Wisdom from my Internship

During my internship this summer, I had the opportunity to meet with many company leaders. Most of them shared sage career advice. Here are bits of wisdom from a few of the fascinating people I met:

VP of Marketing

• Find the nuggets you can learn from your superiors. Even managers who you do not wish to emulate in some ways can teach you something important. Learn what you can from them.
  
• Gain advocates who will give you honest feedback.
• Prepare for meetings with superiors. Anticipate their questions and needs.

VP of Marketing:

To succeed as a marketer as new marketing channels emerge and existing channels evolve:

• Empathize with your customer.
• Learn the language of the CFO so that you can communicate to executives.
  
• Gain experience with 3-D Marketing. (This is marketing where your consumers connect with consumers, your consumers can give you feedback, and you can communicate with your consumer- Think social media.)
  
• Seek experience and skills rather than titles.

Company President:

• Set goals and communicate to others how they will be measured against them.

Executives in Technology and Operations Roles:

• Maintain integrity
• Always question
• Be open to change. The only thing constant is change.
• Stay objective. Make fact based decisions.
• Work hard.

Executive in Risk & Compliance:

• Learn about systems to drive transparency and accountability in organizations.
• Learn how to create a system of governance.
• Learn to sort through noise.
• Remember the black swan. Many things seem obvious to everyone in hindsight.
• Communicate up and down.
• Say what you will do, and then do it.
• Learn to make complicated issues simple. Tell stories and analogies to bring your communications to life. Use data to support your arguments.