When I moved to Columbia three years ago, I could never have imagined the opportunities that awaited me here. And this is a huge one!I'm so honored to use what I've learned during my career in tech and my time as an entrepreneur to help serve my community and mentor the next generation of business leaders.

HelloSEO started accidentally when an attorney asked if I could do some SEO for him on the side while I was still working at GSG. Suddenly, I had a taste of the entrepreneurial life, and I was hooked. It was also my first taste of creating my own strategies and SOPs. I loved owning the entire project and proving (to myself) that I knew what I was talking about. HelloSEO was a side hustle from November 2020 to October 2022 when I finally decided to take the leap. The biggest challenge was trying to build up clientele enough to match my income while also working a demanding job at a startup (see the 8-month-long SWOT analysis above.)Thanks to some strategic partnerships and an amazing business advisor, I finally quit my job on October 21, 2022. I was terrified. One year in, and HelloSEO has grown tremendously. I now have a full team, an incredible book of clients, and some killer case studies. I can’t wait to see what the next few years look like for HelloSEO.

In December of 2021, I was invited out to Irvine for a meetup and ended up connecting strongly with the analytics team. There were a few position shifts happening, and it seemed like the perfect time to throw my name in for a shift to the data team. This was yet another huge shift for my career, and the amount I managed to learn about data, analytics, and reporting in those 10ish months still makes my head spin. It was incredibly challenging, and I felt like I was failing forward the entire time. During this time, I also got to complete an 8-month-long SWOT analysis with another teammate and then present it to shareholders. This is another collection of data that I’ll cherish forever.

In April 2021, I was recruited to be an SEO content manager at a high-growth semiconductor startup in Irvine, Ca. It was a thorough interview process and such a massive career jump that I was fully convinced they’d choose someone else. It goes without saying that I got the job. I was suddenly in charge of writers, creating my own strategies without the safety net of an SEO manager who was ~really~ the decision maker. My first few weeks at the job were me thinking “who is in charge of this?!” and then realizing it was me. The job was more challenging and rewarding than any I’d had before. I loved getting the support my team and create really cool content for a cutting-edge startup.

GSG was my first taste of startup life, and the best job I’ve ever had. We worked out of a WeWork in Buckhead, I got to take the train every day, I had the coolest coworkers… I couldn’t have asked for more. At GSG, we were in charge of the SEO and content for all of the coupon pages for Business Insider and CNN. (We generated over 50% of both publications' annual revenue with these pages. So crazy.) I always say this is the perfect incubator job for someone interested in SEO. You get so much freedom to experiment and discover what works and what doesn’t. I’m still referring new SEOs to this job. I was a founding member of the longtail team that managed 400+ accounts for brands including lululemon, HelloFresh, Viator, MeUndies and many more. We were assigned the retailers that weren’t ranking well and had to preform audits, analyze data, and do whatever we could to get them ranking better. My favorite retailer to work on was Roblox. I still have screengrabs of all the data from that SEO campaign. Normal behavior.

I started freelancing during college. I was writing for everything from feminist magazines to children’s book publishing houses. It’s crazy to look back and realize I carved out a name for myself in the children’s ghostwriting space in my early 20s. If you come across any picture books featuring a corgi named Loaf, you’re probably reading my work. This is also where I was exposed to the world of SEO. If you freelance long enough, you end up writing for SEO agencies. I became obsessed with all the different elements that came together to create an SEO strategy and decided to put all my eggs in one basket and dedicate my career to figuring out the SEO world. If I met a young person today with the same blind passion for an advanced marketing niche they knew nothing about, I would encourage them to diversify their interests a bit. But it was my one-track mind that got me where I am today. I’ll always be grateful for that all-or-nothing mentality I had.

My first agency job! A few weeks after graduating from The General Assembly, I landed a job at a boutique agency in Atlanta as a content writer. We worked out of a fancy coworking space with a coffee shop inside, and I thought I had MADE IT. I went into this job with the intention of learning as much as possible about SEO. I’d spent my mornings writing content, and in the afternoons, I’d sit behind the lead SEO Analyst and probably annoy him to death with my questions. By the end of this job, I had branched into SEO reporting, which is still one of my favorite parts of marketing.

My first job out of college. My entire job was using voice recognition software to create captions for the live news. I’d literally watch BBC and Sky news while speaking over it into a microphone to generate captions. Needless to say, I knew A LOT about Brexit for a kid in Atlanta. My biggest takeaway from the job is all the unique ways you can use voice recognition software. If you’re a client of mine, you know I still use this constantly (paired with AI) to create E-E-A-T-friendly blog content.