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OhHello - Nina Nasre
28 Plays1 year ago
OhHello!
It's episode 80, and this "Hello" (what we call a certified mentor around these parts) is all about #community
In fact, Nina Nasre leads the Adobe Acrobat community, and we're thrilled to have her as a mentor within our tribe!
Nina is a 💪 and confident leader, and she talks about how it's not easy navigating a corporate environment without #mentors
🔑 Key Takeaways:
Nina highlights OhHello.io as a vital resource for young professionals navigating career challenges. Being a strong woman in corporate America is not easy. She gives shout-outs to 3 of her mentors (Erin Milan, Mary Sheehan - an elite OhHello.io 🌞☕️ OG, Phil Cowlishaw - a mentor to many) that have helped her
🌱 Life Beyond Work:
An avid traveler and foodie, Nina stresses the importance of work-life balance and enjoying life's experiences.
📣 Connect with Nina on OhHello.io: https://ohhello.io/mentors/ninanasre
#Mentorship #CareerDevelopment #OhHello #Adobe
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Transcript
Reconnecting and Career Reminiscing
00:00:08
Speaker
Oh, hello, Nina. Hello, Jeremy. How are you?
00:00:14
Speaker
I'm good. Thank you for having me. It's so good to see you. It was so good reconnecting last month, catching up on life, catching up on your career journey, your trajectory. Yeah. You're crushing it. So everyone knows Nina and I worked with each other at Tube Mogul and Adobe. Nina lives in California. She grew up in California. She started her career at Oracle, but
00:00:40
Speaker
We're going to start this pod and vat a little bit differently than how we've done this before.
Format Change Suggestion
00:00:44
Speaker
Yeah. As Nina and I were grabbing a coffee right before we started, she came up with a deal. Let's switch this up. Let's do it differently than the way it's been. And as a community manager, as someone who's been in product marketing, as someone who has been in strategy, I said, let's give it a shot. Let's do this. Let's try it out. Switch it up. Switch it up. Nina, let me ask you a question.
The Value of Mentorship
00:01:09
Speaker
What excites you about Oh, hello? And what excites you about mentorship? Two for one. I think what you're doing at Oh, hello is so valuable and so needed in this space. I was thinking back to when I was 23 first out of college, and I felt really hopeless in my first job and really like a small fish in a huge pond. And I wish that I had more resources in in and
00:01:38
Speaker
places I could go in order to talk to someone who was, I could relate to and to help me kind of like get a little bit more hope in terms of like, what is my next step? How do I get there? I don't even know which way is up. So I think that what you're doing is so important and will be so valuable to people, especially young people who don't, don't know what, how to get to their, where they want to be.
Accessing Expertise Virtually
00:02:03
Speaker
And also just accessibility, being able to access different experts, different people, uh, with different skill sets, whether someone is 25 or 75 within their career, everyone has some different secret sauce about like what has worked for them and what hasn't. So it's also so much about being in this kind of more virtual world that we have. Like the accessibility is, is a lot easier now than it was even a few years ago. So.
00:02:32
Speaker
I think that it's really an exciting opportunity to be able to connect with people in totally different places and I think what you're doing is amazing.
Career Transition and Strategy
00:02:44
Speaker
You are a mentor within the Oh, hello community. You're part of the tribe. We hope others join the tribe as well. But with that said, what kind of advice are you going to be giving to people that are choosing you Nina, that for people that want to reach out that want to pick your brain, walk us through a little bit more about what you've done thus far in your career. And just some of the value propositions that you offer.
00:03:10
Speaker
I made a big jump from sales to digital media strategy at a startup. We got acquired by Adobe and since then I've had a variety of different marketing roles at the company and
00:03:24
Speaker
everything from digital media strategy, product marketing, campaign strategy, and now community. So I think it's rare to have somebody that is able to navigate all of those different areas internally or in totally different organizations.
Building Relationships for Career Growth
00:03:39
Speaker
And there's so much that goes into marketing.
00:03:41
Speaker
So I think that my biggest kind of strength and asset has been about my relationship building, how to foresee where your next opportunity is gonna come from, how to double down on your strengths in order to get to that next step. And to be honest, I did not know I was gonna end up in a community role. Like I had no idea I would be leading community for Acrobat one day. If you had told me that a few years ago, I would have been like, what even is community?
00:04:08
Speaker
Because the role didn't that even the function hardly even existed so. Overall like the skills that i think i can bring are are those intangibles right navigating big organizations how to set yourself up for success to prepare yourself in your current role in order to have more opportunity in the future.
00:04:28
Speaker
I love that. Navigation is so important, especially for someone who's worked at a few different tech companies. Yes. Your family members of yours, your dad, your uncles, your cousins have been within tech.
Confidence in Male-dominated Settings
00:04:42
Speaker
And something that we talked about before this is just also the political ecosystem of working at a company of if there are a lot of males in the room, of being able to know how to navigate. You had said to me,
00:04:54
Speaker
when we were chatting earlier, you're like, you know, something that occurred to me after being a year or two within my career is not to be timid about the different rooms that I'm going in and who I'm meeting with. You specifically said, I just go into every room, every meeting, and it took me a couple years to build that confidence. And I just look at people in the eye and say, you're just my dad. You're just an uncle. Like,
00:05:19
Speaker
just like having them and so i think that those aspects of being able to navigate a corporate structure going in and out of different companies it's really. It's genuinely is an intangible because when a lot of people start their careers or or if they're moving from a small tech company.
00:05:38
Speaker
or if they're moving from an ad agency and they go into a bigger corporate setting, they're like, oh my God, what do I do? This is a different size aquarium than a fishbowl, so to speak. Absolutely. And I think that it's intimidating to be at a big company anyway, so let alone kind of building the confidence that you need in order to really hold your own in an executive meeting or when you're working with a bunch of different cross-functional partners,
00:06:08
Speaker
or whatever the case be. But exactly to your point, it took time to kind of really build to that. But you just have to remember, these are all just people. People want to have genuine connections with each other. And so how do you become this genuine pleasure to work with? Make your manager's job easier, right? Be someone that people want on their team. But at the same time, it's a fine line between then also having strength and confidence and advocating for yourself.
00:06:37
Speaker
And especially being kind of a woman in corporate America, like finding that balance has been so key and critical for me in order to make my jumps to the next thing and be seen as a valuable teammate and also a leader.
00:06:53
Speaker
That's such amazing feedback and something that I'm sure people will get value from when they're, when they're syncing with you.
Impact of Mentorship
00:07:00
Speaker
Tell us a bit about just who some of your professional mentors are and how you got to be who you are today and what kind of impact that they made on your career thus far. I'll list a couple of people who, yeah. So Aaron Mylan is one who made a huge impact on me. She was my hiring manager.
00:07:21
Speaker
at Tube Mogul. She saw kind of some of those intangibles. She took a chance on me. I had no marketing experience. I came from sales and I was so focused on finding an organization and a manager that I connected with. And it was so amazing for me to see, you know, another woman, a family woman who was working and all of that. And we actually like kind of, we're still in touch. We've grown together. We grew together and she gave me my big break. So big shout out to her.
00:07:50
Speaker
Another person is Phil Kalashaw. He was the VP of strategy when I started at Tube Mogul and that's an example of someone who you could be easily intimidated by, but we were able to work together. I learned
00:08:03
Speaker
so much from him. He's so smart. But he also has been so instrumental in terms of my professional development. I still to this day, do not make a career move without consulting him. So huge shout out to Phil. He knows that he's been my mentor all these years, but big one. And then a third is Mary Sheehan. She really we were. She's amazing. She's a fellow. Oh, hello, mentor. She's one of our first
00:08:32
Speaker
She is, and we had the opportunity to work on the PMM team together as both teammates, and then she ended up managing me for a little bit. What is PMM for those that are watching this? Product marketing. Got it. I learned so much from her. She is so incredibly intelligent and such a kind, warm person to work with. Fantastic, fantastic woman. It's an amazing example of how
00:08:58
Speaker
establishing these relationships in your org, you don't know where you're going to end up. She actually was the one who helped foster that relationship in order for me to move over to Adobe Acrobat. So
00:09:08
Speaker
She made a huge impact on my career as well. That's amazing.
Community Management at Adobe
00:09:12
Speaker
Help us understand a little bit more about what you do. As we've discussed, you've done product marketing, you've done strategy. Now you're doing community management for one of the top global tech companies and a product that everyone is familiar with in some sort or another. Tell us a little bit more about what you do on a day-to-day.
00:09:32
Speaker
Community at Adobe community in general is like a big new way to market, right? You're thinking about user generated content ambassadors, right? Like it's a way to flip marketing on its head and in a non-traditional way. And really at the end of the day, what everyone's looking for is those genuine and authentic connections. So we have a unique opportunity right now and I'm, I'm leading the charge with,
00:09:58
Speaker
of building a small business community around Adobe Acrobat. Ultimately, what we want to do is help have champion small businesses in order to grow and realize how they can be more productive. You're talking about micro entrepreneurs who these days are wearing all these different hats. And how do you foster that connection? Yeah, like yourself. How do you foster that connection and help small businesses become successful? So that's something we're looking to do.
00:10:27
Speaker
And we're in a really exciting time, I think in just general at Adobe and in the world with all these amazing resources and tools we have at our disposal, whether it's AI, whether it's all these different document productivity tools, whether it's creative productivity tools. And so we're trying to really amplify this authentic voice of the customer for Adobe Acrobat.
Passion for Travel and Life Revitalization
00:10:49
Speaker
And when you're not amplifying the authentic voice of the customer for Adobe Acrobat, what are you doing outside of work? Tell us a little bit about who you are. Outside of work, I try to travel as much as I can. I think having a work-life balance is so important because as a single woman in my 30s, I think it's important to just really take time to enjoy and have fun.
00:11:18
Speaker
On a personal note, I had a very big kind of life change. I thought I was going to get married and that didn't end up happening. But it opened these doors in so many interesting ways where I got the benefit and I'm having the benefit of really growing into my own at this stage of my life. And I've re become reacquainted with this kind of zest for life. And that I don't think I would have gotten otherwise. So
00:11:45
Speaker
I travel as much as I can. I started a travel blog as a passion project, and I just like to experience different cultures. I'm a foodie and having fun. You gotta prioritize having fun, because if not now, then when? Yep, I agree. Nina, this has been awesome. Any other parting words of wisdom or advice that you want to give to the Oh, hello, VOD watchers, the pod listeners, and just our overall community?
Creating a Fulfilling Life
00:12:10
Speaker
You know, we're all just trying to make it. There's no, there's no,
00:12:15
Speaker
you know, guidebook on how to make something and live the life that you want to live. But I think something that I've learned and I'm learning and continuing to kind of double down on is how do you architect a life that you actually want to live, whether it's professionally and or personally, and that's kind of where I'm at. So if there's anyone who wants to talk about it, I'm excited. I'm here. Whether it's marketing specific or just how do you navigate life, I'm here and I'm ready. So thank you so much for having me.
00:12:44
Speaker
Nina, you rock. Thank you, everyone, for watching. Thank you for listening. Until next time, go ahead and book Nina. Now that we are live, go hello.io. Book Nina if you have some time with her. Thank you, Nina. Bye, everybody.