A Kinetic Kaleidoscope of a Journey

My passion for singing started at a young age, and I was priviledged to have had the opportunity to pursue it early on. I began performing for large audiences at the age of six, and I continued to hone my skills as a singer, dancer, and actor. During high school, I was the state champion in the Oregon Solo Competition, which further fueled my love of performing.

Eventually, I received a music scholarship to attend Northwestern University. While at Northwestern, I starred in numerous on-campus productions, including playing the lead role in "Evita". This was a pivotal moment in my life. I was surrounded by other talented and passionate performers. And as the leading lady, I was challenged in new ways as a leader of a big cast and crew in the largest student-produced musical in America.

Northwestern was also where I discovered that context switching was my superpower. As a student, I focused on music and theatre, but my liberal arts education gave me a broader perspective on the world and how it could inform my creative work. I found that I thrived in an environment where a concept I learned in Poli Sci gave me a new idea for a scene study. This cross-disciplinary approach to learning and creating gave me a unique perspective that I would carry with me throughout my career. Northwestern was the beginning of seeing myself as a Kinetic Kaleidoscope, and life as a dynamic learning lab. 

Pounding the Pavement in the Big Apple

After college, I headed to New York City, the ultimate destination for performers looking to make it big. I quickly immersed myself in the Broadway scene and started pounding the pavement in search of opportunities. Back-to-back auditions, where I had less than a minute to persuade a group of jaded casting directors to hire me out of thousands of other talented actors, helped me develop the thickest of thick skin. And I needed "survival jobs" to make ends meet. 

One of my first ventures was pitching the "Showmancing" column concept to BackStage.com My idea was "Sex and the City meets struggling artists," and it was a way to combine my love of performing with my passion for writing. The column became a hit, and it gave me a chance to explore the industry from a different perspective and share the unique journey my friends and I were on.

My main performing gig was with the USO Liberty Belles World Troupe, a 3-woman show based on the Andrews Sisters, which toured all over the world to perform for veterans and active-duty military. In addition to performing, we had to be "always on" as ambassadors for the USO who traveled in full costume and makeup. They actually docked our pay if our nails weren't painted red by the time the car to the airport arrived. While I had the honor of performing for dignitaries, including the President of the United States, it was the everyday military personnel that left the biggest impression on me. Exposure to a different lifestyle than my own left me humbled, and I wrote about it in a BackStage Magazine article titled "I'll Be Seeing Them."

To get decent health insurance, I also started temping at Warburg Pincus, a highly-pedigreed Private Equity firm, where I booked executive's travel and filed expense reports. But I became interested in the business, and started reading all of the prospectuses lying around. Before long, I was helping out the Marketing team and staying late with the young grunts (my peers) who were pulling all nighters doing due diligence for big deals. 

As I continued to work for Warburg Pincus, I found myself gradually spending more time on corporate projects than on theater work, which was supposed to be my dream. While the transition didn't happen overnight, it eventually became clear to me where my true passion lay. The deciding moment came down to the color blue.

During the day, I was tasked with getting the perfect printed collateral for our annual meeting, which required matching the exact pantone of our Warburg Pincus brand blue color. My desk was filled with paint swatches and printed samples from multiple vendors, and I was obsessed with getting it right for the very hard-to-please SVP of Marketing. 

By night, I was in an audition-only master class with Craig Carnelia, workshopping songs. In one of the pieces I was working on, my character sang about wanting to swim in a clear blue stream, and Craig encouraged me to visualize the blue stream and see it clearly as I sang. But every time I closed my eyes, all I could see were the different Warburg Pincus brand blue color samples on my desk. This was the moment I realized that my heart and passion lay in the corporate world, where I could channel my creative energy into something more substantial and enduring than fleeting performances.

But I knew I needed formal business training to take my career to the next level. So, I made the decision to pursue an MBA. And what better place to do that than deep in the heart of Texas?

Texas MBA: Learning, Laughter, and a Touch of Imposter Syndrome 

At the McCombs School of Business, I had the opportunity to learn from some of the most knowledgeable and experienced professors in the field, make lifelong friends, and indulge in some of the best times of my life. As part of the MBA Journal program, I also had the chance to write for Business Week, building on my writing experience at BackStage.com.

As a McCombs Venture Fellow, I had the privilege of receiving specialized education on entrepreneurship and venture capital, while also interning at a local private equity firm. Despite my love for the program, I often struggled with imposter syndrome, given my nontraditional background. I downplayed my unique and creative background in an effort to be taken more seriously as a student and a business person.

Looking back, I regret not embracing my experiences and recognizing the value it could bring to the program and to a future employer. Fortunately, I'm not wired to hide my light under a bushel for too long, and that former actor would soon re-emerge as I started my journey at General Electric, where another former actor, Ronald Reagan, once worked as the company's spokesperson.

From Startup Dreams to GE's Experienced Commercial Leadership Program

After completing my MBA, I was eager to jump into the world of startups or venture capital and private equity. But fate had other plans. I discovered GE's Experienced Commercial Leadership program, which was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to gain a "vocational MBA" and develop the skills I needed to become a sales and marketing leader. Sponsored by then-CEO Jeff Immelt, the program consisted of three, eight-month rotations in different business units, as well as hundreds of hours of classroom training and travel all over the world, including to China and Argentina.

The program was intense and challenging, but it taught me how to lead and inspire others, and how to think creatively about solving complex business problems. It also exposed me to a diverse array of industries and helped me develop a deep understanding of global markets and trends. And one trend emerged and caught hold of me so tightly that I bet my whole career on it: Digital 

Betting on Digital: Leading Transformation as a GE Intrapreneur 

Early on in my time at GE, I became enamored with digital. As a commercial leader, I believed it was crucial to understand how to market and sell products and services online, as the world was quickly moving in that direction. Despite pushback from mentors who dismissed digital as the realm of the communications team or the summer intern, I remained convinced of its importance. As a marketer, I understood that it was critical to understand our target users, find them, connect with them, and convince them to buy. The digital revolution was changing every facet of this process, and it didn't make sense to cede it to IT.

This focus on digital proved to be a shrewd move, as I and a few other "Digital ECLPs" known for our expertise in this emerging practice were among the most sought-after graduates from the program. I landed a role leading digital transformation for GE's $5 billion transportation business. 

As a digital leader within GE, I faced resistance and skepticism from many of my colleagues. But I persevered, connecting with other digital leaders throughout the company and advocating for meaningful change from within. At a global digital summit in 2012, we predicted that within 10 years, there would be no need to call it "digital marketing" anymore - it would just be "marketing." Little did we realize that we'd still be advocating for Digital more than a decade later with "digital" still used as a qualifier for a certain kind of marketing, rather than a capability baked into the entire function.

During my time at GE Transportation, I led the development of over 15 iPad sales tools for the company. These tools simplified complex product offerings and enabled the sales team to better visualize the value of GE's software and solutions to customers. Each app was treated like a digital product with its own platform roadmap and feature set, and was later leveraged by other GE businesses such as Wind Turbines and Power Generators. Notably, the Durathon Battery Shape Shifter Calculator, which was developed using 3D modeling software MATLAB, was the first-ever mobile app to integrate MATLAB with iOS.

It was during this time that I began to think of myself as an "intrapreneur" - someone who was technically part of a huge corporation but was operating with a startup-like mentality to drive innovation and change. I would take that Intrapreneurial mindset with me to lead digital transformation across a variety of industries and business models. 

From Grass Seed to Saw Chain: Revitalizing Enterprise Manufacturing 

GE left an indelible mark on me, but after so many years in B2B marketing, I wanted exposure to the a new challenge in the world of consumer goods. Over the course of a decade, I led digital strategy and execution for a range of brand manufacturing companies, helping them navigate the evolving digital landscape and drive growth across multiple channels. Through this work, I honed my expertise in all aspects of digital strategy and execution, from building cross-functional teams to optimizing the customer experience across touchpoints.