Always a Winger: People Person and Unapologetic Marketer with Amy Lewis (1/2)

Who knew leaving publishing might result in a career as a marketer in the tech industry? Amy Lewis was encouraged to pursue a role at Cisco by a career counselor who recognized her unique strengths. Now Amy refers to herself as an unapologetic marketer and a people person. On the soccer field and in her career, she is always a winger. She is focused more on the assist than scoring the goal.

In episode 301, Amy shares her early career transition from publishing to marketing for Cisco. We’ll discuss what storytelling is and how it can be used with individuals or large groups of people and how product marketing is about finding connective tissue. Amy also weighs in on online marketing, why she enjoys it, and how she learned to communicate with executives. Listen closely to learn about the impact of having good mentors throughout a career.

Original Recording Date: 09-19-2024

Topics – An Intentional Career Change, People Person and Unapologetic Marketer, Social Aspects of Marketing and Storytelling, Skills and Personas, Product Marketing as Connective Tissue, Candid Headlines and Communicating with Executives, Becoming the Interviewer

2:03 – An Intentional Career Change

• Amy Lewis is the director of enterprise marketing at GitHub.
  • She is also known as @CommsNinja.
• Amy tells us she majored in English and Political Science in school. After a 10-year career in publishing, she wanted to try a new career and landed in technology.
  • “Greatly oversimplified, it started with a Commodore 64, and then we wound up here.” – Amy Lewis
• Has the background in English and Political Science been an advantage since Amy got into the tech industry (i.e. experience in multiple different types of marketing roles)?
  • Amy says yes and went to a career counselor at the time she wanted to make a career change out of publishing.
  • “You have a really interesting skill set. You’re a storyteller, but you understand technology. You see where the world is going…. Cisco needs people like you. Technology needs people like you, people who can tell stories…. Go get a job there.” – Amy Lewis, feedback she received from a career counselor right before she joined Cisco
  • Amy tells us no one in her family worked in technology, and she had no contacts in technology. But after blind applying, she landed a role at Cisco.
  • Amy leaned into storytelling and making complex things simpler and understandable for others.
  • She did not know certain skills would be so applicable in this kind of career change, but she made the pivot at the suggestion of the career counselor.
  • Thinking back, Amy doesn’t remember how she found the career counselor originally.
• What made Amy want to leave publishing as a career?
  • Amy has been thinking a lot lately about return to office (or RTO as we might call it) because she has been working remotely for many years. She worked in New York at the company headquarters and then would later move away to start a family and work remotely.
    • Amy cites some advice from her mentor Brian Gracely about career limitations when you do not work in the same location as a company’s headquarters.
    • While working remotely for the publishing company, Amy saw a number of people get promoted. She felt at the publisher she would not be able to climb or grow any longer and that a new challenge was needed. It seems like she in many ways was out of new things to learn.
    • During the time Amy worked for the publisher, AWS was still Amazon.
  • At the remote office where Amy worked for the publisher, she was in charge of the server closet. In addition to this, Amy had digitized a number of properties for the publisher.
• Did leveling up mean becoming a manager, increasing salary, becoming a team lead, or just taking on new responsibilities?
  • Amy tells us it was all of these things. She is a competitive person.
  • Amy already had children, knew she did not want to have any more, and felt she could take more chances.
    • Amy needed to be with a stable company that would not fire her while on maternity leave. This is important for any working woman out there, even if left unstated.
    • Amy knew she could get paid more. She also had a director title but could not manage people because she worked remotely.
    • “I was ready to try something new, so I kind of restarted everything…. I’m ten years in. I’ve got a lot of contacts, connections, comfort. I had and raised my kids kind of in that environment, and I chucked it all away and…took a temp to perm contractor role at Cisco to get my foot in the door and try something new.” – Amy Lewis

8:39 – People Person and Unapologetic Marketer

• How was Amy’s previous experience looked at coming into the temp role at Cisco?
  • Amy started working as part of a content syndication program, which was focused on storytelling. At the time she hit all the right keywords for the role and was going to outpace most everyone else because of her experience.
  • After building websites and digital properties at the publishing company, Amy knew the disciplines of content syndication and online marketing well. These areas became her initial focus as part of the role at Cisco.
  • Amy describes herself then as someone “not afraid of the server closet and familiar with content.”
  • John highlights that Amy was the exact combination of things her employer was looking for at the time (what we might call a unicorn).
  • “This is the story of me, but everybody is a unicorn. Everybody’s got a superpower. Everybody’s got something that makes them unique. People say this, and when you forget it, let us all be reminded. Figure out who you are, what you’re good at, what drives you, and best of all, if what drives you is also good for business…and then be unapologetic about it and do it over and over and over again. Because I can either be half as good as somebody else if I’m trying to pretend to be them. Or I can be the very best Amy Lewis in the world.” – Amy Lewis
    • Amy embraced her unique skill set to excel in all of her previous roles and continued to embrace it when she landed at Cisco.
  • “I’m a people person. I call myself an unapologetic marketer…. In a traditional publishing company, it was weird to be a marketer there. And in tech, it can feel weird to be a marketer…” – Amy Lewis
  • In the publishing industry, Amy built the online marketing department and helped with the website. She worked for a small company and had easy access to the business owner.
    • As a storyteller, Amy finds connection in things that on the surface do not seem connected.
    • Even before Twitter, Amy would connect with people using online bulletin boards like phpBB.
  • Amy knows she is uniquely good at watching, listening to people, understanding personas / specific groups of people (i.e. the audience), and turning it into something using her creativity.
    • Amy continues to focus on what she is good at, what she likes, and how it serves the business – the connective tissue.
    • Amy mentioned her company once sold page-a-day calendars to the cat buying audience.
    • “Honestly, a cat lady is as passionate as somebody is about the type of phone they have in their pocket is as passionate about the type of networking gear that they use is as passionate about the software stack they’re engaged with. People are passionate, and it’s about people. I’m a people person.” – Amy Lewis
• Was marketing something Amy learned in school or picked up on the job?
  • Many people who are now in marketing had early interests in cults, serial killers, and other dark things. Amy’s field of study required reading all kinds of books on political movements, etc. (which is really marketing).
  • Amy mentioned marketers naturally seem to want to know what makes people tick. For her, it’s a combination of technology, how the world works, and natural curiosity.
  • John cites recent political cycles that are a merging of political movement and online audience building. Even before the internet, building a social movement was a form of marketing. It was about going to meet people, networking with them, connecting around an idea, and building community.
    • Amy’s example is one of reading about these types of movements and then applying that knowledge in a new area.
  • Amy’s mother was an English teacher

17:02 – Social Aspects of Marketing and Storytelling

• Was Amy interested in conversations with other people from a young age or ensuring she could collaborate with others in her work? What about that social aspect of working in marketing?
  • Amy started as a Chemistry major but realized she didn’t want to be stuck in a lab.
  • “I don’t want that. I want to be front of the house. And I don’t know that I wanted to be on a stage per se, but I knew I didn’t want to be in a lab…just doing lab things.” – Amy Lewis, on the decision to not keep pursuing Chemistry
  • Amy even thought about being a lawyer, especially since she had experience as a debater in high school and college, but that did not seem right.
  • “The other kind of spoiler alert is I’m an introvert. I may seem extraverted, but I think I shine a lot brighter online…. I can decompress. I can be behind my keyboard. I can go read a book afterward….I think there’s a lot