Women Taking on Tech: Tips for Growing Your Career
Jaclyn Kalb, General Manager of Frontify US, shares her approach on balancing business philosophies and culture — creating harmony and collaboration in a growing organization.
Jackie, you have an impressive history of working in the branding and agency world. How did you get started?
I actually started at the age of 15, with a brand research internship at Teen People magazine, which I absolutely loved. From the very first day, it felt like second nature to me, and I continued that path all the way into journalism studies in college. After that my wanderlust set in, and I traveled internationally for my Masters in Literature with a focus in Creative Writing at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland.
I then decided to stay in Europe, and went into the activation side of brand marketing, working in experiential marketing and advertising across the UK, Germany, and around the US.
After living abroad, I returned to New York to get back to my roots in the branding and agency world. I worked in various capacities for several agencies and also at PwC, working with high profile clients like Time Warner, Moody’s, and MetLife. It was long hours, but it was work that I loved, and I knew how — and when — to ask for help.
“I’ve found that seeking out mentorship, like-minded entrepreneurs, and continuing to learn from my peers has been fundamental to my career.”
Working in the highly demanding agency world can be tough — how did you navigate this, and more importantly, how were you able to advance your career?
I greatly admire women who give each other the confidence to take risks and advance their careers. So a foundation of mine has always been to support women’s advancement groups, which is why I currently support the Hatchery’s Wonder Women and Women 2.0 in NYC.
Starting from the time I was 15, my mentor at Teen People, Janis, taught me that fearlessness, an appetite for knowledge, and resilience were all keys to being successful in the hectic-paced corporate world of New York. To this day, 18 years later, I remain in close contact with her, as I do with many of the women who I’ve been lucky enough to work with.
The women of Zoom Media taught me how to sell and make work fun. My career coaches and colleagues at PwC showcased how to command a room.
A close colleague of mine at STA Travel showed me that you can be strong and in charge without sacrificing your personal life. At Brite, I learned that women in management roles can (and should) lift and elevate their female coworkers. Storyful showed me that the c-suite has enough space at the table for women. And I’m lucky that the Frontify team has been encouraging of me, my background, experience, and me as an individual — since day one.
I’ve been very lucky to have worked with extremely smart, strong, and supportive women throughout my career. That’s also what I try to bring to my Frontify teams both in New York and Switzerland every day.
So what made you want to work for Frontify? I imagine working on brand pitches for global companies is very different from working for a brand technology company.
I was actually working on a big agency pitch when I found Frontify because I was looking for a better way to prepare our (digital) brand assets.
Having spent the majority of my career pivoting between brand pitches and research for clients, I found that often times we forgot to include our own tone of voice, narrative, and key brand objectives within client needs. Having the ability to pull consistent information about the brand you’re working on was appealing to me, as I’ve spent the majority of my career spending far too much time seeking out information that easily can be housed in the Frontify platform. Having access to information for each brand was keeping my day efficient, and that was a real perk, so I saw a huge value in the product itself.
The company culture was also appealing because I saw authentic purpose as a main contributor to the high growth, and decided to take a leap into the world of tech.
So at the end of 2018, I landed an executive role as the US General Manager for Frontify. I love the international culture of a Swiss company with 2,500 clients around the world, and I can successfully grow the business using my strengths — including creativity, empathy, and research.
I’ve been very lucky that the team at Frontify understood that I was up for the challenge of taking on the General Manager role and that inherently everything I’ve learned in my career drives back to the idea that people’s happiness is key — whether internal or client.
How has it been going so far, scaling Frontify into the US? Has anything changed in the company?
Performance-wise our revenue has doubled YoY, and since January 2019, the US revenue increased by over 100% and we expanded the office to a team of 11. We make sure our US employees have the same flexible hours policies and modern benefits as our European counterparts. We don’t need micromanagement; we’re all smart people.
People think I’m crazy, because we don’t have a traditional sales commission structure, especially as a SaaS company, but this is one of the reasons we maintain such high growth. It takes away stress so we can act as a team of experts, and it helps create honest relationships with our clients. It was actually something I fought to keep in the US market.
Most importantly to me, I’m increasing my involvement in the advocacy of women in leadership, specifically aiming to give women the confidence to take bigger roles and offering their own experience and advice.
Both the branding and tech worlds have a stigma around male domination. Jackie’s leap of faith has taken her from a team contributor working with high profile clients, into a new senior executive role for an international brand tech company with 2,500 customers and counting.
