At SPS Jessica...
- Explored the connection between tech and communications
- Found a way to get her feet wet in PR
- Tapped into the Columbia network
- Interned at a digital ad agency
- Leveraged her head for numbers to get a job at…
You left an accounting job in San Francisco to come to SPS. Tell us about that.
I was working at a Big Four accounting firm. I liked what I did, but was curious about PR and marketing, specifically in the tech industry. I read about South by Southwest, so one year I attended. I was intrigued by the conversations around marketing and technology and wanted to do that for living. I saw the Columbia program as a way to make this happen. I also wanted to live in New York for the networking and job opportunities.
How did the program help you make a career pivot?
Being able to incorporate numbers into a new career was something I wanted to explore. My professor, Amy Inzanti (who taught Dynamics of Persuasion) worked with a lot of data. She was also Senior Vice President of Insights and Strategy at Cohn and Wolfe. In fact, she is the one who eventually helped me network and get the job I have today. I also liked Steve Jarmon’s class a lot. We visited different agencies and talked with professionals.
Have you found what you studied at SPS useful in your new career?
Yeah! I work for Jones-Dilworth, a boutique agency based in Austin. What we do here is a great mix of what I learned in the Columbia program. We’re a PR agency that works almost exclusively with tech start-ups. Because our clients don’t have the resources larger companies do, we act as their outsourced marketing department. In addition to traditional PR, we do corporate communications, paid media, and a lot of content marketing, strategy development and execution.
Any insights you would like to share on getting the word out?
We create a thoughtful media strategy. We pitch the big tech and mainstream publications. We get our clients involved in thought leadership—making sure they write blog posts and contribute content to the trade pubs. The goal is to get your vision out there, and to build up to the point where journals write about what you’re launching.
