Our CEO, Elana Leoni (@elanaleoni) was recently a guest on a Twitter chat called, “InTheSpotlight” with the #Digital360Chat. The moderator, Bernie Fussenegger (@B2the7) asked her seven career questions about her professional journey, along with some education-specific questions. We’ve provided a recap below!
#Digital360Chat happen every Friday at 12pm ET / 9 am PT. Please join along, there are some very inspiring guests every week. Check out a sample of past guests.
What is your current profession and what was the past you took to get there?
I’m the CEO of a small marketing agency (@LeoniGroup) that works with education brands. My path was long and winding but I took two big risks in my career. First, I quit my first job out of college with no other job lined up (just wanted more and didn’t know what “more” was). I ended up at a dream role at Edutopia. Second, I left my role at Edutopia to get my MBA at UC Berkeley’s Haas Business School and started this agency up in tandem. Taking risks while you’re in school seemed like a good way to mitigate risk and explore my passion.
When you went solo with LCG, how did you know you were ready and how did you prepare for it? Any tips or advice for others?
Oh...you’re never ready and it’s never easy. People thought I was absolutely nuts for going back to school so late in my career and starting my own agency. I will say to make sure you always take risks in your career and life. Or sooner than you know it, you’ll look back and regret that you didn’t follow your instinct.
Some tips: If you find yourself wondering “what could be” with any new career direction, job, or idea pretty regularly?” I would say you owe it to yourself to explore it. But again, do this within your own risk tolerance. This could mean exploring it while working for a while.
Above everything, make sure you're kind to yourself (I'm still working on this). You'll always feel embarrassed for the progress you haven't made yet or all of the things you've yet to do. Be kind and enjoy the "now" as well. You also have to be comfortable with starting from scratch. Many senior employees get used to a lot of luxuries that as a small business owner you simply do not have (and won’t in the short term). If you’re starting your own thing, make sure you have clients already lined up to start. This will help you learn and also keep the pressure off on doing lots of biz dev to start.
What were some of the reasons you wanted to start your own agency?
You're going to think I'm crazy but I actually started my own agency to instill balance in my life. In terms of balance, you have to know why you are doing what you are doing, and keep that reason present at all times (it'll help you get through the bad and make sure you celebrate the good).
I built Leoni Consulting Group because I wanted to build a team centered around making impact in all aspects of education. And boy, my team is composed of some of the most talented and good humans around. Feel very lucky.
Last thing I'll say is that technically as a marketer, I wanted different challenges and different people to market to as well.
How have you been able to integrate social, community and digital into your clients with education?
That's a very big question, but at the heart of what we do is simply help bring brands back to their "why." Why did they start this company and how can we help them build an authentic community around that purpose. How can we turn them into a brand that listens?
One of our team members, Porter Palmer, always asks our clients, "How can we turn every one of your employees into a Chief Listening Officer?" She's VERY Smart.
Helping education brands is important for you. Why and what areas do you focus on?
It's a bit of a challenge marketing-wise to focus on so many areas within education (B2C, B2B, etc) but it keeps us on our toes and we learn an INCREDIBLE amount daily.We work with brands that can make a positive impact in education. Whether it be working with parents, education administrators, students, or teachers — we absolutely love it. This passion to make a difference drives my team daily.
We're all about impact. Literally, we ONLY work within education. And we hope that at the end of this all, we can create our own theory of change to show the dotted lines of our work and the overall impact it has made.
Do you ever feel that with education the technology and understanding with social and digital is lagging?
It depends on who you're talking to. Contrary to some beliefs, it's not dictated by age. I can list 1000s of edus on Twitter who can school me any day on anything related to technology. It's just that they aren't being empowered or listened to as much as I'd like.
Being active in your community is very important. What types of organization do you help and why? Is it marketing, branding, social or guidance?
You can't just say you're a community builder and not be a part of many communities yourself. Some of the communities I am active in:
• My Prison University Project community and try to help as much as I can. I'm also active in the ed tech startup community. I've been a mentor with StartEd Accelerator and various other accelerators. It's so rewarding connecting with other edtech entrepreneurs.
• A small Slack community of women-owned edu-focused businesses. They are my lifeline for so many things. Community makes you feel supported and that you are not alone.
• The Haas School of Business community (on VP of Communications for the Executive MBA Alumni Board). We have the goal of fostering as much community as possible within all of our alumni.
• My local boating club community, The Sausalito Cruising Club. I love Sausalito and it's where my father and his father spent time on the water. It brings me back "home."
Any advice on picking the boards or communities you want to be part of?
In terms of being on a nonprofit board, make sure the board fits your culture and style. For me, it was important that I also was inspired by the other board members and boy, at Prison University Project, I am in awe of the smartness on the board.
You need to figure out what moves you. What would you want to spend your precious time doing and feel energized doing.
What’s one thing you are proud of that you have accomplished?
The work we did to uplift educator voices at Edutopia exploded. Edutopia became the most active education brand in social media. Thousands of educators interacted with them daily to improve their teaching. I remember when we started that community work, we called it a movement but we weren't really sure what the impact of what we were doing would actually be.
In terms of a more current proud moment, within Leoni Consulting Group, I always thought I'd be the most proud of the work we did and the projects we accomplished but what I'm most proud of is the team I've helped gather. It's an honor to work alongside them.