From public health to marketing tech operations, this exec made sense of the moment

Reid, 35, enjoyed social marketing as a graduate student at the University of Delaware, but never expected to pursue it as a career. She entered the healthcare industry as planned after graduation. Today, she is the operations manager for marketing and technology firm Tapp Network.

How did this Lewes-based, remote-working executive get to where she is? I spoke to Reid about her career trajectory, moving from healthcare to marketing technology, academic hurdles and trusting the path for our How I Got Here series. Here’s what she said, edited for length and clarity:

Why was your transition to marketing technology unexpected?

I went to University of Delaware for both undergrad and grad school. My undergrad was health behavior science with a concentration in fitness management, and I continued into grad school with the program [in] health promotion. It’s very similar to a public health degree, with slightly more of an individual focus. It’s a two-year program, so there’s some basic courses that you take. In undergrad, I had to take some business classes and marketing, macro, micro, all of those sorts of things. And then in grad school, there was an elective class on social marketing that I took, and I loved it. It was my favorite professor, and we did it jointly with Thomas Jefferson University. It was just really different and really fun.

When you’re done your first year, you go into the second year and after that first semester, you have to take what’s called comprehensive exams. So there are two from the main courses and one you pick as an elective. You get a prompt and you have to sit in this conference room with a few other students for eight to 12 hours, just writing with no internet access or anything, just answering this prompt about everything that you’ve learned over a year and a half in the program. If you don’t pass the written exam, you have to take a verbal exam basically defending your position in front of the board. And then if you don’t pass that, you’re kicked out of the program.

Jen Reid. (Courtesy Tapp Network)

I wasn’t worried about it. I’ve always done well academically. But wouldn’t you know, it was probably a class of 10 of us, and me and one other girl didn’t pass one of our exams. Mine was social marketing. So I had to go defend my position in front of the board. And they sent me out in the hallway and I slumped down against the wall and, up to that point, it was definitely one of my lowest moments. Academics had always come pretty easy to me. It was, like, part of my identity, and I just felt like it was a real hit to all of that. I ended up passing and moved on, but was just pretty sure that marketing was not for me.

What did you initially do after graduate school?

Once I graduated, I went into worksite wellness, which is what I thought I wanted to do. I did that for a little bit, then worked in the hospital system for a little bit, and started my own consulting company for a little while before I got what I thought was my dream job working for public health. I was overseeing the infant mortality program within the Maternal and Child Health Bureau [at the Delaware Dept. of Health and Social Services]. And I really loved it.

We had a social marketing company that was working for us at the time, and the owner recruited me. You know, I was young and it seemed really cool and fun. They’d come to our meetings always really polished and put together, and it seemed like we were doing the hard stuff and they were doing the fun stuff. The agency was based out of Rhode Island, and they flew me out there, and they offered me the job. I was going to be the only remote employee and stay in Delaware and work with the Delaware clients. I ended up having the opportunity to work not just on infant mortality, but all of the maternal and child health scenes and programs. It was great.

They ended up laying off half the company, and then a year later, they closed their doors. At that time when I was let go, I was interviewing, and I’d heard of Tapp Network and had seen them at a few different networking meetings and events. So I applied, and I knew they were mission-driven, which wasn’t exactly the same as being social marketing-specific, but similar. And so I interviewed, and then it was probably a month or more before they offered me the job. They hired me as the health marketing director and the plan was for me to build out the healthcare business unit. And then a year into the job, I was promoted to director of operations.

I’ve said this to a few different students that I’ve mentored: You just take the best opportunities that present themselves when they do.Jen Reid Tapp Network

So yeah, it’s just hilarious to think, after everything with the exam, and here I am.

What do you do as Tapp’s director of operations?

We’re still a small company, so you wear a lot of hats. I would say my main hats are HR operations and then I’m still doing some account management, project management and business development. But in terms of operations, it’s making sure that we have the right people on our team overseen. I used to do all of the employee onboarding, but now I have somebody else who helps with that. Managing budgets and profitability and people and processes, all that changes really quickly in a small company that’s growing really fast. So it’s sort of this constant continual quality improvement cycle.

How is Tapp Network mission-driven?

We started primarily working with nonprofit organizations because we saw a need there, specifically, around digital marketing and marketing automation and that industry sort of falling behind the for-profit industry. So we wanted to figure out how we could help there. So that’s how we started — we didn’t turn away for-profit work, but that’s where we niched ourselves, and that’s still primarily true to this day.

The nonprofits we work with have grown in size significantly, though, so we have a lot of government contracts, some larger for-profit business contracts now, and then we still have some of the smaller nonprofits that we work with. Most of those come through a partnership that we have with TechSoup. They white label us and vice versa. We are the sole provider of web and marketing services through them, so if you’re a nonprofit looking for the services, they work with us at a discounted rate.

What advice would you give to someone entering the workforce with a specific degree?

I’ve said this to a few different students that I’ve mentored: You just take the best opportunities that present themselves when they do. I never thought I’d be working in marketing technology, especially after that social marketing situation. I love healthcare and I’m very passionate and involved in our healthcare clients and different boards and things that I’m on. But if I look at the skills across my lifetime that I’ve always been really good at, which are organization, time management and budgeting, these are skills that were transferable across industries. So while I’m not specifically in a healthcare industry or field anymore, I still get to touch it on occasion. The pathway of getting here makes so much sense now that I’m here. I almost feel like, how did I not see it sooner?

This is How I Got Here, a series where we chart the career journeys of technologists. Want to tell your story? Get in touch.