A few months ago, I invited Leona Hobbs to speak to a group of students in a program called “Next Steps” for women entrepreneurs at Toronto’s Rotman School of Management’s Initiative for Women in Business, where I am a program consultant.  Although I had known Leona and Maggie for some time, I had never heard either of them speak, and was blown away. Leona’s rating from students was off the charts, and I started to pay much more attention to what was happening over at Social Media Group (my office was a block away). We had explored working together on projects in the past, but this was the first time that I got a really good sense of how grounded, practical and strategic the SMG approach to social media strategy, execution and content really was.

SMG was an ideal partner for me to have an “interesting conversation” about aligning our skill sets and businesses.

I had been working on client strategy and execution around digital communications content for about 15 years, most recently for a boutique digital communications agency I co-founded, called Experience Media, with a focus on e-learning, stakeholder communications and digital communications. With a client base that ranged from financial services, telcos, government and not for profit, we worked on a variety of large, long term digital communications projects, many of which were moving towards integration into a social media environment. I was personally ready to transition into a new role, and professionally ready to embrace the migration of content into the social media environment.

A few short weeks after our “interesting conversation”, here I am, and ready and excited to do what I’ve always loved doing – working with clients to integrate digital technologies into their businesses, in a way that is grounded, makes sense, and maximizes the client’s ability to meet their strategic goals and business objectives. Since my start online in the 1990’s, my role on a digital project has always been to make sure the solution allows clients to make the best of new technologies, but is grounded in the realities and goals of their business. It was like that when Web sites moved from IT departments to marketing departments, and it’s like that with social media now. At the end of the day, digital communications solutions have to solve real world business problems, and are proving to do it beautifully.

I’m thrilled to be joining the team at Social Media Group as Group Head, Client Strategy and Innovation!