Slack’s head of global marketing came to her career in an unusual way. Unlike many marketers who hold business and marketing degrees, Kelly Watkins earned degrees in theology from Abilene Christian University.
When asked about her start in marketing, Watkins said she is fascinated by the ways people build systems that help them understand the world. For anyone who uses Slack, Watkins has found a near-perfect environment for understanding how people work and the business-communication systems they create.
In her role at Slack, Watkins leads all aspects of the brand’s product, platform and growth marketing, as well as overseeing its advertising, events and editorial efforts. Right now, Watkins says her team is focused on Slack’s international expansion — aiming to grow its usage beyond the current 40 percent of Slack users who live outside of the US.
“I’m most excited about this because we have the opportunity to stretch ourselves and think creatively about how we extend the Slack brand in a way that maintains our voice, but is relevant and resonant for different cultures,” says Watkins.
“We’re wrapping our brains around how Slack can fit in environments with different norms around work and business, but stay true to the fact that at the end of the day, we’re all human beings looking to do our jobs the best we can.”
Before joining Slack, Watkins served as Bugsnag’s VP of marketing. She also spent time leading brand and product marketing for GitHub. While at Github, she launched GitHub Enterprise on AWS, Atom, Electron and the GitHub Developer Program and helped grow the number of developers using the open-sourced software development platform from 3 million to 10 million.
Why did you go into marketing?
After finishing degrees in systematic theology, I’d worked my way through religion personally, but remained fascinated about how people come to build systems that help them understand the world.
Click here to read more Q&A with Kelly Watkins.
SOURCE: Amy Gesenhues
MarketingLand
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