ISDI Student Spotlight ft. Pam O’Brien Betts
In this weekly series, we’ll be highlighting the student journeys and accomplishments of our future leaders in digital business.
This week, we are featuring one of our business veterans who has earned her stripes through the rankings of The Clorox Company, KPMG, and Bare Essentials, here’s a snapshot of some of the amazing things about Pam!
Pam O’Brien Betts
- Tell us a little bit about your background and why you decided to make ISDI a part of your journey?
After 31+ years experience in customer service, sales, marketing in a variety of industries, I took ½ years off; as I became ready and started to look into reentering the workforce, I felt that I wasn’t equipped with enough knowledge and understanding of this digital world. I saw ISDI as an opportunity to quickly pick up knowledge where I was lacking.
2. What is your go to motto for work and life?
My motto: No matter how good we are, there’s always room for improvement.
I’m naturally curious and have a knack for taking things apart and rebuilding. I’ve channeled this energy for over 30 years into managing people, projects, programs, organizations — in telecom, consumer product goods, wine/spirits, and health/beauty industries. I want to tap into my passion for developing people, improving processes, and creating exceptional customer experiences — in a consulting capacity — to help organizations take their business to the next level.
3. If your friends and family had to use 3 words to describe you what would they be?
Integrity, Genuine, & Kind.
3. What is a surprising fact not many people know about you or something you wish more people knew about you?
I love to travel, I’ve been to every state in the U.S. except Maine. I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to travel to 6 of 7 continents in the world.
4. If you had to write a book about something, and you knew it would be an all time best seller what would it be and why?
Topic: Intellectual curiosity.
Why? With curiosity, the mind is more open to better understand differences in cultures, ideals, mores, and beliefs. This ultimately creates a kinder and better world around us.
5. Now that you’re starting to amass more digital business knowledge, if you were to start a business tomorrow, what would it be and why?
a) I’ve always dreamed of owning a kitchen gadget shop because I LOVE kitchen gadgets and LOVE to cook.
b) Online storefront that specializes in bike wear/accessories geared toward the neglected market segment of larger size women. There are many large size women, whom are active cyclists — yet few suppliers produce apparel/accessories for larger women and those that do have awful or plain designs.
6. What is a product/service/company/book/activity/you name it that you advertise to your friends and family all the time? Share with us!
Lately, Google Home (and Nest) — they make ordinary tasks much easier and efficient.
However, in last 5–10 years, I’ve also been known to talk about health and nutrition apps/software (Map My Ride, Loose It, Nutribase) — these have been instrumental in noticeable improvement on my lifestyle and health. My family finds amusement in my WOM advertising — once I find something I am passionate about, I talk about it nonstop.
7. Humor us a little, what’s your best life story or joke?
Hmmm….1985 trip to China with my father. Unbeknownst to us, The Houston Embassy made a change in the chop/stamp requirements for a Chinese visa — essentially everything on the stamp that was normally red, was not inked, and everything that normally was not inked was red so unbeknownst to us we were holding documents that were not up to code.
This is back in the 80s, so at that time, flights to China had to stop at the first point of entry into the country, regardless of destination. We were headed to Beijing with a delegate of business and government people who were all invited by the Chinese government. When it was my father and my turn in line at customs, the government officials were perplexed by the state of our visas: my father and I were questioned together and individually for almost 5 hours. United, our airline at the time, was required to hold the plane with all passengers aboard until everyone on the manifest was on board. A United Airlines station representative was called in middle of night USA time to negotiate with Chinese Immigration, explain the inconvenient timing of our documents, and push for our release. After 5 hours, we were finally cleared, but this was the only leg of our trip that was not in First Class — we were in next to last row of coach on wide body plane. It was rather embarrassing boarding the flight and having to walk past the unhappy delayed passengers who knew it was us 2 passengers who caused this serious delay. What is a good story and funny now, at the time is was extremely frightening as a young girl traveling to Communist China for the first time.
Thanks for joining us on our Student Spotlight Series! For more ISDI blog posts written by our amazing students and our esteemed academic board, check them out at our ISDI Blog here.
