PR is one of those careers that you don't know much about until you start exploring it. I started interning when I was in college with Lizzie Grubman, an iconic PR gal. I interned for over a year, and it was a great education on everything from PR practices, to team dynamics! Next, I interned at Armani to experience the high-end side of fashion and at a boutique PR firm to experience PR for liquor and spirits. Through my internships, I narrowed my niche down to fashion and that lead me to my first job with Shopbop.

People love this story. I was a senior in college and President of my sorority, which was the catalyst for me to make sure I had the coolest job. The girls looked up to me. I knew I wanted to work somewhere where I would get exposure to a lot of brands. I was applying to jobs at Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus when my college roommate told me about a store called Bop. Bop was located at the University of Wisconsin and was set to become a chain across college campuses. I was really intrigued and cold emailed the owner of Bop to pitch myself to him. I told him what I could do for Bop and that I wanted to be a part of his team. After meeting and interviewing with the owner, I became one of the early team members of Shopbop.com.

With a growing business, you have opportunities to learn and grow and work in a menagerie of different spaces within a company. At Shopbop I did everything from styling the photo shoots and writing product descriptions, to helping pack boxes and pitching to TV and magazines. It’s really important for young people to not look at a very hectic schedule as a downer but rather as an opportunity to learn and be a sponge for information. The best advice my mom ever gave me was, enjoy this phase because it will pass and you’ll never get to have a first career phase again. Look at each of those things as part of the ride so that, in the end, you’re able to fully embrace the next phase.

The most important things I learned in school were from the sorority. The sorority taught me how to motivate a larger group of people. When I first started at Shopbop in the early 2000s, it wasn't cool yet to shop online and there were barriers to customer acquisition that we don’t think about today. So I suggested that I go on television and conduct segments about how to shop online and use products from Shopbop. To make sure I could back up my work with data, we included an incentive code on merchandise that would help track my efforts. The first media I pitched was AM Northwest in Portland, Oregon where I did a style segment on how to pack your suitcase for summer. Everything was from Shopbop and because of the tracking code we could see the effect. I slowly started doing more appearances and was on roughly 400 different television shows. My roots learned in the sorority for pitching and learning how to motivate groups of people were a huge help to my career.

It was definitely not something I sought out to do. I loved working at Shopbop; however, I was given such a great opportunity being in the right place at the right time that I think it would have been short-sighted not to seize it. When we sold Shopbop to Amazon, I had some great career coaching and approached them with the idea to start consulting for Shopbop through Bollare.

A lot of the reason we've had such growth is because many people trust my personal understanding about blending e-commerce with the PR strategy. The neat thing about an e-commerce business is that everything is hyper trackable. You can work smarter if you understand how to read the analytics. For example, I’ll have a new website come up with their top five referrers to the site including time spent on the site, the number of click- throughs till you lose people, etc. Next, my team and I will look at this data and set benchmarks on how we're going to improve it for somebody. Digital is wonderful because if you’re savvy, it allows you to work, not just hard, but very smart too. Whether it's a hash tag, click-through or tracking link, I can now talk to the client about a true call to action that we created because I can make it measurable.

How we help someone build their brand varies, so I can't give a blanket answer about creating a savvy media campaign; however, a recent campaign example is Quiksilver Women and Quiksilver Girls. This is a brand that a lot of people probably associate with Orange County, surfing, a certain price point, etc. Through a blend of wonderful PR, blogger seeding and social media we’ve been able to change that outlook. We use a mix of traditional media, blogger-seeding where bloggers integrate with the brand on a deeper level than just wearing products and creating content for the brand’s blog and Tumblr. We work on the social strategy through Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram to re-shape how consumers view this brand.

My favorite part is seeing a light bulb go off with a team member. I am the queen of asking rhetorical questions because I think a lot of times we're moving so fast that we don't necessarily like to think about why something worked or why it didn’t. I love asking the team questions like, “What could have gone faster?” or “What was more challenging?” and having people really go through that internally because those are the kinds of lessons you can only teach yourself. Seeing how they can layer work and make it run smoother and enjoy things more is hands down my favorite thing.

The most challenging part, also on the team side, is apathy. It’s not in my DNA to not give it my all, so if I see that in a team member I struggle to understand why it’s happening.

I really come from a place of “nice girls can finish first.” I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone that says I ever cut them down or tripped them up. It’s been eye-opening to see people do that to me and, because I come from a wholesome family background, I'm not necessarily one to think about that dark side of competition that can be pervasive in the PR space.

Yes. I have many, the first being my father. He is so present and an advisor to me in so many ways. My husband, Don, has taught me about enjoying the ride. Now I realize you can sleep when you're dead: enjoy the perks of the ride! Sara Flores, Bollare’s VP, has taught me about knowing your worth and really not being shy to enjoy that. And, of course, the team! I mean really, there's something about every single person at Bollare that I admire, which is why they're on the team.

Absolutely! I think if you are working somewhere where you can't see yourself one day wanting to be like someone above you, then you should U-turn because that's where you're going. That's what your peers and mentors are teaching you to be like: they're teaching you how to have their lifestyle.

Yes. Find something that you really like because it comes across if you're genuine or not. People can tell if you're a faux so find something that you’re really passionate about and hyper-focus on it. Also, have something that is your unique point of differentiation in the marketplace and be able to articulate that very clearly in one sentence. Become an expert there and use that as a marketable skill to help attain the type of career and job you really want.

I love the growth of the Bollare team! I want to be very strategic with our growth and not just sign on clients to sign them and not just hire people to hire them. I want to be thoughtful about if this type of client fits with our dynamic mix and be very curated with our dynamic mix because that's how we continue to be successful.

There are so many! The first time I walked my mom up to the front door of the Bollare office. The first time I saw our New York office. We started New York in a small incubator space and Sara Flores had bought a one-way ticket, stayed on a friend's couch and got a membership to the SoHo house so she could start to be “in the scene” and meet people. When we got our big office in New York on 5th Avenue and the elevator opened to a full floor, I had a moment. I also love any of our holiday parties, anniversaries, etc. Those are all moments where I really try to sip it up.

Think about what it is that you do in your spare time. In my spare time, I always wanted to read fashion magazines, go shopping with my girlfriends, go be social, naturally connect with people, etc.

Think about what you do naturally because that's going to be the most organic to you and it feels less like work. Also, looking alive, seeing opportunities and helping create them for yourself. No one would have given me this.