedom, and a larger bandwidth with input from cross-functional teams such as UX and design. Furthermore, working in-house calls for more focus on marketing campaigns with less involvement of various roles, accountability based on campaign metrics, and slightly more restricted creative freedom due to obstacles such as gaining stakeholder approval. In startups, where I have interned, there is limitless creative freedom due to the necessity to experiment and test new tactics, but a tighter budget to carry out campaigns with. Jenn also described aspects of her current role as a web content strategist and how she delegates tasks to their respective teams, and creates guideline documentation for the numerous people constantly developing the main Uber site.
Finding Your True Calling
Jenn does not believe secondary students should be told that they can only pick one career and stick with it as she knows many people, including herself, who have pivoted frequently over the course of their post-graduation years in order to discover and pursue areas they truly love. Jenn struggled pinpointing her passions early on in high school and college, like many others in her stage, and although convinced she was interested in political science and journalism, she ultimately discovered passion for marketing later down the road. It’s okay if you have not figured out what you would like to do in the long or short term, as long as you adopt a growth mindset and the willingness to learn new skills through trusting your gut, working hard, and pushing yourself. In college and beyond, you will also meet diverse people who can lead to unexpected opportunities as well.
The Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Jenn believes everyone should go the extra mile to bring their best foot forward and present their full attention, kindness, and open mindedness to every person and opportunity that falls across one’s path as one can never know who can change your life, especially when first starting out. For instance, When Jenn created documentation and guidelines at Beyond, she had been contacted by a recruiter for Uber, and although it was not her favorite work, it allowed her to a paramount role contributing to various projects such as an internal education platform for Google which then spiraled into more opportunities, and enabled her to progress and grow in the field, and eventually be contacted by an Uber recruiter. Through accepting challenges and grinding through the seemingly “mundane” work, Jenn was able to overcome Catch-22 and gain experience working for multiple Fortune 500 companies in a broad range of industries.
“Put your heart, mind, and soul into even your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.”
-Swami Sivananda
Adopting a Growth Mindset
Like most of us, Jenn has faced imposter syndrome, which causes her to doubt her abilities and worth, leading to a lack of confidence when working with a team. To combat this, Jenn prioritizes mental health and encourages reaching out to a colleague or manager if you need help or do not feel at your best. She also suggests that listening is more important than speaking, and to be mindful when answering questions, ensuring you have thought through and understood the question before offering an answer. As a leader, Jenn values integrity and possessing the vulnerability to admit your mistakes and take the initiative to rehabilitate the issue and improve for the future. To put it bluntly, mistakes happen so take them in stride and do not beat yourself up, rather work towards continuous improvement. While at Beyond, Jenn explained the retrospections her team did every two weeks to evaluate their performance, reflecting on what was going well, why it was going well, what could be improved, and then listing actionable steps, and specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals to achieve growth. This active learning activity allowed Jenn and her colleagues to come together as a team and admit that nobody is perfect and there are vast amounts of room for improvement through hard work and conscious effort.
Thanks again, Jenn! Until next time!
03/17/21.
