Natiiv

Natiiv Founder featured in Chicago Tribune

Tagged chicago , press , tribune

From scooping ice cream to owning a company.

Thanks to the Chicago Tribune for interviewing me for an article on reinventing yourself at work.

"It's really all about making yourself visible," he said. "Volunteer. If you have a boss that has staff meetings, I think you should sit in on every staff meeting and pick up on two or three problems that that boss and that staff need and want to solve."

That's exactly what Leah Jones -- owner of Chicago-based Natiiv Arts & Media, a company that teaches clients how to use social media tools -- did to get ahead.

When Jones showed up at a Chicago temp agency in summer 2005, they didn't know what to do with her. She had not worked more than two years at any job and her experience ranged from scooping ice cream to managing a residence hall in London. She managed to land a temp administrative assistant job at Edelman, a global public relations agency, where, after raising her hand to volunteer on a number of projects related to social media, she soon was hired on as part of Edelman's Me2Revolution -- a group formed in 2006 to launch their public relations into the digital and social age.

"If I could participate, I was participating," she said. "I was talking to my supervisor about creating a position in our group too. I was asking, 'How can we change my job description to better reflect my skills?' "

By the time Jones left Edelman in January 2009, she had been promoted to digital-culture evangelist, helping clients to understand what was being said about their brands online and helping to create strategies to match.

> "Don't let a job description define what you do," Jones said.

Go over to the Tribune and read the whole article. A few of my friends were interviewed for it as we all needed to reinvent in 2009.