Inquiring Minds Want to Know

Apparently I haven't given enough details of my job to satisfy some people and I want to quash any rumors of me working for any illicit operations in the Valley. I haven't given any details because of two reasons:

1) I just started last Monday and didn't have any real details, and

2) My boss mentioned in my interview that he had read my blog (it's on my resume), and I found out that other members of the PR team had read it as well.



So in an effort to make sure I actually knew what I was talking about before posting (which is a change of pace for me), I decided to hold off until I had an idea of what my job was before telling a little more about it.

Here's what I know right now: I do PR. I'm the US PR Manager for SAGE Publications. The US is needed because the company I now work for is a global entity and has offices in the UK, Singapore, India and Washington DC. In fact, my boss and the majority of the PR team are located in the UK. I've spent the last week trying to be able to do the time zone math in my head (it's an 8 hour difference).

Lucky for me, last week was an unintentional boot camp of the company. There were LOADS of people over from the UK (including my boss and my UK counterpart), and the freelancer that has been doing parts of the job for the last 10 years was also flown in to help give me some context and information about what I'll be doing. But the first week was intense. I literally met about 50 people, learned about a new industry, learned about 5 new products, and had cocktail or dinner engagements on 3 of the 5 nights. It was a great learning curve, which I feel like I got through pretty quickly.

Clearly, I'm still learning. I can tell you about the upcoming branding audit results and present to fellow staff, but I can't print out a report and staple it--because I don't have a stapler. Or a highlighter. Or just about anything. The office I'm in (and I'm thankful that I have an office and not a cubicle--not sure how I got that lucky, but I'll take it) right now has got a desk with drawers that currently hold a box of tampons (I brought those in), a computer, a week's worth of my notes strewn about the desk (I'm notorious for being messy on the desk, but clean on my hard drive), roses from Chef for Valentine's Day, and a refrigerator.

Why a fridge? Because I'm a lazy caffeine addict. This place has about 300 employees or so on-site and the breakroom is downstairs. There's a vending machine and three fridges for storing frozen meals (but only up to two per person for space sake) and four microwaves. But those things require me to: 1) have cash or change--which I never do, or 2)not be in meetings where I have the 7 minutes roundtrip to get a beverage and get back upstairs. (Yes I timed it). So I'm lazy and put the fridge in my office so I only have a 4 second trip to get a diet Coke. Really it's for the company's sanity as well as my own.

Anyway, office aside, I do a lot of the things I did at the AHA. I push out journal articles from among the 630+ journals we publish. I announce the acquisition of new journals. I announce when books are published. I work on social media. I contribute to a corporate blog. I prep our executives for speaking engagements. I continue to be the branding police. I manage a staff that plans events--except instead of cocktail parties and Galas, it's conventions and trade shows.

That's basically the gist of what I do. And it's for a very legit, very legal and not at all X-rated independent company. On another day, in another post, I'll start comparing for-profit with non-profit. It's been a re-entry experience into the for-profit world. And not a bad one.