‘I Love My Job’: How My Company’s Transformation Is Helping Employees Elevate Their Careers'

Welcome to I Love My Job, the series where we hear from real women who really love their jobs. In this edition, we sat down with Stacey Seltzer, Senior Manager, Platform Success at Ampersand. 

In her 14 years at Ampersand, Seltzer has been able to constantly grow her career and pivot between multiple roles and teams. “I started out on the Local Sales side of our business as a campaign manager and quickly moved to a sales planner role,” shares Seltzer. “I’ve spent the bulk of my time here at Ampersand as an account executive on the local side. Then, three years ago, I moved over to our Operational Department.” 

As for how she made this pivot, Seltzer shares that, “Ampersand has really supported me in numerous ways in terms of advancing in my career.” For instance, when she was an account executive, “that was really the only trajectory to be promoted within the organization,” she explains. However, “since we moved from being a typical sales organization into more of the AdTech space, it's really broadened the different avenues and paths that you could take within the organization to elevate yourself.”

Upon seeing all of these possibilities, “I was very vocal about wanting to get into operations,” Seltzer shares. And the management at Ampersand helped her achieve this goal. Her VP at the time pushed her to work with the HR team members who had been hired specifically to help with career coaching. “That really helped me advance and cross over into Operations,” Seltzer notes. With the help of this company-wide dedication to supporting internal career development, Seltzer managed to find the path to her dream role.

In the following video, Seltzer shares more on why she loves working at Ampersand. We also provide lightly edited highlights from this video discussion in the following article.

Tell us about a project you’re currently working on that you find exciting?

I'm working on a platform that we recently released to the marketplace, which we've been working really hard on for the last two years.

The platform allows us to offer our clients a different way of purchasing traditional media that they did not have in the past, and it brings a lot of different data into the marketplace so that they can create more effective campaigns. And, in the spirit of partnership, it allows us to help strategize with those campaigns more effectively within the marketplace.

My role and function with the platform has just been to make sure that our clients are getting the best user experience possible and taking any feedback that they have about the platform back to our product and engineering departments to help enhance their user experience down the road long term — helping us build a platform that the marketplace can't live without.

How would you describe the culture at Ampersand?

Very family friendly. Ever since we've rebranded our company, we've been evolving. We've offered more maternity and paternity leave than we have in the past, more flexibility in terms of working hours and working from home. And, while Ampersand has always been a family environment, the culture around that has just expanded... There’s also been a lot of growth in terms of expanding our company and [promoting people with] different backgrounds into leadership positions.

What is your favorite thing about Ampersand?

My favorite thing about Ampersand has always been the people. I love the team of people that I'm working with, especially in this new role there's just a ton of support. I’ll be going on maternity leave, and while I I feel some anxiety about leaving my team, I know that I have a ton of people in a lot of different departments who can support my team while I'm away. It’s extremely comforting to me because we have a family environment and know that there are a lot of people within the organization who will have our backs. We just continue to support each other, and that's my favorite part about coming to work every day.

What advice would you give to other women who are thinking about working at Ampersand?

Take the opportunity to lean in and advance your career — there are more paths here in terms of data, tech, engineering and things of that nature. And, speaking up about what you want, understanding the vision and long-term goals of our organization and seeing where you fit in [is important]. 

Ampersand does feel like a small startup within a large organization, so we have the resources and opportunities available for women in business here, you just need to speak up about what it is that you're looking for and what you want. We’ll help make it happen because we need all hands on deck here.

Interested in joining the Ampersand team? They’re hiring! Click the link below to browse opportunities.

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Check out other posts in the ‘I Love My Job’ series:

• 'I Love My Job’: I’m a Senior Director in the ‘Emerging Field of Belonging’ at the World’s #1 CRM

• 'I Love My Job’: Undertaking an Exciting Digital Transformation While Promoting Women in Engineering

• 'I Love My Job’: From Launching an Art Gallery in New York to Exploring Blockchain Technology

• 'I Love My Job’: How I Pivoted From Being a Banking Lawyer to Head of DE&I

• 'I Love My Job’: My Gratifying Career of Making Music, Selling Music and Supporting Music Education