Who is Amanda?

Ok, here’s the real story. If you read this far, I like you already.

First things first, I’m American, if you couldn’t already tell. ;) From Kansas, right at the bullseye of the country. I came to Australia in 2020 with my husband, who’s originally from Sydney. Since then, I’ve become what I’d call a hybrid Aussie — no one’s mistaking me for a local, but I have certainly paid my requisite immigrant shoey dues.

My innate love for words and grammar has opened the door to one of the most fascinating parts of my life as a transplant: US English vs Aussie English. Truly one of my favourite topics. (See? I can acclimate!)

I started my career in the US, having first cut my marketing teeth as a copywriter at a couple of ad agencies that specialised in two very Midwestern things: beef and airplanes. (The airplanes one may be less obvious, but fear not, I’m happy to talk your ear off about it.)

After exhausting my limited cache of beef quips and jet-themed puns over the course of a few years, I decided to see myself out of that small world and instead moved to Austin, Texas to work in tech. I started at a small SaaS company, driving all things content marketing in a world that still didn’t even really know what content marketing was supposed to be.

In that first content role, (Shopgate) I managed ad campaigns, emails, social strategies, website pages, event marketing, video direction/production/presentation, PR, executive ROI reporting, and pretty much every other thing that fell into the immense cracks found in a burgeoning startup in Austin in 2016. It was a fantastic ride, and to this day, I have never learned so much, so fast in any other role.

Next, I stepped up to a more sophisticated scale-up company (uShip) that was part transportation marketplace/part ecommerce platform. This role allowed me to focus more closely on the content discipline, honing my skills in the messaging + positioning and content optimisation worlds. This was also my first exposure to real SEO work, thanks to a team of search experts who I worked closely with to develop content plans and pieces that kept up with the rapidly evolving SEO landscape of the 2018 era.

During that time, I also got a surprise little life interruption: cancer! I was diagnosed in August 2018 with stage 3C bowel cancer while working at uShip. Perhaps I am biased because of the incredible kindness I was met with from every member of the company, but uShip is — to this day — the best company I’ve had the privilege of working for. As a bit of a side quest on my side quest, I documented the entire thing on my blog, which you can still find here.

After somehow surviving that, another delightful detour: Covid! Due to the pandemic, 40% of the uShip team was made redundant, and I was part of that lucky group.

Fortunately, I was able to step seamlessly into a new role as a Senior Copywriter at another Austin startup, ShipperHQ. And alas — another detour! As I started that role, I also decided to relocate with my partner back to Sydney, as his job had also been made redundant and he had an offer waiting back home. So in a strange twist, I spent most of my time at ShipperHQ working from Sydney. It was a welcome respite to be able to focus exclusively on copywriting after a fraught few years. Back to basics, back to what comes most easily to me.

But of course, that feeling didn’t last: I soon found myself needing to be part of the bigger picture again. I didn’t always like to hand off my work and move on to the next thing. I’d always been part of the full campaign cycle and it was less rewarding to not be able to see through the other elements of campaigns, report on performance, make improvements and then do it all again.

Next, I moved into the world of fintech, with a role at nonbank lender Plenti as Content Marketing Manager. It was a great sized team and company, and allowed me to flex my skills while developing new ones. It was a great feeling to be back in the world of full-cycle marketing.

I worked closely with front end developers and SEO contractors to improve the brand's visibility through strategic content planning and technical improvements. I maintained close relationships with sales and product leaders, and worked with them to develop and distribute meaningful collateral that solved customer and broker pain points, while keeping a necessarily human-thread through it all. I also managed the Employer Brand, creating a variety of content designed to showcase the company as a great place to work. And one of my favourite parts of the job? Holding training sessions to help familiarise the wider team on written brand standards and mastering written communication. (Did I mention I really like words?)

After an organisational shift, where the marketing team was dispersed and largely made redundant, I left Plenti and jumped into a new role at a US/Australia SaaS company that specialises in data and AI governance (RecordPoint). In this role, I owned content strategy while managing a team of content producers. This role also relied heavily on close cooperation with Product and Sales leaders to rapidly produce content aligned with ever-changing product roadmaps and releases, and sales objections. As is typical in a start-up of this size, priorities changed almost constantly, which helped me get even better at pivoting at a moment’s notice, without compromising quality or resonance.

Finally, after soaking up a whole lot of experience (and data-themed acronyms) in a relatively short time, I transitioned to my current position within another SaaS platform: Wiise, a KPMG Futures company. It’s a really interesting mix of big company and small — it comes with all the support and structure of KPMG, but also has the scrappy feel of a genuine startup, where anything could (and does!) happen. While I continue to wear many hats (event coordinator, social media strategist, partner marketing manager, video editor, etc)., my favourite part of this role is getting to know the customers who actually use the product. I love getting the chance to connect directly with small business owners who have a real stake in the future of their company — the kind of people who can genuinely benefit from reading something like a case study, see themselves represented in it, before taking action. With the smallest marketing team I’ve been part of, I continue to learn new facets of the marketing discipline every single day.

While I greatly enjoy my role at Wiise, I’m always eager to meet new people and learn about new opportunities that my experience and neurotic love for words could be a benefit to.

More than any single other factor, I am looking for a team of real humans. People who think like humans, practice human empathy, and solve problems in human-first ways. Over the course of my career, I’ve learned that this — above all else — makes the biggest difference in the efficiency, effectiveness, and longevity of a company.

While my career has indeed been largely focused on content, the reality is: content is the message, but everything else that goes into producing, distributing, and measuring it, is just as crucial. And conveniently, it’s what I’ve been doing all along.

So while I’m certainly open to exploring other content roles, I’m also very open to further broadening my horizons using the array of experience I’ve stacked up so far. Roles in Partner Marketing, Field Marketing, B2B Marketing and Product Marketing could also be a great fit for me — and more importantly, I know I could be a real asset to the teams behind them too.

In these paragraphs above, I’ve mostly described my work life, with a bit of personal anecdote necessarily scattered throughout. But as you might imagine, I’m quite a lot more than the sum of my job experiences. (You too!?)

Beyond all this, I’m a people-person through and through. I’m the daughter of two journalists, and thus, rarely know when to stop talking and asking questions.

I’m a wife, to a husband who is a fly-fishing freak who loves US college football, both of which have osmosis-ed over to my world to some degree.

I’m a ridiculous dog lover — mum to a red miniature Dachshund puppy named Dot.

I’m a reader, but not the kind that reads 20 books a month or anything — for some reason, each year for the past 4, I have accidentally read exactly 34 books.

I’m a big lover of travel and am itching to tick off my seventh continent — Antarctica, of course. The cliche makes me cringe, but travel is truly the best teacher (well, of most topics) I’ve ever had.

Someday, if science allows, I’ll hopefully be a mum to a human child, who will almost certainly inherit my generational lack of slyness and instinct on when to stop talking.