Transcript: Women Who Code — Silicon Valley Full Interview with Ruanna Owens
It’s never too late to make a career change or go in a different career direction! Also — the importance of connecting with others and finding ways to merge your passions with your career.
Ruanna Owens is a Developer Relations Digital Marketer for TomTom’s business enterprise unit and developer portal. With a background in education, writing, and content creation, she enjoys being creative and using writing as a vessel to facilitate human connection, tell stories, and create change. Passionate about education and tech for good, she is committed to increasing equity and diversity in the tech space and building meaningful relationships in the developer community.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Ruanna Owens to learn about connecting her passions with her career, the importance of networking, and tips for success in her field. The main content of our interview is below. On behalf of Women Who Code — Silicon Valley, I thank Ruanna Owens and appreciate her time being apart of our #ShoutoutSaturday series.
Connecting Teaching with Digital Marketing
Can you tell me a bit about your career path and what led you as a Digital Marketer for TomTom?
For my whole life, writing has always been a huge passion of mine. I studied English for my bachelor’s degree, with an emphasis in creative writing. Then I studied abroad for a summer in Italy, when I was in my junior year of college. I just fell in love with traveling and living in a different country and learning all about a different culture. I was determined to travel again once I graduated from college, so I saved up for a few years after my undergrad and found a program where you could teach abroad in Spain. I’d never been there before and I knew some Spanish, and the culture was really interesting to me. I really wanted to experience living in one place, rather than hopping around and traveling for a year, because I really was interested in absorbing the culture of the place and really getting a feel for what it’s like to live there, like a local. I taught in a small school in this little town in southern Spain. Throughout that process, I really discovered that I loved working with kids and their families and helping them learn English (while they helped me with my Spanish!)
When that program ended, I moved to the Bay Area, got my Master’s degree in education, and got a job teaching in Oakland, California. I loved it because the school was in an incredibly diverse area — there were 31 different languages represented at the school and there were so many different stories, backgrounds, and experiences. I really loved that because I had a lot of English language learner students, and many parents whose primary language was something other than English. I loved being able to connect with different cultures that way and learn from them as well.
After five years of teaching I was starting to feel like I wanted to try something else. I was already going to be moving to a different city and I thought, “This could be a good opportunity to make a career pivot since I’m already going to need to get a new job — it could be a good time to kind of explore another avenue.” I started taking online courses in content marketing, mainly because I was interested in writing and I had some experience writing blogs that were education-focused. I started out in a contract role where I helped write content for an edtech startup. I also volunteered for a couple of different nonprofits, helping them create content as well. I eventually got a job at TomTom, managing their blog and other digital communications for their developer portal.
What do you wish you’d known when you were starting out in this career?
I don’t know if it’s something I wish I’d known because it’s not like I regret not knowing, but more like things I’ve learned along the way:
- Know your goal
Something that I’m always thinking about, in terms of content marketing and digital marketing, is knowing what your goal is for the content that you’re creating. It’s really easy to get all these ideas and think, “Oh, this would be really cool” but then making sure to go back to the beginning, thinking: What is the goal of this? Whoever reads this piece of content or this article, what do we want the outcome to be ? Interestingly enough, I’ve actually seen a lot of correlations with my teaching experience. For example, when you’re coming up with a lesson plan to teach your class, you can have a really interesting or cool idea, but then you always need to think: Does this align with the learning objective? What do I want the students to walk away with? What skill do I want them to have after this activity? That’s been really helpful.
2. Data, analytics, & metrics
Another thing would be the importance of data, such as the analytics and metrics of your content, and how important and how useful it can be to guide your future decisions and moves. It’s something that I’ve been practicing and am continuing to always think about as I’m doing my work.
3. The importance of connecting with others
Know that your skills — even if they’re in a different field or role than you were in before — can be applied, and you might not even realize the extent until you’re in it. I think it’s important to regularly communicate with other people and teams in your organization or your company. Especially with remote work, it can be really easy for everyone to kind of feel like they’re in silos. I think it’s important to keep building and maintaining connections with others, and also collaborating with a range of people — everyone can learn from each other. Each person is going to see things from a different perspective.
Lastly, my team has been super supportive and I think that’s key when you’re making a career change. The people and the culture are so important — finding the right people and finding a place that sees your background as an asset instead of something that you’re lacking because you don’t have a lot of experience in a particular area — yet! I had a very diverse background and I really appreciated how they recognized how my skills could be applied to this particular role, and anything that I didn’t know, I would learn along the way.
Networking and Connecting
What is some advice on reaching out to other people in your industry, connecting with them, and networking, now that we’ve all gone remote and online?
I think that it definitely takes a little bit more work than it normally would, especially now that we’re remote. Normally I think it’s much easier to have these organic conversations that you just happen to join, like when you’re making coffee in the office or overhear a random conversation and join in — it’s much easier. I think to build these relationships, get advice, or whatever you need; you need to be more intentional during these times. I’ve been learning to take more initiative and not just get stuck working from home in my little bubble.
I’ve also been researching different conferences that are online. I attended one in October called LTX Fest, for Latinx professionals in the tech industry. I wanted to go last year when it was in person, but I wasn’t able to. Then I saw that this year, it was virtual, like everything else. I was a little hesitant at first because I thought it would be much more difficult to establish real connections with people, especially during these virtual times. But I went and I was super impressed. They had panels and keynote speakers with a chat box on the side where all these people were dropping their LinkedIn profiles and open to connect with anyone, and commenting on what was going on with the speakers. You could also do one on one networking within the platform — I did that with about five different people still keep in touch with them. I was really impressed and kind of pleasantly surprised by the outcome of that.
So I would say that’s one thing to keep in mind — to not be afraid — just reach out to people and take that initiative. Even within your work or your place of employment; connect with your colleagues, even ones that you don’t know very well. I think a lot of times people are reluctant to put time on other people’s calendars because they think everyone’s so busy all the time.
I think another piece of advice would be to just take the time to look and put yourself out there. Websites like DEV.to, a website for developers of all levels, is also a great place to connect with others. They have a lot of different people posting blogs and articles. It’s a good place that I’ve found to connect with other women in tech, people that are new to the tech industry, and people who are really interested in a certain area of technology. That also has been helpful, just writing blog posts on there, commenting on other people’s articles, and chatting with people. Here’s a recent short article I wrote through my search of trying to find women in tech to follow on this platform.
There’s so much out there. Even though there are a lot of barriers right now because we’re not in person, because everyone is forced to be online there’s so much content out there and even more opportunities to connect with others now and that’s kind of a cool thing.
Tips for Success
What are your words of wisdom for Digital Marketers?
The importance of knowing and connecting with your audience is huge. It’s easy to keep putting content out there, but I think it’s really important to not forget about the people piece. Who are the people that are reading your content? Why are they reading it? What are their needs? Who are they? And just really making sure that’s very clear.
Also staying up to date with industry trends because it’s such a fast-moving world. There are always new tools coming out and always new things to learn, so keeping a finger on the pulse of that is really important too.
Do you have a favorite marketing tool?
For graphic design, I got started with Canva. I also love HubSpot Academy. Some of their online courses are super helpful and they seem to be quite relevant and they give really good examples of how you can apply the things that they’re teaching you. I would say those were two of my favorites, as well as Airtable, for project management.
Finally, any tips for success for women in this field?
Take courses,network, and get involved in other groups that have a women in tech focus, like Women Who Code, or even in your own organization or your own employee resource group. At TomTom we have different chapters for women at our organization, depending on our region, and that’s a fun way to get involved with other women in tech. It can also be a great leadership opportunity, a way to learn and connect with other people, and find mentors.
Want to read articles written by Ruanna Owens? Follow her on DEV.to where her focus is to share her passion for equity and access in tech education and diversifying the tech space. You can read her latest posts on her favorite DEV women in tech to follow as well as career change tips! You can also view more of her work on her website.
Want to hear more about our #ShoutoutSaturday series?
Follow our Official Blog for the WomenWhoCode Silicon Valley chapter!Join us on Saturday, January 16, 2021 with the Co-Founders of UInclude, a platform that promotes diversity and equity in the workforce, as they discuss how to use research and data driven solutions to increase workplace diversity as well as their insight into the tech world for our next #ShoutoutSaturday content.
To get more updates about this event and our series, follow our social media platforms at linktr.ee/wwcodesv
