Global ecommerce and digital marketing leader in consumer goods
BIO
Home: Boulder, CO
Current employer: W. L. Gore & Associates
Places I've lived:
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Houston, TX
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Córdoba, Argentina
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Chapel Hill, NC
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St. Petersburg, FL
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Boulder, CO (home for last 15 years!)
Makes me smile:
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All things dogs, including my own
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My kids' school pix
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LEGOs
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"Annie" (the 1984 version)
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Black tea at 7 am
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A good Tar Heel basketball win
Brands I've grown with
My inspiration
My main goal is for my daughter to learn that women can be fierce and for my son to understand that men can be vulnerable. I will have to be louder than almost every cartoon character, book, and subliminal message to get those points across. And every extra effort will be worth it to watch them be their authentic selves.
A colleague of mine from Europe introduced me to this book, and I'm forever grateful to him for such a great recommendation. Thank you, Linus Logren!
"Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug is a great read that brings you back down to reality when considering the layout and purpose of any website. There are also plenty of practical tips on usability testing, which he appropriately emphasizes.
I bought 10 copies of this book for a Digital Strategy Team series I led in 2019 and made this book required reading before we got started. I loved hearing product managers and our distribution lead fully grasp UX concepts.
Krug makes seemingly newfangled, digital concepts comprehensible to anyone, as they should be. There's no need to believe that online shopping has a different set of rules about human behavior than retail shopping does.
I hesitated to add Bozoma Saint John to my inspiration list for two reasons.
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I don't know her personally and all that she stands for, so there's always a risk in getting behind someone you've never met nor had the chance to know and understand.
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She is a single, black mom who is a marketing executive. I am some of those things but not all. I won't pretend that I know what it's like to be a black woman trying to succeed in this world nor a single mom trying to balance my career and parenting.
But, from what I've read from her and heard from her, she seems like the kind of woman who would be honored to give inspiration to anyone. Her stories make me think, pause, do something different, want to be more.
One particularly motivational quote from her is:
“I don’t know that I want to belong because if I belong then I won’t be fearless, and I won’t fight. I’ll get too comfortable."