"If you get certain things wrong, someone could actually die"

Talent Spotlight!

Julane Marx calls herself "a natural editor," although she admits that it's kind of a curse - she can't read the newspaper, for example, without spotting typos. With an MBA and a career that took her through a range of tech-oriented companies involved in technical training, software, and Web-based business services, she finally found herself ensconced as a VP of Marketing spending 90% of her time doing things she didn't enjoy like sitting through endless meetings and agonizing over spreadsheets.

Striking out on her own, Julane's love for words and interest in the English language led to one of her first freelance editing gigs. As a subscriber to Michael Quinion's "World Wide Words" newsletter, one day she stumbled across a mistake in it, which she duly brought to his attention. Being a stickler for proper syntax and usage, Mr. Quinion appreciated Julane's eagle eye and American viewpoint and enlisted her as an "Advisory Editor," setting in motion a "series of fortunate events" that has turned into a second career as a freelance copyeditor.

Julane has found freelancing to be a "fun way to make a contribution" while retaining the freedom to explore new possibilities once the project has ended. She came to Aquent back in 2002 thanks to a clever ad for proofreaders our Los Angeles office ran and successfully passed the fairly challenging proofreading test that we administer interested candidates. She worked for Aquent here and there, eventually landing a long-term assignment with a Fortune 500 biotech firm specializing in human therapeutics.

Starting out as "one of the troops," she later moved into a role as manager of the proofreading team, then took responsibility for training the vendors our client brought in to take over this function as our contract was phased out. Overall, Julane found the environment particularly rewarding, partly because she enjoys working with really smart people, and partly because proofreading for products with medical applications is beyond mission-critical. As she put it, "If you get certain things wrong, someone could actually die."

Her successes on the proofreading front led to a new role as a marketing communications manager for the company's brand protection department, the main purpose of which is to combat drug counterfeiting. During this temporary assignment, she updated the department's public position statement on drug counterfeiting, created a fact sheet about the department, penned newsletter articles raising its profile in the organization, commissioned two logos and a multi-use tabletop display unit, and worked on a plan for rolling out an important new product security feature to be launched in the fall. She enjoyed flexing a number of different muscles she has used in the past in an interesting new setting, plus there were "a manageable number of meetings and not a spreadsheet in sight."

Having worked in a range of environments and worn a series of different hats, Julane's primary advice to others pursuing a career in marketing is to "try everything." "Variety is a value in itself," she says, "and it's the ideal way to discover what you do best and what makes your heart sing." Exploring the possibilities in order to find out what you love to do isn't just about following your passion, as we're so often told. More importantly, it's about becoming a valuable and engaged participant wherever you work; someone who understands not only his or her own function but also how it fits in with the big picture. In Julane's words, "You aren't going to be effective if you don't care about what you're doing."