Chelsea Maher
Head of marketing, Trust and Culture Shift
I’ve been in marketing for just under 10 years. I first got into it through my job at an accountancy practice where I was working on reception. I started helping the marketing manager on some basic marketing tasks, I then covered a lot of her role while she was on maternity leave and found I loved it (and was quite good at it).
When she came back we carved a path for my new career in marketing. My employer paid for my CIM qualifications and six years later I was head of the marketing department.
I’m passionate about inspiring others to get into marketing because when I was in school I didn’t even know it was an option for me. I love my job and I’d love others to find out what it’s like too.
We need to get in front of school children earlier so they know about all the career possibilities available to them before they leave for college. Initiatives like Unilever’s ice cream competition work brilliantly because they get school age children’s imaginations going and open their eyes to the possibilities of marketing. Getting inspirational speakers into schools and one-on-one mentoring initiatives in place, rather than just traditional work experience placements, will give them more opportunity to question marketing professionals on what they actually do for a job so they can work out for themselves whether or not they like the sound of it. Dispelling some myths about marketing being just advertising and telling them about all the different types of jobs in the field might help make it a more aspirational career.
