Q: What's your best tip about social marketing?
A: Start with research—always. Social marketing is about changing behavior. You can’t change behavior without knowing what your audience’s perceived barriers to change are. Once you’ve identified those barriers, you can create marketing strategies to help overcome them.
Q: Describe a project you are particularly proud of completing.
A: My master’s thesis. I collected data the day before moving from Memphis to Portland, drove across the country with the surveys in the back of my jeep and finished the thing remotely.
Q: What do you like best about your job?
A: Helping clients reach their goals.
Q: What is it really like to be a Pac/West team member?
A: It’s great to work with people as obsessive as I am. I mean that in a positive way.
Q: Where do you go when you need an information fix?
A: Online newspapers—I scan the headlines for topics I’m interested in. I also watch CNN. With two children under the age of 3, I no longer linger over the Sunday New York Times or any other paper.
Q: What sports do/did you play?
A: Track and soccer from the time I was a little kid through high school. I still run regularly, but much more slowly. In fact, some would say my running looks more like scooting, but I at least I’m out there. I’ve run a couple marathons.
Q: What attracted you to a career in social marketing and marketing/communications?
A: It’s the perfect mix of the things I like to do—write, research, strategize, and create. And best of all, I actually get to apply on a daily basis much of the behavior change theory I studied in grad school.
Q: How often do you cut your hair? Describe your worst haircut.
A: Getting my haircut is therapeutic so I go often—every six weeks. I turn off my blackberry and catch up on the latest celeb gossip while my stylist massages my scalp and makes my hair look decent, at least for a few hours. The worst haircut was the one I gave myself in 1st grade. I have the class photo to prove it.
Q: Who is the most famous person you’ve ever met?
A: Michael Stipe. I was in college at the University of Memphis and waitressing at a health food restaurant when the members of REM walked in. They were recording at a nearby studio. I served Stipe a carrot juice. REM was, and still is, one of my very favorite bands.
Q: What kinds of movies do you like and why?
A: Foreign films because the people look real.
Q: If you could only watch one TV show this fall, what would it be?
A: American Idol. I’m way into it, which I find amusing because I used to balk at reality shows.
Q: What’s your favorite concert you’ve ever attended?
A: One of the best was Alison Krauss at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. And as a bonus, Emy Lou Harris sat in the row in front of me.
Q: If you could live anywhere in the world for a year, where would it be and why?
A: Sydney, Australia because it’s warm, dry, a big city, English speaking (I don’t have a talent for learning foreign languages) and a great base for exploring that part of the world.
Q: What do you like to read the most, and why?
A: Short stories because I can actually finish them with the demands of small children, unless I’m on vacation and then there’s nothing like a great novel.
Q: If you could eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?
A: Risotto because it’s the best comfort food and there are so many ways to prepare it.
Q: What is the furthest away/most impressive place you have traveled to?
A: While I’ve traveled farther, Venezuela was one of the most interesting. I spent two weeks in Maracaibo and Caracas doing PR for an international health care organization.
Q: If you were stranded on an island, what is the one thing you could not live without and why?
A: Coffee. I have gone without red wine during my pregnancies and that was tolerable, but I’ve never been able to function very well without caffeine.
Q: Red or white wine?
A: Red
Q: What's your favorite "crazy day" snack?
A: Ben and Jerry’s Heath Bar Crunch. Yum.
