Courtney Conway

October 13, 2020

Why I Want to Become a Chief Marketing Officer
I never thought too far ahead into the future when I was a kid, but as I grew older I became
very aware of the fact that I wanted to do something that interested me. It scared me to think of
getting a job that I didn’t really like. When it came time to think about the future, I realized that I
had always been very interested in the media and in writing, and so I became a communications
major. I didn’t yet know what aspect of communications I was interested in, but after taking
classes for my degree, I quickly realized that the aspect of communications that I liked the most
was marketing. I felt like it combined all the parts of my communications study that I felt
passionate about, and thinking about a possible career in marketing became a motivator to work
hard to finish my degree and plan for the future.
There are several reasons I want to work in marketing. Coming into college as a
communications major, I took all different classes from script writing to interpersonal
communications to try and get a feel for what aspect of communications I wanted to do, and
while I excelled in those classes, the ones I enjoyed most involved marketing. Making marketing
projects in my Advertising and Public Relations class and learning about social media marketing
in my Social Media class completely peaked my interested in marketing, and after working for
Healthy Living Magazine and Events,​ and learning about how my boss marketed her business, I
got a taste of how the skills I’d been learning at school could be applied in the real world. I loved
looking at marketing analytics, coming up with creative content ideas, and trying to think of new
ways to interact with the audience. It challenged me and brought out my creative side, and didn’t
really feel like work while I was doing it. I realized marketing and public relations was for sure
what I wanted to do, and it felt really rewarding. In the last four years, I have been shown so
many different aspects of marketing, both educationally and professionally, and I am eager to
expand on these skills as I enter the professional marketing world.
My overall career goal is definitely to do the marketing or public relations for a major
corporation. I saw how it could be done on a small scale, and I can only imagine how interesting
it would be to do it for a major business. I only have limited professional experience right now
though, and because of this, my goal after school is to first get into a master’s program for
marketing. I think that will help me add onto my skills, and hopefully allow me to later leverage
what I’ve learned into a successful marketing career. After I complete a master’s program, I want
to try and get an entry level job in marketing and begin working my way up to my end goal, to be
a Chief Marketing Officer.