Kristen Engelhardt (SVP at Automation Anywhere) - Very Sci-Fi and Futuristic

Vin: Welcome to The Marketing Stir Podcast by Stirista, probably the most entertaining marketing podcast you're going to put in your ears. I'm Vin, the Associate Producer here at Stirista. The goal of this podcast is to chat with industry leaders and get their take on the current challenges of the market, and we'll have a little fun along the way. In today's episode, Vincent and Ajay chat with Kristen Engelhardt, SVP at Automation Anywhere. She talks about how empowering companies to use their technology and using the right tools, programs, and resources, help grow skills and careers. Ajay boasts about some rare whiskey bottles to try and Vincent is ready to flaunt his energy at the office. Give it a listen.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of Stirista's The marketing Stir. I, of course am your host, the well caffeinated Vincent Pietrafesa, the Vice President of B2B Products& Partnerships. It is so great to be talking to you. Ladies and gentlemen, Stirista, let's get our company out of the way. If you don't know us by now, we have so many amazing listeners, but if you're listening for the first time or in case you forgot. Stirista, we are a marketing technology company. We focus on identity. We have our own business to business data, our own business to consumer data, people, companies, customers, our proud partners utilize that data to email to it, get new customers. We also own our own DSP called AdStir. We could do display, OTT, connected TV. We have our own identity graph, identity resolution is so popular right now. We have solutions for cookies going away. Cookies. Who's sick are hearing about cookies? Anyway, it is so great to be here. You know what I'm not sick of, doing this podcast. And especially my co- host ladies, a gentleman, I get to see him in person. I get to see him in person and hand deliver him a nice coffee. He demands it. He's very demanding. It's what he does, but I'm happy to see him very soon. Lades and gentlemen, Ajay Gupta. What's going on Ajay?

Ajay Gupta: Hey, Vincent. Looking forward to having you here. We are getting the office prepared. So it should be a fun couple of days here, Friday and Saturday.

Vincent Pietrafesa: I like it. What has prepared mean? Tell the people out there what prepared means. We're going to all the COVID protocols, right? We're making sure it's-

Ajay Gupta: We got many boxes of COVID tests, but that's not the fun stuff. We also have some pretty rare whiskey like Pappy Van Winkle, Macallan 25 and a few surprises that you'll just have to wait and see for Friday.

Vincent Pietrafesa: I love it. See, I was going to bring you some whiskey. How can I hold up to that now with my$ 11 bottle that I was going to bring in from the airport there at San Antonio? I'm looking forward to it. We're going to be at a Spurs game. I've never been to a Spurs game. It's going to be fun. I always like this time of year, the new year and the end of the year to kind of see my teammates. Some of them I'm meeting for the first time. Some of them they're sick of hearing from me and they're sick and tired of me coming into the office because of my annoying energy, but it's okay. It's all right. I'm going to bring that anyway. It's going to be a great time. Looking forward to it. Looking forward to it. Ajay, you know what else I'm looking forward to, this next guest. Let me tell you first about this next guest, because this is one of those scenarios where we had reached out to this next guest and she was working at a different company at the time. Let me just talk about some of the companies that she's worked at. Salesforce, heard of them, right? It was not in Salesforce, it doesn't exist. How many times you sick and tired of hearing that? But, Salesforce is great company. PeopleSoft, Cisco, Gartner, come on. And when we spoke to Kristen, she was in the process of joining a new company. I said," Kristen, I don't care if that is a startup in your basement. I want to hear from you. You are so fun." I really think our audience is going to love her AJ. So please a warm welcome, and I'm excited about what she does. Listen to this. She's a Senior Vice President, Community& Learning at Automation Anywhere. I've been really wanting to hear about Automation Anywhere. Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome, Kristen Engelhardt. What's going on, Kristen?

Kristen Engelhardt: Hey Vincent, hey Ajay. What's going on with you guys?

Vincent Pietrafesa: We having fun. I'm freezing. I'm freezing in New York. Ajay is, he's got a t- shirt in San Antonio, but we're doing well. Getting ready for holidays, the new year coming, but how's everything with you more importantly?

Kristen Engelhardt: It's amazing and thank you very much for having me. I love what you all are doing here. I love the way you're bringing expertise and thought leadership to all the marketing community out there. And as a passionate builder of community, I value all of the work that you all are doing to empower other people. And it's awesome to be on with you guys.

Vincent Pietrafesa: We appreciate it. And that's one of the things that when we were originally talking, that community and that position that you've had at Salesforce, and you've also now at Automation Anywhere I want to hear about. First, tell the audience, all the amazing people in marketing who are listening to us on a weekly basis, tell us about Automation Anywhere.

Kristen Engelhardt: Okay. Well, first let's zoom out for a moment on how I made this transition from 16 years at Salesforce to Automation Anywhere. I think that like many people in the marketing world, but in the world in general, I recently made that career transition that many of us are doing in this work from anywhere world. I stepped away from 16 years at Salesforce to grow a new community all over again in a brand new technology space. So that is Automation Anywhere. They've built the number one robotics process automation platform in the market, RPA for short. And this is you guys an incredibly exciting technology space. And I think that robots and RPA can sound very sci- fi and futuristic, but software automation is really about the creation of digital assistants that make our day to day lives less routine and give us as humans more time to unleash own natural creativity in the world. It's really exciting.

Vincent Pietrafesa: I love that. And I know we have some questions about RPA later-

Kristen Engelhardt: Sure.

Vincent Pietrafesa: That we want to ask you. So I'm like, this is some exciting stuff, but Kristen, let's take a step back there. I would love to understand some of your day- to- day. The sense of community I mean, I think we can use it more now than any time in these past few years, but talk to us about your role within Automation Anywhere. And then after that, I'd love to find out how you got into this business. Some impressive companies including now Automation Anywhere, I'd love to understand your current role, what you're doing there and then how you got into this crazy thing we call marketing.

Kristen Engelhardt: Okay, great questions. What do I do on a day- to- day basis? My number one job is empowerment. The goal for any technology company is to empower other people to use their technology. Technology is incredibly powerful, but it can also be incredibly complex. And, it is also critical as the path to any kind of transformation, personal or professional. So the tools, the programs, the resources, and the relationships that help a user of our technology build their skills and grow their careers, that is central to any community strategy, including ours. And so every day, the team and I wake up and think, what can we do to empower our users to build their skills and grow their careers? And I think that on a practical level that looks like the programs and events that really match and marry and grow expertise at hyper scale. So like one of my favorite examples of something our team has done in our user community is the bot games, remember bots, software robots? We held those a couple of months ago and the developers got to participate in a new bot challenge once each week for four weeks. So it might be an HR bot building challenge one week and an account payables challenge the next week and, they all built their bots and the rewards were, they had the opportunity to really amp up their bot building technical skills and learn how to use our platform, which is great for us and solve their own business problem in new ways. And then they could share insights and achievements with their fellow developers. And of course, as a marketer, they got exclusive swag, which is always fun. But the business impact of this type of community building exercise is pretty rewarding for any business, including ours. So for example, that bot games event drove a 50% increase to our developer community where even more RPA developers could access our resources, build their skills and meet fellow developers. So it really had this wonderful multiplier effect and we do things like that all day, every day.

Vincent Pietrafesa: I love it. And Kristen, talk to us... A lot of people, we ask this question on the podcast where, how you got into marketing, how you got into this business in general, right? Some people are like," I studied marketing and I'm in marketing." That's a rarity. Other people are like,"I went to school for religion, for philosophy. I was a dance major and I got into marketing." So I'd love to hear that story.

Kristen Engelhardt: Okay. Well, it's more of the latter, not the direct path. In my last semester of college, I moved to St. Petersburg, Russia and lived and worked there for two years. And, just a news flash that is not a direct path to a career as a marketing executive, but it was instrumental in my journey. Because, Russia in the middle of winter in the'90s was not a welcoming place. However, there was a small community of expats, all of us there transforming our lives and we each contributed what we knew to help the rest. So someone had a fax machine and someone else knew where to get yogurt and I had a contribution. I had an email account, which was very new at the time and we all contributed and helped each other. And we didn't just sort of survive that experience, we thrived together. And that foundational experience created for me a very deep appreciation for the power of connection and acceleration through a shared experience. After that seed was planted, my career path was fairly conventional. I went to work for a very small market research firm, and that's where I really cultivated a passion for data. You talked earlier about your organization and your data offerings. And the power of data and the stories it can tell, led me to seeing how the narrative behind the numbers could electrify a room and influence strategic direction. And so throughout my career then, that led me to really focus on where can I learn from the very best storytellers in the world. And even though I started out in Salesforce and the products organization, I very quickly went to marketing because you're going to learn from the most brilliant marketers in the world and that's where they were. And that's also where I got to do things like build the voice of the customer function and help bring the trailblazer community to its first million members and here we are today.

Ajay Gupta: Seems like a great unique journey for sure.

Kristen Engelhardt: Thank you.

Ajay Gupta: Can you tell us a little bit about RPA and what the automation market looks like in general for you?

Kristen Engelhardt: Sure. I think that in any technology space, the biggest goal for all of us is demystification of technology, right? And it can seem really complex to people who aren't in it every single day. So what is automation software? Let's just start there. Automation software allows businesses to write code and software robots, the bots, that automate manual tasks in multiple departments. So a great example is in sales and marketing, right? So when an organization automates something really time consuming and manual like lead filtering or updating your CRM system or researching prospects, creating quotes, when that is all automated, the sales rep, the marketer can spend their time reaching more customers, building their client relationships. The technology does the manual work and the humans can focus on what only humans can do on the relationship side. So the global RPA software market is huge. Gartner says it's almost two billion, that's a 20% growth rate from 2020 and it's getting bigger all the time. This is a really, really exciting space and Automation Anywhere is a really, really exciting company.

Ajay Gupta: And what is the user strategy with RPA tech?

Kristen Engelhardt: Well, we talked a little bit about the developers and how we energize them every day. I think that the user strategy in automation is to make sure that people understand how to use the technology, but how also to use the time that they get back in the world, right? When you are automating a task, you then have more time to focus on something creative or go to your kid's soccer game and anything in between. So the more that we can demystify the technology and show the just day- to- day business benefits of automating your manual tasks, then we have done our job.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Kristen, I want to talk about the... Because, you being in this business and also being the head of the community, you were interacting with customers all the time so I want to ask you about marketing in general. What are a couple things that are going to be coming down the pipe that you see up and coming in the marketing sphere?

Kristen Engelhardt: So, one of the most interesting trends I see right now is how a company handles outreach and engagement for the non technologist. And that is true whether you are selling automation software like Automation Anywhere, or your Peloton. Because technology is intrinsic to the offering and the experience. And it's really easy to market to a tried and true audience, like in our case, it's the RPA developer and it's harder to reach an entirely new audience that will help grow your business impact exponentially. So the way companies tackle outreach to the non- technology business user and in our parlance, the citizen developer is really important and I'm watching that space very closely.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Yeah, I appreciate that. So I wanted to get your insight just because you're talking to people all the time in that area so that's very helpful to our listeners as well. I'd love to get, steps back there, 16 years at a company as Salesforce, what really drew you, you touched upon it, but, the transition at this point, after being somewhere in 16 years building that community that a lot of people know about, that go to some of the conferences, you see the trailblazer community, talk to us about the transition over to Automation Anywhere.

Kristen Engelhardt: Sure. I honestly thought I would just retire from Salesforce. Every year I got to do new things, more innovation, different problems to solve. And I was with that organization from, I was employee 800 and it's a 70, 000 plus person organization today. Although I made my career transition decision in what felt like very personal and specific to me, it turned out I was part of this moment where a lot of people are reflecting on what they're doing. What I realized in my own process was at heart, I'm a builder. So helping to build some of Salesforce's earliest customer programs and practices, including what is now the trailblazer community, including the voice of the customer function and a lot of our early, early efforts in bringing product to market, clearly one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. So I really thought I had achieved sort of all of my innovation potential in those 16 years, but what the opportunity arose to build again with a super hot technology and an amazing customer base, Vincent, it kind of stopped me in my tracks. It really made me rethink. And, like many of us who have gone through this global pandemic, there was just an opportunity for some self- reflection. And I realized I have a lot more innovation in me left to give. And then all of the things that matter in a career like a huge market opportunity, fast growing company, a great leadership team, that all came together. So for me, it was just a no brainer to make the decision.

Ajay Gupta: Interest. In terms of kind of the value of building a user community, what do you think are some of the main reasons to build a user community and what factors play into it?

Kristen Engelhardt: Ajay, that is such a good question. Every company is at some inflection point in its evolution. It might be taking the business public or shifting a go to market model, maybe single product to multi product. It might be migrating a product. It might be expanding internationally or moving up market are maybe multiple of these transitions. And these are critical transitions to a company's growth, but they can be very complex to accomplish. So the most successful businesses I have seen make these growth leaps together with their customers, leveraging the power of their install base to help them create this forever loyalty along the journey, but also win future market opportunity. So companies like Salesforce, I mentioned Peloton, Harley Davidson, Shopify, Automation Anywhere, I think we've all learned that customers adopt more quickly and expand their investment in you more aggressively when you swarm your users of your technology with really two things, a seat at the table on the product direction that they have built their career on and a community of peers to help each other accelerate their individual success. So when a company invests in a community strategy like that, it has essentially a secret weapon in the market, it's customers. And when you do it right, the customers adopt your existing offerings more quickly, but they also expand their new investments more aggressively and, they evangelize the company as natural brand ambassadors. So basically a thriving user community will use more of what you have to sell, buy more of what you bring to market next and tell others to do the same.

Ajay Gupta: In Automation Anywhere, specifically decided to double down on their community first strategy. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Kristen Engelhardt: Yes. Well, we are at one of those inflection points I was talking about a little bit earlier. So we have the only Cloud native automation platform in the market and the number of customers and partners in the ecosystem who want to try that platform, learn about it and transform, whether it's a company or career on our platform, that number is growing at hyper scale and they all need each other to share their common practices and build their skills and elevate each other. So our community double down investment is a response to that demand. So for example, when our user group program started, it started with one very small 15 person meeting in one state. And what we saw was within a quarter, there was five more user groups, regionally, each one with, more than 50 members. And that's just in the three month time span. And there's more demands every week for different types of user groups. Can we have a user group specific to this product, to the insurance industry, to, revenue cycle management, on and on and on. So we are really investing to scale this connective tissue. And especially, I think we're seeing with the ability for digital participation, in the work from anywhere world, we just have to invest to meet that demand. That's probably just one example of the community demand we get to meet.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Kristen, I want to ask because of your expertise in that, this is just something that I would like to know, or the companies listening, what do you recommend as far as like kind of starting a community, some steps, right? Is it get a LinkedIn page, is there a company, a certain size company that should do this? What are some simple steps to begin a community like this?

Kristen Engelhardt: So I would say the very first thing you want to do is start by listening. That's my number one is listen to what your customers need and want. I mean, it helps for sample to be in the maturation phase where you've nailed product market fit. Because once you've nailed product market fit, you have people who want to use and buy and invest and transform on that technology or with your offerings. So make sure you've nailed product market fit and then go listen to your customers. What do they need to use more of what you have to offer? They might say," I want basic training on tools and skills." They might say," I want to talk to five people like me who are solving the same problem/" Hands down they will definitely say," I would like a voice into your product direction." But I think step one is listening, and that can be done very, very easily by getting on the phone with one or a group of customers. What I like to do and I'm really excited that we're about to do here at Automation Anywhere starting in just a couple weeks is we're going out on what we call tour. We're doing a customer and partner listening tour. In this era, it's mostly digital, but we hit the digital road and we hold a series of focus groups and say," This is what we're thinking of doing. Give us your feedback." And it's a great opportunity to craft the community and the product together.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Well, I love that. Thanks for that advice. People who are probably listen, me listening, I was like, what are some ways to start? How do we do that? So I appreciate that. And then it kind of leads me to something I was just thinking of. Did Automation Anywhere do a lot of in- person before? Did they do a lot of trade shows? And like you said, now, even part of the community was a lot of that visiting in- person. You kind of answered it as far as changing a little bit to virtual, but are you thinking eventually meeting them in person, a hybrid? I think a lot of companies out there would love to learn more about what our company's doing as things start to open up. I've been at some in- person events lately and they were great. Then you get this variant, that variant. So I just wondering your thoughts on that.

Kristen Engelhardt: Yeah. So who isn't thinking about this right now, Vincent? Who is not trying to grapple with their digital hybrid in- person event strategy? What I can tell you is, again, we're leaning into what our customers are saying they need and want. So the listening tool we're about to do is a perfect example. We set that up as a hybrid strategy. So a series of digital sessions, and then a couple of very small in person sessions in a few different cities around the country where we overlaid where is the demand and the need and the customers raising their hands and saying," I'm fine," meaning in- person. And of course we have to look at health and safety protocol. Where the vaccine rates high and where are the COVID rates low because we need to protect each other and our customers. So I see hybrid strategy is very, very important. But honestly, I can also learn from even our competitors. So one of the very first things I did when I joined the company was I went to our competitors user conference. And it was really helpful because that's how we learned it was probably too early for such a big event. No customers came. It was wonderful for partners, but the community didn't show up, it was actually kind of sad. The partner booths were empty, the community station had no members, there was no customers in the audience. And that was a really good learning experience. We're like," maybe too soon for that." So you can build your strategy with knowledge from everywhere.

Ajay Gupta: Kristin, one of our staple questions here has to do with LinkedIn. I'm sure with your background and your title, you get a lot of unsolicited messages on LinkedIn. So our question is twofold really. One is, what's the message that gets a response from you. And more importantly, what's a pet peeve of yours, a message that really annoys you?

Vincent Pietrafesa: Now, the pet peeve's going to be hard because Kristen... Or maybe there is. Kristen is one of the nicest people, but-

Ajay Gupta: Hey, hey Vincent, I bet it's interruption.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Yeah. I hate when people interrupt me on podcasts.

Kristen Engelhardt: Well, caveat, I think Vincent reached out to me on LinkedIn first and we did not have a previous relationship. So clearly you had a message that was relevant and compelling.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Thank you.

Kristen Engelhardt: So, I would say that is the number one of a message that gets my attention is relevant and compelling. Is this person sharing something new that I don't already know, and is it relevant to me? All of us have limited time, so we have five seconds, 10 seconds to read a LinkedIn message very, very quickly. And I think that the relevancy is so key. One of the things is I don't buy technology. I'm a builder of programs and relationships and I get solicited for technology investments all day, every day. If I have the time to send them over to my IT partners, I would, but I don't have the time. So relevancy in your audience and the right message for the right audience is just critical for all of us in the marketing world.

Ajay Gupta: Kristen, you've had quite an amazing career. What's been a moment or two that particularly stand out for you?

Kristen Engelhardt: I mean, there's so many, but I will share a recent one, which is, so values are incredibly important to me. I talked about my basis in community building and how that's informed who I am as a person, but also how I show up in the work world and what I do as a profession. And I've always tried as a leader and a learner to stay true to those values. And I wear them on my sleeve, literally. I don't know if you can see, I have a bracelet here with three words. When I left Salesforce recently, my existing team, this is super emotional, my existing team gave me these bracelets. They say community, gratitude and Ohana. And they said," these are the values that you have taught us, and we know you're going to go take them to your next community and we will carry them forward for you here." And they have these bracelets also. So that was just an incredibly rewarding moment career- wise.

Vincent Pietrafesa: I love that. Can you elaborate on Ohana because, we heard that one more time on our podcast and I believe it was from another amazing person. I wonder it was Jackie Grief. This was early on. I remember the Ohana. Just that mantra. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

Kristen Engelhardt: Sure. Ohana is a native Hawaiian word for family, and that's how my previous company operated, as a family, and that's the value that we all got to bring to community. And it's the value that has transitioned also out into, for example, the alumni world. There is an incredible alumni Ohana that helped me figure out my career transition. And then I'm bringing that family value to Automation Anywhere. We were just having a conversation, my leadership team and I about how we want to recognize and reward our most prolific and generous community members. We call them the A- listers right. We have an A- lister program. And, there's all different ways when you're building a community of brand ambassadors that you can incent and motivate people to basically share their stories about your brand. You can pay them, you can offer them cool stuff, you can give them points. And we were really grounding our A- lister program in the spirit of giving back and sharing expertise as the number one value. And that spirit of generosity, that's what family is all about. And so I really look at the Ohana, the family value as the community we're building is a family and that family helps each other, in this case, learn new skills on our platform.

Vincent Pietrafesa: I love it. I love it. Kristen, before we get to some of the personal stuff and close the podcast, we have a lot of... Don't worry, just personal questions about who you like to do. Sometimes it scares people when I say we have some personal stuff to talk about-

Kristen Engelhardt: It's all good. This is a great conversation.

Vincent Pietrafesa: But I want to ask you what other marketing questions, I want to understand what is the role of authenticity and customer trust in marketing? I would love to get your take on that before we jump.

Kristen Engelhardt: This is one of our topics. I think many of us, myself included can have a conflicted relationship with the power of brilliant marketing alongside the sort of ethical importance of authenticity. Marketing is an art and a science that serves a very important purpose. It's inspiration. Effective marketing inspires us to do something different. And, authenticity and inspiration can coexist alongside each other, but one does not require the other. So as an example, we're surrounded by disinformation about a global health issue right now every single day. That disinformation isn't authentic at all, but it certainly inspires people to make life impacting health decisions for themselves and their families. And authenticity, for example in the software industry, let's take an example any technology company deals with, the release is late, we weren't able to deliver your favorite feature, the technology is more complex to implement than we thought. Authentic, but not very inspiring, right? So where I like to be is in an organization that knows how to balance that healthy tension of marketing and authenticity with a foundation of trust. So when trust is your guidepost, you are able to focus on what is the most relevant for which audience in which channel. I mentioned our A- lister program. These are the superstars of our developer community who are leading by example and giving back their expertise to each other. So they have placed their trust in us and we in turn have placed our trust in them. Next week, we are taking that listening tour sneak preview out to our A- listers only. And we're opening the kimono and sharing with them our 2022 product roadmap for a very candid NDA discussion, before anyone else on tour. And we get to ask them things like, are we on the right track? Will these investments empower you? What are we missing? Do we experience this level of trust and authenticity with every single one of our thousands of customers? No company does. So the depth of authenticity is not for every channel, but we trust this group of customers to keep such an early version of the product direction to themselves for now so that we don't disrupt thousands of people. They might share after the session what they got out of the experience and that they value the trusted relationship with Automation Anywhere, whatever they do say about their experience on the tour stop will be incredibly authentic, and their personal stories of trust and product building together with us are much more powerful marketing than any campaign we could come up with on our own.

Vincent Pietrafesa: I love that. Glad I asked. Kristen, personal stuff, what do you love to do in your spare time? Are you watching some shows, you reading some books that you recommend? Talk to us.

Kristen Engelhardt: Okay. Well, I live in Marin County in California, so I am lucky I get to indulge in one of my favorite pastimes just right outside my door and that's hitting the trails on Mount Tam. So I'm a big cyclist, mount biker, hiker. And, I'll probably unwind today at the end of the day with the hike up the butt Buster trail hardcore, right. Super fun. And I love to do that. I put on my podcast queue, I listen to a few key podcasts that are on my rotation I can share, and I just walk out the door. So that is really great. And I would say, what's on rotation right now, I'm a huge crime junkie. So I listen to some real world crime podcasts. And then, I personally think every single person should listen to the podcast Smartless which interviews great people with great interviewers. And I would say those are my two big ones right now. But I have-

Vincent Pietrafesa: That's awesome.

Kristen Engelhardt: I have another favorite pastime and that is watching my kids grow up. So my husband and I have two teenagers now, and the journey of taking them from babyhood to... My son turns 16 next week. He's going to be getting his driver's license. I know, it's just an unbelievable experience. And if you think scaling a software company is challenging, raising two kids even more so and even more rewarding.

Vincent Pietrafesa: That's awesome. I'm enjoying that journey myself with my two little ones. What's your son's name who's birthday's coming up?

Kristen Engelhardt: Carleton is turning 16. Yeah. And then-

Vincent Pietrafesa: Awesome. Well, happy birthday carton.

Kristen Engelhardt: Thank you. Thank you.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Happy birthday out there from the Marketing Stir. And how old, Betsy you said?

Kristen Engelhardt: Betsy is 13.

Vincent Pietrafesa: 13. Yeah. Well, good. Now he's got to listen to at least one episode, right? Carlton, happy birthday. Kristen, just a closing thought? There's a lot of people in marketing who listen to this. There's a lot of students as I was at a recent event where there's a lot of students there and," Hey, I listen to your podcast," and they're listening to get into the marketing. So any closing thoughts, advice out there for people before we depart?

Kristen Engelhardt: You know what, you were asking earlier about what gets my attention on LinkedIn. Aside from messages, I think a parting thought is every time I see someone in my network, whether it's a student I know, a mentee, a colleague, friend, anyone post about their new career transition, I think that is an incredibly exciting moment. I get excited. The pandemic has been tough for all of us and will continue to be so for some time, but one amazing byproduct of this moment we're all going through is that we've all realized there can be a different way to work, a different technology to work on, a different place to work from or people to work with. And I hope everyone else is embracing that and really looking at what matters most to them and focusing on that, whether it's staying where you are and doing something amazing or taking a big leap and trying something new. I love the celebration of transformation, especially for someone like me who wakes up every day and challenges myself and the team to enable people to transform on the Automation Anywhere platform. But seeing all those career transitions is validation of the power of transformation and I hope everyone embraces that.

Vincent Pietrafesa: I love that. I love that. Thank you so much. That is Kristen Engelhardt. Automation Anywhere is so lucky to have you. Kristen is the-

Kristen Engelhardt: Thank you.

Vincent Pietrafesa: SVP of Community& Learning at Automation Anywhere. I'm Vincent, that's Kristen, that's Ajay. This has been another episode of The Marketing Stir. Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk to you soon.

Vin: Thanks for listening to The Marketing Stir Podcast by Stirista. Please like, rate, and subscribe it. If you're interested in being a guest on the podcast, please email us at, themarketingstir@ stirista. com. And thanks for listening.