Senior Marketing Coordinator // Meriden, CT // Employee Owner since 2017
Can you tell us how you got involved in Marketing for the AEC industry, and your role as Senior Marketing Coordinator at BL? I may be the only marketer on the planet who didn’t just fall into AEC marketing. If you talk to any marketer, nine times out of ten, they’re going to say they graduated college, fell into the industry by chance and then fell in love with it. I’m unique in that my mother was a marketing manager for an architectural firm and she now does business development for an engineering firm. So, I grew up in this industry. I knew about it. I specifically sought it out when I graduated from college.
As for my role as a Senior Marketing Coordinator, I’ve got my hands in a lot of different pots. Primarily, I’m a proposal coordinator, so I manage proposal submissions for potential projects and opportunities on a day-to-day basis, depending on what’s out there. Alongside that, I help with preparation for project interviews, including presentations. I also handle all of our award submissions. If we have projects that we think are particularly award worthy, I coordinate with project managers to put those submissions together. I also take care of our firm surveys. The ENR ranking is a huge survey that I manage, along with the Hartford Business Journal lists and similar submissions. Then there’s article writing for our newsletter, and I manage our InDesign templates. I train staff on how to use them and troubleshoot issues when they come up. I also write all of our marketing manuals, including our brand guide, marketing department manual, and PM marketing manual. Currently, I’m in the process of updating the back end of our website and our posted articles to better optimize them for search engines, so I’m doing SEO work as well.
What are you looking forward to in the coming year for the AEC Marketing industry? AI is changing the way marketing is done, not necessarily in terms of how we as marketers work day-to-day, but in how our clients will use AI to evaluate our proposals. We’ve already heard from some clients that they’re beginning to incorporate AI into their evaluation processes. As an industry, we’re going to need to figure out how to work with AI so we can continue getting our message across effectively in a different environment. The way we develop and present proposals may need to evolve, because communicating with an AI-assisted review process will likely require a different approach than communicating with a person alone. It will have different requirements, and we’ll need to adapt to make sure our proposals are still as effective and impactful as possible.
What does employee ownership mean to you? I always think about employee ownership in terms of our culture. To me, it means that we are all valued and valuable, regardless of our role. I think BL does a really good job of developing people at every level, training people at every level, and giving people opportunities to lead and grow at every level. Programs like Foundations, which is a leadership training program that all employees go through regardless of their role at BL, are really unique. I think it’s a testament to the investment we make in our people. Employee ownership is all about us. It’s about the employees. So, investing in programs like that, I think, is tantamount to both employee ownership and our culture.
October is Employee Ownership Month — a month long celebration of the benefits of employee ownership. This year’s theme is “The Roaring 20s” to celebrate BL’s 20 years as an ESOP. Can you tell us a bit about ESOP Month, your role in it, and share what you are most excited about for this month? Employee Ownership Month is a month-long celebration of all the things that make employee ownership great. It’s done in partnership with, and supported by, the ESOP Association, who started Employee Ownership Month. At BL, it means a full month of activities and events. Every day there’s something new going on, and we also have events that run throughout the entire month. There are games, activities, challenges, team-building events, happy hours, etc. Every time our employees participate in an ESOP month event they earn tickets, and then at the end of the month, we have a huge company-wide raffle where we give away lots of amazing prizes. It’s really a great opportunity to build relationships across the company. It’s also a chance to celebrate employee ownership, which is a cornerstone of our culture, and to recognize all the thousands of hours we put into our work every year while having some fun along the way.
My role is largely as the communications chair. I’m responsible for building the ESOP Month website, which is where all the information about the different events, activities, and what ESOP Month is all lives. I also send out emails and communications throughout the month, and I manage submissions and oversee how we track the raffle tickets earned throughout the month. I’m largely responsible for the graphics and communications side of ESOP Month, essentially the marketing side of it, even if it’s internal marketing.
What I’m most excited about is seeing all of our ideas become reality. We start planning ESOP Month in January, so it’s rewarding to finally see everything come together. I’m also excited to see which events employees latch onto as their favorites. There are always activities we know will be a big hit, but sometimes we try something new and people really take to it. People are always very appreciative, which makes all the hard work worth it. That’s something I always look forward to. BL goes so far above and beyond for ESOP Month, and I think that’s what makes it both fun and challenging. I honestly don’t know any company that does it the way we do.
What do you like to do in your free time? Is there anything you’re looking forward to in the next year? In my personal time, I love quiet activities. I enjoy reading, doing puzzles, and just listening to music. I’m also lucky to have a very large friend group in NY, so I spend a lot of weekends going into New York to see friends in the city. I also have friends in Connecticut who I see all the time, so I have a really supportive community around me that I love spending time with. Finally, I’m looking forward to getting back into traveling. I haven’t been able to travel much over the last couple of years, but I have some bigger trips planned for next year.
