Welcome to episode 117 of the Nerd Journey Podcast [@NerdJourney]! We’re John White (@vJourneyman) and Nick Korte (@NetworkNerd_), two Pre-Sales Technical Engineers who are hoping to bring you the IT career advice that we wish we’d been given earlier in our careers. In today’s episode we share part 1 of our interview with Kate Emshoff and discuss Kate’s early career, challenges around relocation for work, and some interview subtleties for women.
Original Recording Date: 04-06-2021
Topics – Early Career History, Relocation, Job Changes, and Interview Subtleties
2:32 – Meet Kate Emshoff

* Kate Emshoff is a mother of 3 living in the Chicago suburbs and works for Innovatis Group. One of the largest clients is VMware User Group (VMUG) where Kate serves as the Senior Director of Program Management and Operations.
* Kate started on March 9, 2020 (which was about the time everything shut down because of the pandemic).

* Her focus is more on execution of programs like UserCons, and she has never attended a UserCon in person. All of these are virtual at present.
* Going into the pandemic, VMUG already a fairly robust virtual event platform, so it was not too difficult to change everything to virtual events.
* VMUG hopes to begin having some in-person events in September of 2021.

5:11 – Early Career History

* Kate attended Illinois State University studying communications and then focused on public relations and business administration.

* Upon graduation she wasn’t extremely clear about what she wanted to do.
* But, she had the chance to study abroad in Salzburg, Austria and visit a number of countries in Europe.
* Kate had to take out a loan to take the trip, but it was worth it, and the experience helped her realize she wanted to work in international business.

* One of her first jobs was working for the Radiological Association of North America (RSNA).

* The Marketing position where she started was more of an admin role.

* Interestingly enough, every position Kate has taken in her career has been a role that previously did not exist at the company.

* Kate was charged with marketing the company’s scholarly journals to institutions like libraries and hospitals (where RSNA had been targeting individuals only).

* This included negotiating licensing with universities and healthcare systems internally. Every country has a different healthcare system.
* Navigating these new waters for the company helped Kate elevate quickly. She became a manager at a young age and was horrible at it.
* As you elevate to management it’s less about executing and more about being more intentional about growing, encouraging, coaching, and mentoring.

* At one point she wanted to leave Chicago (had never lived anywhere else).

* She accepted a job at The Royal Society in London after flying out there to interview, but it ended up not working out.

* This was after she had given up her apartment lease and sold all her furniture!

* She still wanted to live somewhere else and interview with a company that published content online.

* After interviewing with one company, she called a friend who told her about a new opportunity in Market...