International Women’s Day: What it Means to Me
In honor of International Women’s Day, we asked our Director of Marketing what it means to her and how she got to her position today.
My Marketing career started when I graduated a year early from college in 2009. I landed in the workforce in the middle of the recession and entry level jobs were scarce. Despite my two internships I worked during college, the overall job market was poor with unemployment reaching upwards of 10 percent. After a short stint working in the food and beverage industry and a nanny, I decided it was best to work for myself and open my own freelance graphic design business. My work varied from video editing, logo design, marketing collateral, social media management and a plethora of other marketing and advertising related gigs.
After travelling the United States, I decided to settle back down in my hometown of San Diego and start looking for a job that provided more stability than the gig economy offered. I started as a Marketing Coordinator and from there worked up to Marketing Specialist, but I still hungered for more. The job I had did not offer opportunity for growth so I decided to discover what would be a better fit. I remember the interview process for Suna was quite extensive and thorough as I had two phone interviews and two meetings before I was notified that I was selected as the new Marketing Manager.
Working at Suna has been such a pleasure and I am so grateful that my boss, Michael Larkins, took a chance on me. I truly believe that you don’t know what a great boss is until you have a bad one; and boy have I had my fair share of those. Michael has been a mentor that has directly contributed to my success. At the end of 2016, when I sat down with Michael to review goals for the upcoming year, he challenged me to accomplish all of my MBOs and in turn, I would be promoted to Marketing Director. That goal really pushed me to expose the drive I had within myself to take my career to the next level.
I have been blessed with a multitude of people in my life that helped me get to where I am today. I am so proud to live and work in the best country in the world. America provides an endless amount of opportunity for women in the workplace and I am honored to work for a company that shares these same values.
Noelle Hazekamp, Marketing Director