The nitty gritty:
For more than 30 years, I have worked successfully in the fields of marketing, communications and public relations for a variety of industry– health care, higher education, hospitality, sports – building a lifetime of multifaceted experiences that are rooted in an intentional expansion of responsibilities for each position I’ve held.
The MUCH longer version:
I’ve No, I was not named after the character on Scooby Doo; I think I'm actually older than the two-dimensional Daphne.
I was, however, named after the British author and play write, Dame Daphne Du Maurier. It was a name my parents were sure no one could shorten or give cutesy nicknames for.
So, of course, my dad called me “D-Lynnski.”
My cousin - for 50 years - has called me one of these two beauts: “Daphnoid Delecti” or “Daffodil Pickle.”
And, thanks to my love monitoring all things weather,
I am known as “Doppler Daph” to my friends in Illinois.
Then there was that “Daogbe” incident.
Most everyone else just calls me, “Daph.”
I've been a marketing and communications creative for a very long time. For so long, in fact, that I started my career using MacPaint on an Apple IIE for an advertising/journalism class at my alma mater, The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). Over the years, I've worked with almost every iteration of the MacIntosh and almost every design program created for it – including Aldus Freehand (seasoned graphic designers will sympathize).
I remember what it was like to compose layouts using editorial content printed off a typesetter, use a waxer to adhere strips of content to a grid, and wad up more yardage of tooling line than I care to admit. Looking back, I can probably thank those antiquated systems for their role in inspiring me to expand my career beyond layout and design. Besides, at the rate that I was adding tooling line to landfills, I’m almost 100 percent sure the industry would have eventually forced me to move in a new direction.
The tooling-line job was my first out of college, and it was in grocery. It wasn’t an environment that encouraged a lot of creativity, and the work was intense, with multiple retailers running multiple versions of ads and supplements every week – sometimes twice a week. The hours were long, the attention to detail had to be precise and I learned how to juggle tight deadlines that have been some of the most difficult of my career. I also learned how to navigate and guide multiple options for increasing sales and the multiple industry personalities associated with them.
From grocery, I transitioned to health care. The deadlines were still present, but not nearly as hectic. The opportunities to expand my marketing and communications skills more creatively, however, were limitless. I was the sole designer on staff for most of my tenure in that industry, driving messaging and visual information marketing. Eventually, I added a junior designer to my tiny creative team, and with the rest of a small staff of four, produced a monthly magazine, annual reports, fund-raising materials, videos, brochures and any other marketing and communication collateral essential to the health system’s needs.
Midway through 2000, I transitioned to higher education, where I grew my skill sets exponentially. Not only did the energy of the university spark this cascade of expansion, the team I worked with at Eastern Illinois University was brilliant. At our peak, there were eight of us on staff, and we were a powerhouse of marketing and communications creativity, covering the gamut of needs for the university. We ideated and developed recruitment campaigns, capital campaigns, alumni outreach campaigns and generated all related content. We produced print, web, multimedia, outdoor, mobile and, well, you-name-it collateral for the whole of campus - from admissions, to the alumni office, to the foundation, and even athletics. (Higher ed folks will know that to be a bit of an anomaly.)
After 18 years in Illinois, I landed in back in southwest and worked for a year and a half in the restaurant industry until I could find my way back to higher education. After a brief and truly enjoyable nine months honing my development communication skills at New Mexico State University, I put my journalism degree to work as speechwriter for the president at my alma mater. I also put pen to paper as lead writer for UTEP’s current strategic plan.
As much as I loved putting my degree to work and challenging myself in the written word, I missed the daily interaction with a team of creatives. I missed the opportunity for visual ideation, energy in execution and the chance to watch people as they received the visual stimuli developed by a creative team.
The Universe was listening, and I landed a position that provided me the opportunity to guide and lead a creative team at Texas Tech Health El Paso. For three and a half years, I mentored and worked with this team of highly talented creatives to promote and celebrate the fast-growing progress of the institution. The pace was fast… VERY fast and we pivoted from one major project to the next with unbelievable balance. Poise… maybe not so much… but balance… definitely. I give huge kudos to that team, who time-and-time again, cranked out simply amazing work - work that not only celebrated their creativity, but also their aptitude to well-exceed the parameters of the assignment.
After a while, though, that pace started to wear thin. After all, I’m no spring chicken. I’d already been there and done that. I needed less email and a lot less stress.
Now, it’s time to explore this new chapter - one where I am dabbling a little in my love of baking and where I’m revisiting my days as a designer and jack of all trades. So far… it’s been quite nice.
I have time again. Time to stop and smell the roses, time to walk to work and time to rethink my priorities. It’s taken me a while to get my shit together… but, I finally made it.
