A GLIMPSE of WE: Learning & Development

When asked what I love most about working at WE, I always respond with, “all of the learning experiences the agency offers.” When I joined the agency last April, I made it a goal to get involved with as many of the learning and development sessions as I could, while making connections with as many people as possible in my first few months. I wanted to understand all the different moving parts of the agency, from how it operated to what people and specific teams actually do.

Coming from a smaller boutique agency there were many challenges when I was first starting out. I went from reporting into one person and working with a team of four people to working with a large team of over 30. I had to remember names and faces that went along with them, learn the business that I was working on, and become familiar with the many different parts of the agency.

During my first couple months, I met with employees across the agency, from Business Development and the dynamic duo in charge of our internship program to countless teammates on my internal agency team. I was able to get smart on the work they did and operations across the agency. However, I kept feeling like I was missing out on asking those burning, more in-depth questions about the parts of the business that are out of my scope. Questions like how do competitors edge out your product? What do you do to combat media fatigue? Do you have any new or interesting ways to reach a new audience or demographic?

Luckily for me, the GLIMPSE program was announced and I knew that I needed to participate and gather all the answers to these lingering questions. An offering from WE’s Learning & Development team, GLIMPSE pairs people from different accounts and teams to provide insight into their work. The program aligned with the goal I had originally set when I joined WE, offered a safe environment to ask the questions I had, and prompted me to ask questions I would have never thought to ask.

GLIMPSE offers employees the opportunity to meet new people at the agency and learn about their role. The program links individuals with a team, or subject matter, that they’re interested in. This opportunity would give me the chance to bounce ideas off a more senior PR person, learn how they navigated the PR career ladder, and talk through some of the roadblocks I have had.

For me, that subject matter was the cloud. My previous PR positions lightly touched on the cloud, but I never had the opportunity to dive deep and learn all about how the cloud works. I found that I was curious about the cloud, how Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform, worked and what WE’s role in the business was for our clients. GLIMPSE paired me with Alex Vaught, an account manager on the WE Azure team. I was able to speak candidly with Alex, ask the questions I had about the business and agency team, and then also inquire about his career and overall time at WE. I also had the chance to bounce my career goals off him and learn about his career aspirations.

This program has not only made me a more critical thinker, who asks more questions, but it’s helped me continue to seek out members of the agency and ask the right questions — the ones I really want to know.

GLIMPSE also provided value to my team. After hearing about how Alex and the Azure team solved the problems they faced and some of the innovative ways they fixed them, I brainstormed ideas for my clients and team based off the Azure team’s great ideas. Overall, participating in GLIMPSE was an eye-opening experience. I look forward to continuing to network my way through WE and taking advantage of every learning opportunity the agency offers.

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