Meet the young women making waves in digital in The Drum's 50 under 30
In the fast-moving world of digital, it is rare to stop and reflect on talent, but it’s clear that the industry has it in abundance and we wanted to highlight some of the top trailblazing young women making their mark in this traditionally male-dominated industry.
The Drum’s 50 under 30 does just that. After calling on our readers to share their nominations of women who had broken the mould and gone above and beyond before reaching the age of 30, the final 50 were curated with the help of an industry panel.
The list serves to celebrate the level of female digital talent carving out a new way for the industry. Over the next five days, we catch up with the 50, listed alphabetically by surname, to discuss career highlights, a typical day, and what advice they’d give younger women starting out on a similar path.
Here are the first 10 individuals chosen for this year.
Stephanie Alys, co-founder, MysteryVibe
What technology do you most need day-to-day?
I tend to travel a lot, so anything that helps me connect with people while I’m away. And a good pair of noise-cancelling headphones.
What is your biggest career achievement to date?
Being asked to close one of the stages at Slush conference with a talk on the future of sex and robotics. The audience was completely packed with people sitting on the floor and standing about five rows deep at the back.
Victoria Barbatelli, senior communication strategist, Goodby Silverstein and Partners
What is your biggest career achievement to date?
When our team pushed the first ever emoji linked to a social cause through the Unicode Standard and it was coded into every Apple and Android phone in the world.
What one piece of advice would you offer someone entering marketing today?
There are a lot of opportunities to feel overwhelmed and under-qualified entering such a complex and fast-paced industry. The volume and speed of information coming your way will make you feel like you’re drinking from a fire hose.
Lizzie Barclay, head of marketing, Yahoo UK
What is your biggest career achievement to date?
Managing to maintain a balance. I’ve always got away from my desk to find inspiration for corporate performance. I developed an app, mentor startups and volunteer for charity. It’s never held me back and has taught me so much that I can apply to my day job too.
What technology do you most need day-to-day?
We need email, but we also need to switch off from it. In my team, we experimented with ‘no email Wednesday’ where we didn’t send any internal emails all day. It made me more efficient and also more focused in meetings.
Casey Bird, president, SheSays
What is your biggest career achievement to date?
In 2015 I helped re-build the mentor scheme for SheSays, ‘Who’s Your Momma’. It has been hard work but to date we’ve paired more than 120 women in London alone and run three sold out events.
What one piece of advice would you offer someone entering marketing today?
Network until you are blue in the face. People hire people.
Rita Bourma, senior user experience designer, Possible London
What is your biggest career achievement to date?
That I have managed to have only worked on projects/companies I love or ended up loving the project I was working on by turning it into something I believed in.
What brand means the most to you?
The brand that gave me my first opportunity, exposed me to all types of disciplines, showed me how to set the bar high and proved to me that I can have fun working on something I believe in – Net-a-porter.
Kara Bridson, designer/art director, Media Bounty
What one piece of advice would you offer someone entering marketing today?
Be kind, be honest (as much as you can) and listen. A good attitude will take you far.
Describe yourself in three words.
Committed, ambitious, kind.
Claire Burgess, account director, NMPi
What is your biggest career achievement to date?
One of my proudest achievements is that I lead on an efficiency project within the agency, which through the creation and implementation of monitoring processes and the subsequent analysis of the results, resulted in almost doubling the amount of gross profit per hour generated within my client portfolio.
Who or what motivates you?
Both my clients and my team motivate me in different ways. Our clients trust the work we do for them, and therefore come to us with wider challenges than those just directly related to digital marketing, and my team is passionate about our industry.
Morgan Burrows, interactive producer, Crispin Porter + Bogusky
What one piece of advice would you offer someone entering marketing today?
Don’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Not from the places you’re applying, not from your boss, not from your creatives, not from your developers, not from your clients. For example, I can’t count how many times I was turned down before I landed at Crispin.
Who or what motivates you?
I genuinely enjoy creating, solving problems and helping my creatives build something they can’t wait to get into their portfolios. I take a lot of pride being a hardworking, successful female in a traditionally male-dominated industry.
Samantha Charles, founder, Float Digital
What one piece of advice would you offer someone entering marketing today?
Don’t limit your reading to one discipline; take a step back and learn about industries that impact your area of expertise. You’ll gain a new perspective and truly get your creative juices flowing by tapping into related subjects such as technology, psychology and artificial intelligence.
Describe yourself in three words.
Ambitious, optimistic and persistent.
Laura Chung, regional product marketing manager, ComScore
What one piece of advice would you offer someone entering marketing today?
Curiosity is a great starting point for any career progression, so I would advise someone starting out to never be afraid to push themself to learn more and to ask questions. Marketing in some aspects requires mastering the art of multi-tasking. If you are on top of everything, it gives you enough time to find the challenges that really excite you.
Who or what motivates you?
Knowing that I can make a difference and bring value to my work in everything that I do is my biggest motivation.
To keep up with the 50 under 30 women in digital you can go here or read more in the magazine.