With a happy heart, I am saying goodbye to an amazing 3 years at Kobo. I was hired in April 2013 and shouted from the rooftops how happy I was to land my dream job. As a bookworm, I got the chance to say I sold books for a living and will always be grateful for my days at Kobo.
I was given the opportunity to move from an advertising agency to the client-side and that was such an important step in my career. I worked on the brand marketing team, tried my hand at strategic partnership negotiations and finally found my niche as the sr. integrated marketing manager. I was there as our company went through a workforce consolidation, saw founders leave, a new CEO come in, a re-brand from Kobo to Rakuten Kobo, our president move into the CEO spot, helped launch our loyalty program; Kobo Super Points, I saw co-workers come and go and developed life long friendships.
As I leave Kobo and start a new adventure I want to reflect on the things I learned and share the gratitude that I take from this part of my career.
- I learned how to implement a cross-team collaborative process called integrated marketing planning. I was given the honour of creating a new process that hadn’t existed in the organization before. Creating processes and asking teams to change the way they’ve always done work was a challenge but so gratifying when I could see the process actually works.
- After completing the DISC assessment during leadership training I learned how valuable it is to understand how other personalities communicate and like to be coached in the workplace. I also learned to be confident in who I am and not diminish my strong personality but continue to explain it while also meeting people halfway in their preferred style of communication.
- I’m grateful for simple things like rock climbing at the local spot Joe Rockhead’s around the corner from the office with a co-worker or being able to work out at the GoodLife, 3 blocks from the office before the work day started.
- I’m thankful for the number of healthy restaurants in Liberty Village to grab meals at when I didn’t have time to meal prep.
- I’m grateful that I found my first career mentor. I never had the chance to truly learn what a mentor was in my advertising days and I’m grateful for the biggest lesson I learned from him. He daily shows his peers and direct reports how much he cares for everyone while also being extremely efficient, smart and good at allowing his team to do what they are hired to do.
And last but not least I had the pleasure of working with really, really intelligent people who challenged me to always keep educating myself, be direct and concise, be efficient and thorough and detailed to continue to drive key performance indicators for the company. I will be forever grateful for the time I spent with Kobo. I can’t wait to see all the big plans for the year come to fruition. I”ll be rooting for you from afar. Voraciously reading on my Kobo Aura and smiling when I see all the accomplishments continue to happen.
I’m so grateful for my time at Kobo.
As our President loves to say: Go Kobo!