Career X Culture with Strategy Director, Hanna Shampain

Welcome to Career X Culture, an ongoing series showcasing the talented people of iProspect and their unique backgrounds, passions, and accomplishments. 

In this edition, meet Hanna Shampain, a director of strategy at iProspect US. Hanna reflects on the early working experiences that shaped her current career and the importance of knowing the ins and outs of storytelling. Read more about Hanna and her role, in the Q&A interview below.

Q> What does a typical workday look like for you? 

Hanna> It varies incredibly day by day. I wake up pretty early and walk my dog on the beach. I typically take the first hour of my day to get my inbox sorted out. I straddle two accounts, and as a strategist I have a lot of internal agency work as well. From there, I take a few client calls and spend a lot of time in PowerPoint, presenting decks and doing industry research.

Q> What is your favourite aspect of iProspect?

Hanna> What I love so much is the transparency. For such a large company, it feels like we often function like a start up. We get to see a lot of the work being done across the agency, and our CEO, Danielle Gonzales is extremely transparent during Town Halls, allowing us to really see the inner workings of the company. 

Q> How has your career evolved since joining iProspect?

Hanna> I started about two and a half years ago as a planner and now I am a director of strategy. I have always been interested in the strategy side of things, and much of the audience and thought leadership work has overlap between planning and strategy. My transition worked out well because I was ready for the next step in my career and there was an opening on a strategy team that I had already been collaborating with. 

Q> Is there an early working experience or somebody that exposed you to your current career path? 

Hanna> I started my career at a different agency in the planning sphere. The leadership team there made it a priority to expose junior team members to everything, so I started sitting in on some pretty high-level meetings. This is where I got a lot of my training as a strategist, even though I was in a planning role. I happened to be good friends with a junior strategist at that agency and was exposed to a lot of the audience research work she was doing as well. 

Q> What is a skill they do not teach you in school that you use every day? 

Hanna> My answer is two-fold. I think knowing the basics of PowerPoint is incredibly important for what I do. Additionally, storytelling is a huge part of my job. In school, the 5-paragraph essay is drilled into us, but there is a whole lot of storytelling that doesn’t follow a formula. Using a deck to tell a story involves design, public speaking, and audience connection, all of which I use every day.

Q> For me, iProspect is the Intersection of _______ and _______?

Hanna> Brand and Performance. I know that is a standard answer, but I really believe it to be true. 

iProspect is built by individuals from different backgrounds, all united by a common passion – the acceleration of brands through knowledge of culture and technology. Interested in learning more? Check out the iProspect LinkedIn page here.