Our CEO Talks About Her Journey with Tech

Life often leads us in directions we never expected. Twenty years ago if you told me I would be a CEO of a website and digital marketing SaaS startup, I would have laughed and said, “yeah, right.” I would’ve laughed harder if you had told me that I would be designing website pages for new clients coming on Jag Journey’s suite of solutions called JagSuite.

I remember in college for my journalism class, we had to choose from a list of things to do for our final project. I chose to create an online newspaper that included stories I had written and the photos I had taken. Now, this was during a time when page builders didn’t exist so I had to learn HTML by myself as I didn’t take a class. I just tried to figure it out on my own. As hard as I tried to create a beautiful page, I just became more frustrated. I was pulling my hair out searching throughout the code for a single line or even a single character that resulted in errors. Patience is not one of my virtues. I did my best but the frustration got the best of me and I turned it in less than perfect project and the grade reflected the “look and feel.” If the professor graded on the effort I would’ve earned an A.

So today, I laugh because I’m helping our developers with building website pages of our new JagSuite clients. Our page builder is so easy to use that I am able to create nice looking pages. Earlier, I was working on the Lafayette Women’s Chamber 2020 Board of Directors page and the homepage of our newest client Elite Performance Dance. I am truly surprised at what I have accomplished and how the pages look. This is on top of my task list filled with meetings, sales, and marketing efforts, working on a public relations contract, and all the other to-dos that are necessary to keep a small start-up growing.

I am truly amazed at how tech has continually popped in and out of my life. After earning my degree in communications, I worked at a small tech public relations firm before the dotcom bust. I remember wifi and Bluetooth were just being talked about and Amazon was a small struggling company.  But my introduction to tech came as a young girl. I remember my dad bringing home one of the first desktop computers because he was a programmer. Funny how programmers are now called coders or developers and thankfully we moved past the slow and noisy dial-up Internet! Anyway, I was fascinated by it all and wanted to pursue a career in the tech industry. But as life has it, I didn’t go that route and I am blessed for my public relations career where I have pitched some heart-wrenching changed lives stories to talented reporters that earned them several Emmy and Edward R. Murrow awards.  

With my focus now again in tech and helping Jag Journey and its suite of solutions grow, I find it amazing how childhood interests weave in and out of our lives. It’s almost as if my first career dream of being a computer programmer has come to fruition through the ease of use of Jag’s page builder and building our clients’ new websites. Life is truly a blessing and definitely a Jag Journey!