Jamie Gerrard

A little bit about me.

I taught comic-book drawing classes as a freelancer before any of this became a career. First at the public library, then at several middle schools.

Those same libraries hired me not long after, and I stayed for nearly 7 years. All my roles in the library were public-facing, mostly in circulation. I studied library and information technology partway through and moved into information services.

Somewhere along the way, I started teaching myself web design and development, then went back to school for a third time to study web programming. I freelanced as a web designer while studying and for a while after finishing school.

Not long after graduating in web programming, I moved into a branch operations supervisor role at the library, supporting a team of 16 and overseeing the schedule, library programming, and the branch budget. Around the same time, a mutual friend introduced me to two marketers starting an agency. I thought about it and then left the library to become one of their founding web developers.

Almost 11 years at the agency followed, starting as a front-end developer, then team lead, then manager of a 14-person web development team, then in digital strategy, and finally on the senior leadership team, where I built the user experience team while still supporting digital strategy and an internal team of more than 65 people across departments. Titles were only half the story. I supported HR and operations throughout: performance reviews, growth plans for team members, recruitment, and retention. Growing the agency and growing its people were the same job.

After leaving the agency, I joined a telecommunications tech startup as director of product and marketing, leading an 18-person team covering product, user experience, digital marketing, and operations. It was the same work as at the agency, just in a smaller setting, with a focus on building the team and maturing the product. Every one of those HR and operations skills came with me.

After a brief stint at a business consulting firm focused on service design, I started my consulting practice.

In the years since, I draw on all of it: research, digital marketing, user experience, and business consulting. Sharing what I have learned is also part of my work, through training, workshops, and keynotes at industry events.

I have worked at nearly every level of an organization, including most of the roles held by the people I now work alongside.

Most of my free time now goes to Warhammer with my son, my wife, and our 3 dogs, and to rebuilding a graphic novel collection I recently started. 90s hip hop is the soundtrack to most of it, and I still get back to World of Warcraft when the week allows.