This is the latest in a series of interviews I’m conducting with startup marketing veterans, in hopes of helping Triangle entrepreneurs better market their companies and find the right marketing leaders.
For this installment, I sat down with Kieran Wilson who was just named business development manager at Automated Insights (Ai), but for the last two years has served as the tech company’s digital marketing manager.
Kieran began her career as a television journalist, transitioned into sales and eventually found her way to marketing. Her early marketing roles included some sales responsibility and she later became a director of marketing at a New York-based nonprofit and philanthropy consulting firm, Changing Our World Inc. From there, she relocated to North Carolina to join Ignite Social Media and in May 2014, Ai. We sat down recently for a cup of coffee and a lively conversation.
You started your career as a journalist?
I started my career in Grand Junction, Colorado as a television news reporter for the local NBC affiliate. That’s the same town where Penn Holderness first started his career. I had the pleasure of meeting him at the Triangle Marketing Meetup and we traded war stories, from news in CO to marketing in the Triangle. Reporting was a ton of fun and I learned a lot, but I wanted to get out of the news because it can be wearing.
The skills you learn in news lend themselves to marketing and PR very nicely. After I left, I sold T1s and phone service and then I sold leads to real estate agents as well as marketers. Now, as a marketer, my main task is to generate leads.
I also used to be a journalist and now with Ai, we are automating some articles for theAssociated Press. It’s funny how it came full-circle.
There’s much more. Read the full story at:
http://exitevent.com/article/startup-marketing-qa-kieran-wilson-automated-insights-160321
Note: ExitEvent is a news partner of WRAL TechWire.
