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Jenny SchoenbergerTalent and Development Specialist, FourKites

Libby Schell, Digital Marketing Manager

Libby Schell - FourKites HeadshotLibby has made a huge impact on the FourKites’ Marketing team and the organization as a whole. Her desire to raise her hand, ask questions and always look for a better way have led to her success within the team.

Recently, Libby’s marketing efforts have been focused around the ever-important food and beverage vertical. As part of this effort, together with Miranda Lecea, Content Marketing Manager, Libby created A Supply Chain Leader’s Guide to Optimizing Food & Beverage Logistics, which provides a comprehensive overview of the value of real-time visibility to the sector. Libby has consistently taken on challenging initiatives and has been able to execute at the highest level.

For these reasons and more, I decided to sit down with Libby to learn more about the work she’s been doing at FourKites, and how the team has supported her along the way.

How have you been able to impact and push forward the initiatives of the Marketing team and FourKites?

As an individual contributor on the marketing team, I consider myself lucky to have always felt empowered to voice my opinion on our plans, projects and strategy. FourKites fosters a spirit of collaboration and curiosity amongst its employees, and this has allowed me to feel comfortable speaking my mind.

Marketing and startups are very similar in that they have to continually iterate and evolve in order to succeed. So while it would certainly be easier for my whole team if I would stay quiet during our meetings, refrain from asking hundreds of probing questions, and just go with the flow, I wouldn’t be acting with authenticity or in support of bettering FourKites.

For example, during my time as a campaign manager, we have experimented with a number of new ideas, including producing a series of video interviews with FourKites customers that were captured entirely through video chat. During the filming process, we ran into some inevitable technical issues that could have derailed everything, but were able to push through and create valuable content, unlike anything that FourKites had ever done before.

You were brought into FourKites as a Digital Advertising Specialist, but have taken on campaign manager responsibilities as well as process improvement initiatives. Tell me about the evolution of your role, and how you’ve been able to step up to the challenge.

As a lifelong learner and general enthusiast of all things marketing, I tend to raise my hand and volunteer when new opportunities arise. That is how this digital advertising specialist got the chance to act as a campaign manager for one of our largest integrated efforts to date.

The marketing team at FourKites is small but mighty, with endless ideas to improve our business. This means that, regardless of our title, you will often find members of the marketing team moonlighting as copywriters, graphic designers, creative strategists and data analysts. With the sort of collaborative team we have at FourKites, you get exposed to so many more opportunities than you would at an agency or in a more siloed department.

Prior to joining FourKites, I had done a little bit of everything during my marketing career. That broad exposure allowed me to see the potential for our team to function as a more cohesive, efficient unit. When I joined the team, I immediately started work identifying areas where we could tighten up our processes and work smarter when creating external messaging, and I’ve continued doing so throughout my tenure at FourKites.

As a campaign manager, I have been given a dual responsibility: to plan and manage all of the moving parts that are involved in multi-step marketing efforts, and to evolve the function itself. A lot of my work has been trial and error with different approaches to project management to see what works best for our team, and for myself as a leader.

When faced with a “trial by fire” situation, there are two distinct choices: Give up or persist, and I always choose the latter. I think that learning through experience is the best way to develop a healthy sense of empathy. Over the course of this recent food and beverage campaign, we have learned, adapted and created something that the entire team can be proud of, and I consider myself lucky to have been a part of that.

What excites you most about the next year at FourKites?

The next year at FourKites is going to be full of opportunities for professional growth, challenges that will push us to our limits, and continued innovation to celebrate and share with our customers.

As a FourKites employee, it is important to understand that the company is at a major inflection point in its entrepreneurial journey. Market leaders are being identified as our software category becomes more widely adopted and examined. This will be a pivotal 12 months as we all work to scale our processes and cement FourKites as the undisputed leader in real-time transportation visibility.

I feel incredibly lucky to be part of this team during such an exciting time. Yes, the work will be difficult, but it will be worth it. Having seen the huge impact our platform has had on so many of our customers over the last few dramatic months, it’s not difficult to see the power of our platform and imagine the possibilities the future holds.

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