Today we’d like to introduce you to Kristin McKenna Crowe.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Kristin. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
My story is very much like the John Lennon lyric, “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” As an undergraduate at the University of Georgia, I had dreams of becoming the star of a real-life John Grisham novel. I picked a major with the intention of going on to law school to become a practicing attorney. Avoided all those business school classes my mom was adamant I should be taking. A few months before graduation, I landed a job with a small firm in Los Angeles as a legal assistant. It was about half as glamorous as it sounds. After a year and two LSATs, I realized my dream of living in a novel was not to be. I wasn’t suited to the life of an attorney or a life in LA. At the end of my one-year contract with the law firm, I moved back to Atlanta.
To avoid sharing a bathroom with my two younger brothers, I took a job with a marketing agency I’d worked for during schools breaks throughout high school and college. It was quite timely to be able to land a good job when I needed it. It was meant to be temporary while I planned the next thing but 15 years later, I’m still working in marketing although not for that agency. I’ve made a great career from that temporary job I held for 5 years. I owe a lot to the owners of that company for giving me the opportunity and the space to learn and grow.
I had a good fortune or perhaps just good timing to get into marketing at a transformative stage – during the advent of marketing automation. I’ve spent my entire career working with companies to transform their business and marketing practices to take advantage of new technology and methodologies. I even went back to school and got my MBA – had to tell my mom she was right about all those business classes I’d been avoiding in undergrad.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Smooth? No. But I can’t imagine much of life is a smooth road. I landed at UGA because the only other school I applied to rejected me. I was crushed and pretty lost when I realized the career I’d been planning wasn’t a good fit for me. It is disheartening when your dreams don’t come true. Even if by choice. It was challenging to leave home and move to a place where I didn’t know anyone only to come back a year later. I’ve taken a few jobs in the last decade only to realize they weren’t a good fit a few months later. I’ve worked for companies that got acquired and left me in a tenuous position. You hope things will go perfectly to plan but they rarely do.
But I am also very fortunate; things really turned out in my favor. My four years in Athens were some of the best in my life. I was able to get my undergraduate and graduate degrees debt free. I have always landed on my feet and been lucky enough to find amazing mentors and friends throughout my career.
My advice for women just starting out is not to let setbacks set you back. Things rarely work out exactly according to plan but that doesn’t mean things won’t work out. Take the wins and the losses in stride and consider what you learned and how you can apply that knowledge to the next step. Lean on people who’ve been there before you and give everything a chance because you never know how something might impact you.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
I have one of those jobs where no one really understands what I do. I currently work as a Marketing Technology Consultant, which is the best of all worlds as I can use my corporate marketing experience, and expertise in martech to help businesses solve problems, create efficiencies, and generate more revenue. After 15 years in the business, I can design an individualized approach for each of my clients to optimize their investments across their marketing technology stack.
I don’t write the emails or buy ads anymore, but I am still at the forefront of marketing technology – even more so as I work with an expanded portfolio of clients across industries. Consulting allows me to employ my expertise in cutting-edge digital marketing, operations, web development, and system integrations. I spend my days diving into the dynamic marketing ecosystem, helping companies of all sizes grow their businesses.
I started my consulting career with one of the leaders in marketing automation software, Marketo, where I became a Marketo Certified Expert and a Marketo Certified Solutions Architect. Because of that expertise, most of my work is centered on marketing operations and specifically Marketo. But my passion is around the entire marketing experience and being able to work with companies to help them maximize their use of technology to make their business more effective.
Do you feel like there was something about the experiences you had growing up that played an outsized role in setting you up for success later in life?
I am as successful as I am because of the environment in which I was raised. I am so thankful to have been shown, at a young age, I can be anything and do anything. My parents instilled this in me, as many parents do, but they also showed me it was possible.
My mom has a degree in engineering, one of only two women in her computer science program at UConn. She was a girl who coded before girls whose code was something people recognized as a need. After a decade working for IBM, she started her own business; I was eight and my brothers were seven and two. She co-owned and operated a successful business for nearly 30 years before she and her partner sold it to retire.
The experience as a daughter of a woman who raised three kids with my dad, and ran a business, meant I never gave myself pause to wonder if something was possible. I always knew it was.
Contact Info:
- Email: kristin.mckenna@gmail.com
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/KristinMMcKenna
- Other: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmmckenna/
Image Credit:
Mike Moon Studio
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