#PeopleOfCommercetools — Sharon Dawson — Digital Marketing Manager — Mastering remote team-work before it was cool.
Sharon Dawson, our US Digital Marketing Manager, had always worked in big, on-premise Marketing teams throughout her career. commercetools’ Marketing Team seemed, at first, to be an odd choice for her profile: the geographically dispersed team has people from both the East and West Coast while working hands-in-hands with a German-based team and other members in Europe and APAC. Many things might have changed due to the pandemic, but remote collaboration has been the norm for Sharon since her day one at commercetools.
I checked in with Sharon to see how she is doing. We chatted about her motivation for joining commercetools, her quarantine struggles, and her one very unique collection.
So Sharon, please give us a short introduction about yourself. What are you doing at commercetools USA and how long have you been here?
I am the digital marketing manager at commercetools USA and I started last December. So, I’m almost at my year’s anniversary! :). My job as a digital marketing manager is bringing more leads to commercetools. This means keeping the website updated, sending out emails, coordinating webinars, and helping sales find contacts. I also work with SEO to try to bring people organically to the website as well as with paid ads to increase traffic on the website.
As the only digital marketing expert in the US at the moment, do you think it is very overwhelming, or do you still think it is still doable? And are there any plans to expand the US digital marketing division for 2021?
We have some new marketing people in the US, but they are not specifically in the field of digital marketing. The whole US Marketing Team works great together and I have strong communication with my manager. Whenever we feel a project is getting difficult to achieve, we come to a decision together. Of course, I am open to having another team member, but no plans yet.
A big part of my job is the prioritization of projects. However, I do have a great German Marketing team by my side when I need help. We talk and balance our workload together to make sure that no one is overloaded. If someone comes to me with a deadline, I try my best to help, but if I can not manage it, I consult the German team and say, “Hey, can you guys handle some of this type of work at the moment?”
Are you familiar with working with an international team that works from another continent, or are you used to working in a big, on-premise team in the US?
I’m used to having a big team locally. One of the biggest challenges working at commercetools is the time difference. The Munich office is 6 hours ahead of me, while the US team, with the exception of one team member who is also on the East Coast like me, is three hours behind me, as they are all in California. Therefore, I do spend a lot of time calculating time zones. Also, the holidays in the US and Germany are different as well, so that’s one extra challenge.
Considering the time difference between Durham and California, what does the collaboration with your manager look like?
It has been great! My manager, Margaret, is always available if I have any questions. Also, I don’t like to be micromanaged, so she gives me the freedom to work. I plan my weekly meetings with Margeret and collaborate on our tasks. Besides my interview and the initial onboarding phase with Margeret, the only time I met her in person this year was in January.
As you joined our Durham office a year ago, how did the office life look like then?
Durham office is really great! My coworkers are amazing. We used to go out for lunches and play Foosball together all the time. When we moved to the gorgeous new office, we had many committees like decoration and others that we could choose to join. I joined the culture committee. Overall we have a great mixture of like-minded people. These are of course all the things before the pandemic. Now it’s different.
Another fact about the Durham office is many of you are not from the Raleigh-Durham area initially.
Yes that’s true. I would say 75% of the people here, or at least those I work with, grew up outside of the city. I am from Massachusetts originally, for example. Even with all these transplants like myself, we have a strong community growing here. The best part is the wide variety of food. We can have some killer Indian foods available now which was rare if you go back in time.
In Durham, particularly in the American Tobacco Campus where our office is, there are a lot of exciting tech companies. With all of these options, what exactly motivated you to join commercetools? You have a consumer product background, so a B2B Product like commercetools must be an interesting change!
I am very drawn to our growing product with a lot of upward potentials, which has gathered international attention and support from thought leaders and enterprise-level businesses. Our team is leaders in the way they developed the product from the ground up. In the market of commerce software, commercetools is innovative and different: We are actually cloud-first and cloud-native, instead of retrofitting the buzzwords.
My choice of commercetools has also proven itself to be right during the pandemic. I don’t know of any other company in my area that supported its employees as much as commercetools during Covid-19. A lot of companies have laid off people, including some of my friends. Not only did commercetools stay away from laying off people, it provided us with a budget to purchase equipment for home-office, with which I got myself a nice office chair and a monitor.
Was the quarantine hard on you?
Yes, because I am an extrovert. Video calls are not doing it for me. I like to go out, and even sit in cafes and work where I can see people around me. So, yes it has been hard on me because I really want to see my friends again.
In Europe, remote work is still a new concept we are trying to wrap our heads around. Little did we know that in the US, this has been the norm for years now!
Let’s talk a little bit about yourself. Would you like to tell us something unique that no one, at least at commercetools, knows about you?
Haha. I think I have the world’s largest collection of Cookie Monster stuffed animals. It is probably about 150 at the moment (and counting). I love Cookie Monsters. I started collecting them as a kid, and then as an adult, it just took off. I even have a database with their model numbers and their brands. There’s one in Germany that is a different model than any I own that I’m dying to get, but it can only be bought in Germany. Next time I visit our headquarter in Germany, whenever we can travel again, I’m buying that Cookie Monster!
Such a collection would need a lot of space, right?
Yes. They are currently residing at the top of my stairs. They have shelves that they can stay on, so they stay organized, and I can kind of see them all at once.
I really hope that the pandemic is over soon and the travel restriction will be lifted so you can get the one cookie monster from Germany!
Visit the Instagram account @cookiemonstersanctuary for more of Sharon’s collection!
One last question for you. What would be the one word that you would use to describe commercetools?
Ummm… Innovators — not only the product is innovative, but I think the people that I work with and have gotten to work with over the past year are as well. I don’t feel like they’re just doing the same thing that the others have always done. They’re thinking outside the box. A number of places I’ve been to before say “what can we do to improve” and then nothing ever happens, but here it actually happens and you’re given the power to execute and make that happen without having to go through layers and layers of management to make positive changes for the company.
Thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk about your life here at commercetools. Stay safe Sharon!
There are currently five open positions for our international Marketing team in Durham, Amsterdam, München, and Jena. If this does not convince you that we are an international bunch, I don’t know what will :) If you are a Marketing expert and can see your future self build the future of commerce software, we would love to have a chat! For a closer look at our culture, take a look at our Career Page.
