Main Content

They’re guiding clients through crises, rapid technology advances and political turmoil. Shoring up the teacher-to-principal pipeline in the face of budget cuts and low morale. Building the market for a misunderstood sport. Cutting through the noise to reach clients — and an audience.

We asked five Wake Forest alumni who are navigating these challenges every day how they pilot such choppy waters. Here’s how they are meeting the moment: 

THE COSTS OF a bad meeting stack up fast: a plane ticket, days away from family and lost productivity. Garrett Putman (’98, P ’29) spends his days as senior director of events and experience marketing at SAS, a software company, working to disprove the adage that “this meeting could have been an email.” 

He does so by focusing his team of 30 employees on one goal: Design experiences that artificial intelligence can’t touch. “AI … cannot bring groups of people together in person to connect, learn and find inspiration,” Putman says. So he targets what he sees as the ultimate objective for meeting in person — building relationships.

His secondary goal for his team at SAS, considered a “legacy” technology company, is to work against that stereotype by creating experiences and events that audiences find fresh and surprising. For one conference, he pushed for SAS’s chief technology officer to ditch his standard speech with slides, instead getting Sean Evans, host of the YouTube show “Hot Ones,” to replicate the show’s format onstage. Evans asked the CTO increasingly tough questions as they bit into spicier hot wings.

“Our CTO could have written a blog,” Putman says. Instead, the hot wings made the message stick.

What’s his hot take on AI? As a tech leader and father of a Wake Forest sophomore, Putman sees AI transforming daily life at work and with his family. “I have these two mindsets I play with every day,” he says. “How do I maximize the use of AI while also putting people and ideas together in person more often? That work has been super fun for me, and I think the Pro Humanitate spirit has been infused in that.”

CARY LAMBERT (’13) grew up playing video games, building a following through massively multiplayer online strategy games, including “World of Warcraft” and “League of Legends,” that connect legions of online players in the same virtual experience. She made videos for YouTube and livestreamed on Twitch.

And just as many Little Leaguers dream of growing up to play pro ball, she dreamed of turning her childhood passion into her day job — “helping the world understand that gaming is a sport,” says Lambert. And she managed to do it, now as Logitech’s global marketing lead for esports in San Jose, California.

Even while playing traditional intramurals at Wake Forest, Lambert was proselytizing esports through online videos. She moved to Canada after graduation and began working for Ubisoft, a video-game publisher in Quebec, managing its esports program and taking pro players’ needs to the game development team. “I saw how (the pros) were training, and I saw how they were practicing and playing on stage,” she says. “It’s not just a game for them. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are on the line.”

Her next stop was Nike, where she was charged with “helping them understand why esports athletes are athletes,” she says. From there, Lambert went to Logitech, where she works alongside product developers and researchers on players’ needs.

“When you really get into the science behind what it takes to be good at video games and what actually goes into it — either a decision that’s made, or a flick of the mouse, the g-forces that are generated in a movement and the skill that it takes to be able to do something like that — it is very cool,” Lambert says. 

She sees a growing need for coaching and family support. Instead of helping esports athletes train and eat to fuel their competitions, “parents will tell kids to ‘stop playing those video games,’” she says. “These kids climb an individually ranked ladder in the majority of these games, and it takes a lot of initiative.”

TIFFANY NEWSOME (’13) knows firsthand the toll that teaching can take. She taught English before becoming an elementary school principal in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, at the same time earning a doctorate in educational leadership at UNC Greensboro. 

Now teaching teachers about school leadership at Western Carolina University, she often sees her graduate students arrive as the “battered and wounded soldiers of education.” 

To keep the crucial teacher-to-
principal pipeline from collapsing under funding threats and mounting debt, Newsome focuses on what she can control: how she shares her passion, care and empathy with her students. She strives to ensure “that the care is felt,” reminding her students often “of why they even chose this profession.” 

Demonstrating that the value of learning to think and collaborate outweighs an end product or perceived right answer has helped Newsome in her research on the use of artificial intelligence in the classroom, including the question of when and whether it’s ethical. “I am dealing with it (by), No. 1, debunking the myth that we should be afraid. I think to stay in that place would leave me behind or ignorant to what is being developed that can be leveraged in a responsible and ethical way,” she says.

STREAMING SERVICES have eclipsed cable, and traditional commercials are easier to avoid, so advertisers now rely on experts like Lexi Swift Sindall (’05) to get them in front of potential customers. 

As vice president of what’s called “addressable sales” at The Walt Disney Co., Swift ensures that advertisers can reach the viewers they want on Disney+, Hulu and ESPN. She juggles multiple teams, inside and outside of Disney, with the common goal of targeting viewers with advertisers’ preferred messages. Many projects involve what are called in-show integrations, including product placements, through which a brand becomes part of the story (think “Project Runway” or “Dancing with the Stars”).

Sindall started her career with a traditional advertising agency and two years later jumped to Hulu, then a tiny startup with 30 employees. For the past two decades, her career has grown as streaming has expanded.

She credits the trust she’s won from clients and employees to “servant leadership,” which includes being curious and adaptable, she says. “At the core, my job when I’m talking to marketers is to help them solve their business needs and challenges. You don’t really leave that mission just because maybe the marketplace looks a little bit different.”

WITH TECH INNOVATIONS and geopolitical issues upending business models, Jonathan Doorley (’06) advises corporate clients on ever tougher challenges as a partner and global co-head of Brunswick Group’s financial practice. He leads a global team of about 400 advisers on stakeholder relations in capital markets issues, including mergers and acquisitions, and also heads the firm’s New York office of 250.

“Leadership today is no longer just about managing operations or driving efficiency but about charting a course through uncertainty,” he says. “What once seemed like (events) that might only happen once or twice a generation now seem to be all in a day’s work.”
Doorley urges his clients to reckon with any gaps in their business performance — and how they’re achieving results — before focusing on their communications. He gives the same advice to individual executives as well.

“One aspect of my job, I believe, is to help organizations play their most positive and effective role in society,” he says. “And that can only happen if leaders and those on the teams around them all have that mindset.”

As a history major at Wake Forest, Doorley learned how to identify patterns and understand how unrelated themes or events connect, which helps him explain to clients that “every generation thinks it’s living through unprecedented change,” he says. “What changes are the technologies and the headlines and the actors. What doesn’t change is that organizations still need leaders who can earn trust, make decisions with imperfect information and bring people along with them.”

---

The Office of Personal & Career Development contributed to this story. For more information, go to opcd.wfu.edu