Two years ago I was at a Kirtsy party at SxSW when I met Julie Pippert for the first time. We hit it off immediately. With both of us living in Houston and our similar interests as Moms, bloggers and consultants, we made an instant connection that would only grow with time.
Last year, when I co-founded Zoetica with partners Beth Kanter and Geoff Livingston, Julie quickly became one of the wonderful group of consultants that we work with on bigger projects, like the Crisis Data Summit we did with the Red Cross in August. In fact, she has become an integral part of our team.
As a result, we decided to make it official, and Julie will be joining the Zoetica team full-time on January 1, 2010, as our Director of Accounts. Julie has done, and continues to do, amazing things. You can read all about her achievements in the official press release. She will also help us with our newly announced community The Zoetica Salon, which will be hosted on CEO Beth Kanter’s Facebook page, starting today.
But what I love the most about Julie is how she brings her passion to work. One example is the American Cancer Society’s Choose You campaign, for which she writes as a blogger and serves as a community leader. I pulled a screenshot from the video she did for that effort for the lead photo of this post. She talks about how how her friend died of lung cancer and she realized she wouldn’t be having any more birthdays. The American Cancer Society has a More Birthday’s campaign in which Julie is involved. Just one more example about how she takes her client work personally. You can see her in this picture recently celebrating her own birthday.
Three things I have learned from Julie:
- Always bring your passion to the table, it makes for better communication of your clients mission
- Look for ways to connect the dots, part of what you are hired to do is to make introductions and Julie does this well
- Good blogger relations requires the right people, which are not necessarily the ones with the biggest following
I plan on learning a lot more from Julie. Welcome to the team!
Julie’s Birthday photo credit: The Amazing Imelda Bettinger
