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OhHello - Karin O'Connor
72 Plays2 years ago
From joining her first start-up during the original dot com boom, Karin O’Connor has followed her curiosity through the evolution of technology, data and marketing over the past 20 years.
Karin is currently a Senior Director of Innovation Consulting at Salesforce, where she gets to talk about the intersection of business goals and technology with the most amazing people daily.
Her past roles include Managing Director at Accuen (Omnicom), Digital leadership at OMD and was the SVP of Marketing at an ad tech start up. In her quest for lifelong learning, she earned her Masters of Science from the School of Engineering at Northwestern through their MPD2 design program.
Approaching her work through the lens of Strategy, Empathy and Technology, Karin is passionate about creating opportunities for others.
Inspired by her experience being the first in her family to graduate college she recently founded The First Graduates Club, a year long mentorship program for individuals that are the first in their family to graduate from a four-year college or university. To learn more, join us at thefirstgraduatesclub.org.
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Transcript
Welcome and Guest Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Good grief. Oh, come on, Charlie Brown. All right. Oh, hello. Oh, hello, Jeremy. How are you? Oh, hello, Karen.
00:00:27
Speaker
I am doing quite well. I'm great. I am great. It was so good catching up with you right before we started. How are you? I'm so, so great. So excited to be talking to you. Love all of this and can't wait to talk to you about all the goodness going on here. Well, thank you, Karen. I know who you are.
00:00:49
Speaker
guests, listeners, those watching on LinkedIn, those watching on YouTube, those listening on Spotify, Apple, Google, wherever you listen to your podcast. Thank you for listening to us on ohello.io.
Karen O'Connor's Background and Career Journey
00:01:04
Speaker
Hi, Karen. Can you tell us who you are?
00:01:06
Speaker
I would love to. I am Karen O'Connor. My current role is an innovation consultant with Salesforce, which is a role that I relish. I started out working in technology and marketing in 1999 at a telephony internet startup, which was an incredible ride that went belly up. And ever since then, I've been following my curiosity from role to role.
00:01:33
Speaker
whether it be working at a creative agency, large media agencies, heading up an ad tech startup for marketing, going to school, grad school to learn new things. So I am an industry fan and I consider myself a lifelong learner.
00:01:51
Speaker
You're absolutely a lifelong warner. You had shared with me in the very half an hour ago when we were catching up about a cause that's very near and dear to you and your heart called First Graduates Club. Why don't you tell us a little bit about First Graduates Club? Yes, it's something I'm really excited about.
00:02:10
Speaker
My sister and I were the first people in our family to graduate college. We put ourselves through school doing receptionist, waitress, all the ISC jobs. And when we graduated, we didn't necessarily have the network or the know-how to start entering our industries. I lucked out due to a family friend, but not everyone's so lucky. So I have recently founded the First Graduates Club. Our mission is to take 10 mentees a year
00:02:39
Speaker
who are the first in their families to graduate college from a four-year university and provide them support for their first year as they transition into their career. I'm super, super excited about it. When I heard about your goal of mentoring people, I thought it was an incredible compliment and I wanted to share. That's amazing. That's such an amazing cause.
00:02:59
Speaker
happy to help spread the goodness. Thank you. Of course, virtual hug. Tell me a little bit, Karen, I know your background and the fact that you have spent the past five plus years being
00:03:14
Speaker
a tech expert, an innovation expert, the fact that you went several years back to get your masters in this ecosystem. You've been at wonderful companies. How would you describe your skill sets that you're going to be sharing with the Oh, hello
Mentorship Philosophy and Advice
00:03:30
Speaker
community? What, what excites you about mentorship?
00:03:35
Speaker
Oh gosh, so many things. So I think from a skillset perspective, how I view my approach is I'm a combination of strategy, technology, and empathy, to be honest. I feel like in tech, we don't always focus on the human aspect, even though it's every single aspect of what we do.
00:03:54
Speaker
And then I sprinkle that with a healthy dose of candor. I'm told very frequently that I'm thankful for my candor frequently. And I'm excited about mentorship because I feel like what a good mentor is for someone varies so much person to person. There's not a template. So I love the idea of someone being like, hey, I want someone like Karen
00:04:18
Speaker
who has this this philosophical approach in this sort of background and i want to understand how she feels about the industry how i could be in the industry and for that that connection to resonate which might not be the connection for everyone so that's something i'm excited about it's just getting that fit it's that match.
00:04:38
Speaker
That's great. The candor is so important. And the strategy, technology, empathy, S-T-E, or if we change around the acronym and call it SET, S-E-T. Nice.
00:04:54
Speaker
that really resonates. That's something that can be so resourceful and so helpful to anyone at any stage of their career because having empathy is so important in every single element of who we are, what we do, every interaction, whether it's personal, professional. Awesome, awesome. So looking back then, Karen, just thinking about your set, thinking about your candor, what would you tell your younger self? If you were,
00:05:23
Speaker
25 again, if you were bootstrapping yourself to go through college, to be the first college graduate of your family, what you've learned for the past X amount of years, looking back, what would you do differently? And walk us through it a little bit.
00:05:41
Speaker
First thing I'd say is follow your curiosity. That's been my entire career. I would see a little glimpse of something, and I'd be like, oh, that's really cool. How do I learn more about that? So when you get excited about things, people feel that excitement. If you're just doing something because you feel like it's the right thing to do, maybe you should take a step back.
00:06:02
Speaker
Back to the candor thing, candor doesn't resonate with everyone, but the people it does resonate with, that's your tribe. So 25-year-old Karen shouldn't really be concerned about speaking her mind all of that much. And then the other thing about going back to being 25 is I would want to tell Karen that she has met the most incredible people in this industry.
00:06:26
Speaker
They are people that are her dearest friends. There are people that inspire her every day. So it's just not a career. You're creating a life for yourself and keep that in mind as you get to talk to these people day to day. Everyone has something amazing to offer. Stay curious, my friend. Yeah.
Reflections on Mentorship Influences
00:06:44
Speaker
Who are some mentors that have had a profound impact on your life and your career?
00:06:48
Speaker
No, I thought about that a bit because I saw some of the other chats that you've had with people I adore and I realized that my mentors are the people that I worked most closely with either as peers or co-workers or the person I just report into. So at Salesforce right now, I've had a chance to work with an amazing woman by the name of Jill Royce.
00:07:09
Speaker
And we ended up talking one day, and that's how I ended up there. Jill's been an incredible mentor. And she's been a great mentor because she also follows the set model. She's fantastic. And then in my very large agency days, two gentlemen, one by the name of Ming Wu, and the other one of Josh Jacobs, of Accu and Fame, if we're all the old people. No, both of them, yeah.
00:07:34
Speaker
Incredible people, incredible visionaries, and it was just great to see how they approach business and people. And I don't think they even know the impact they had on me, but I greatly appreciate and value them. Warm fuzzies all around. Thank you for sharing that. I'm sure both of them, I'm sure all three of them appreciate it. And I love that you brought the SET methodology back into the conversation. Well played, my friend. That was good.
Future Plans and Community Engagement
00:07:59
Speaker
As a hello, you're going to be able to choose to donate to over 40 plus charities.
00:08:04
Speaker
What are some charities that are near and dear to your heart where you're going to be able to give back from within the oh, hello.io platform? You know, it's such an incredible list. And I absolutely love that you're doing this. And the one that jumped out to me was Children International. I mentor through Salesforce, a young lady, Lunati, who lives in South Africa, we speak
00:08:28
Speaker
for half hour every single week about school life, a lot about fashion design because that's what she's really into. And I just see really the impact of if we're able to give funds and time to children and how they can grow. So that's where I would like to focus as well.
00:08:45
Speaker
Well, thank you, Karen. It was wonderful having you here. Thank you for being part of the Oh Hello community. Thank you for sharing your tips and tricks and what's going to differentiate you from some other Oh Hellos. And it was so good to hear about just how you look to both give back in terms of first graduates club. That's really something special and you should absolutely be proud of that. And I'm so happy that you're pursuing something that's so important to so many people.
00:09:14
Speaker
Jeremy, thank you so much. I love what you're doing, and I'm so excited to meet some of the O's and get chatting with people. We're gonna have a good time. We're gonna have a very good time. Thank you, Karen. Thank you. Oh, hello, community. If you're listening, please subscribe, and we will speak again soon. Oh, come on, Charlie.