I first started as a Junior Project Manager in a French American Marketing Agency specialized in the medical field called Regimedia. Originally hired as a sales development associate, I progressively took the lead of the organization of an international event in Sweden. The World Association for Sexual Health Congress took place in June 2009 at Gotenburg. We had more than 1200 attendees, 50 incredible speakers, and were sponsored by great pharmaceutical companies such as Bayer or NovoNordisk.
I learned a lot in a broad range of marketing fields such as event management, online and print advertising, website management, sales and more. However, I wasn’t made to work in the medical field: the digital world was calling me.
Afterwards, I had the incredible opportunity to join Microsoft France as a Relation Marketing Manager. I worked under the supervision of Jean-Christophe Thomas at maintaining and enhancing Microsoft brand-awareness among technical and business audiences. I partnered with incredible individuals such as Nicolas Tann and Jules de Haas to develop the French Microsoft Community Website. I managed online marketing campaigns targeted on developer and business audiences, the Twitter account and created and managed the Facebook FanPage. I also took part in several events dedicated to the Microsoft France Community of developers.
During this amazing year in the biggest software company in the world, I learned a lot in online marketing campaign management, community management and social media marketing, until I received an email that was about to change my life.
In October 2010, I was contacted by a recruiter from San Francisco about a job opportunity where I could be a good fit. AppDirect, a start-up developing the concept of “Cloud Service Marketplaces”, was looking for a French-English Bilingual Social Media and Event Manager. After several interviews with Daniel Saks, co-CEO at AppDirect, and some paper-work, I jumped in a plane to San Francisco in January 2011. I was first in charge of all the social media operations for the company. My responsibilities then extended to event management, email marketing, PR&AR SEO and web design.
My experience at AppDirect has brought me not only novel skills in inbound marketing, event management, email marketing management, press and analysts relations, marketing design and user experience but also new friends, new ways to work, and a brand new vision of the world.
After 18 months at AppDirect, I was ready to bring my new expertise to another startup where I could build a marketing strategy from scratch. This is when I was interviewed by Michael P. Geraghty, founder and CEO at Sohālo. Mickey and his team had just finished building the product and he was ready to market it. I started working at Sohālo in October 2012 as the Head of Marketing and Communication. I had a blast imagining, creating and implementing the markcomm strategy of the company: Product Marketing, Digital Marketing, Social Media Strategy, PR&AR, Sales Collaterals and Events.
At Sohālo, I learned how to apply my knowledge to a different company with a different structure and goal. This flexibility is I think crucial for any good marketing professional. It was also one of my first experiences managing people and being a team leader.
In December 2013, I was contacted by Saffron to join the team as Director of Marketing. Saffron is at the cutting edge of tech innovation, since the company is building the first cognitive computing platform that can process information like the human brain by combining two powerful technologies: associative memories and cognitive distance. Saffron can find patterns and anomalies in data, and use experience and feedback to anticipate what will happen next. It is a fantastic product which will revolutionize our lives in the near future, giving computers the ability to accurately predict what we want and avoid errors and accidents.
As Marketing Director, my first challenges were to create a strong image for the brand, but also find ways to communicate the power of the platform in ways that non-technical people can understand, while gaining credibility and trust from the technical community. I also built the Saffron Marketing team, hiring contractors and full-time employees to join me in creating awareness around the company and its products.
