Heather Vaughn is CID’s Executive Marketing Director, responsible for leading our Marketing & Strategy team. We sat down with Heather to talk about how her background in music prepared her to master the unpredictable chaos that is marketing and to hear the lessons she’s learned from the mentors who’ve helped her grow into the incomparable leader she is today.
Meet Heather!
Q: As CID’s Executive Marketing Director you’re responsible for leading our Marketing and Strategy team, setting standards for CID’s marketing efforts, and shaping the way CID approaches the practice. How do you describe your role?
Whenever I give people my intro, I tend to explain that I am on the agency leadership team, which is an incredible privilege. I usually try not to leave it at that though because what being the Executive Marketing Director actually means is that I get to oversee a team of brand, content, and digital marketing people who do everything from strategy to execution, to measurement, to dreaming big.
I also contribute to strategy on accounts or speak into other operational things, so along with leading our team, which I love doing, I still have the opportunity to do some of the work that led me to this industry. But, I'm equally obsessed with the fact that I get to lead all of you guys, which is way more fun.
Q: As part of your team I am obviously a pinnacle of objectivity, so I can confirm that it absolutely is fun.
Totally objective, yes. I agree.
Q: As an agency leader and a marketing strategist yourself, you do a lot of things that others don’t always get to see, or may not even realize are part of your job. What are some of those things?
I do "stuff" like building emails or workflows in HubSpot or Pardot or keeping CRM data clean and up to date. I also write the occasional blog post or help create foundational deliverables like personas, journey maps, and audits of all types. I even pinch-hit from time to time as an account executive or project manager.
But, the leadership piece is the one that I don’t get to talk about as much, and I think it is one of the most important parts of my role.
We’ve all experienced bad leadership in our lives, and I think that’s because there are so many people who assume leadership is just an automatic thing that happens when you grow in your job or move up the company ladder. Like, “Oh, you’ve reached a certain level or mastered some skillset? Cool. Go be in charge of people!”
Q: Which, yeah, bold to assume that anyone can do it let alone do it well.
Right, it’s not a good fit for everyone. That, and it usually involves doing less of the things you used to do in order to spend more time focusing on leading your team, which can be a tough transition for people to make.
But no matter what your title is, leadership isn’t something that “just happens” to anyone. It’s something you have to work at continuously, like a muscle, so you can keep getting better at it.
I’m also a huge fan of continuous learning in general. That’s one of the reasons I also chose to pursue my executive MBA in 2022. The program I went through (Quantic’s School of Business & Technology) helped me gain comprehensive insights into business operations, strategic thinking, and advanced leadership concepts. It complemented my practical experience with theoretical foundations, giving me a well-rounded perspective.
I’m also part of an ongoing leadership cohort through a Milwaukee-based company called Focus Training. They facilitate Graduate Groups for alumni of their past institutes. I've found it to be an invaluable resource for ongoing peer coaching and support.
“No matter what your title is, leadership isn’t something that ‘just happens’ to anyone. It’s something you have to continuously work at, like a muscle, so you can keep getting better at it.”
Q: You mentioned before that unfortunately, most of us experience bad leaders at some point. What are some of the lessons — good or bad — that you’ve learned from other leaders in your life?
One of my mentors, Julie, was my boss in a former role and I learned so much from her. She referred to our team as “the chicks who get sh1t done," and that attitude really stuck with me. It felt so good to be part of her team because we all knew that we were moving the needle all the time, and no matter what you were working on, Julie was the kind of boss who was there for you. She was the boss who never hesitated to sit down with us so we could hash things out. I learned how to build strategic pitch decks, scopes of work for proposals, and even how to write video scripts. But how Julie made herself available to the team... that was my biggest leadership takeaway and something I try to emulate today. Even when you’re at a director level, there’s something powerful about having an attitude of “no task is too small for me.”
Another former boss of mine, Marvin, is the one who taught me to always hire people who are smarter than you. As a leader, your job is to build, maintain, and optimize your team constantly. So that lesson from Marvin is always one of the voices in the back of my head when I'm hiring, but also when I’m working with our teams at CID. It’s my job to make sure our smart people have what they need to keep getting better and to keep making us all better.
“I think that even when you’re at a director level, there’s something powerful about having an attitude of ‘no task is too small for me.’”
Q: So, before you went on all of these leadership, marketing, and mentorship adventures, what did Baby Heather want to be when she grew up?
Hmm, not sure about Baby Heather but High School Heather wanted to be a veterinarian. And I still love animals, obviously, so she was clearly on to something.
It was around the same time though that I really started to get into music, and somewhere around my sophomore year, I decided that that was what I wanted to do even though I had no idea how I wanted to do it. I remember sitting in one of our practice facilities with our musical directors and being like “Wow, that’s a cool job. I think I want to do that job.” So, I actually studied music, got a full music education degree, but then ended up in marketing.
Q: Record scratch, where did that pivot come from?
It happened completely accidentally, a story for another day. But, I feel that my schooling set me up for success in marketing, because marketing is teaching, to a certain degree. So learning about pedagogy — how you break down lessons and how to help people get those “Aha!” moments — actually has translated super well into the business world. I very rarely get nervous, and I attribute that to having to do so many auditions as a student musician or having to stand in front of a group of 80 kids and wave my hands like a crazy person (aka conductor) during my student teaching days. The feeling isn’t all that different from the one you get when you stand up to present to a client or lead a cross-department roundtable discussion. It’s remarkably similar.
Q: You have a lot of different responsibilities in your role. What is something you’ve done during your time at CID that you’re proud of?
I came here because I saw a dead end in my previous role. I wasn't going to grow. When I first talked to Jim and Scott about the opportunity here, I knew that maybe my role wouldn't be fully formed up immediately, but I really appreciated being seen as someone who had the potential to help this company grow. While on the outside it might look like we’re the same size-wise because we hover around the same number of employees, this company has matured a lot over the last five years. When I first came in, we were the little agency nobody ever heard of, and marketing ourselves was a new thing. Even the word “agency” was scary to say because so many other agencies had given it a bad name and we didn't want to be associated with that. But we've since come around, and while it might be a weird thing to count as a victory, I totally do. I’m proud of just how much our agency has grown into itself.
Q: Go-to karaoke song:
A: “I’m Not an Addict,” by K’s Choice. This is based on a very particular memory with my husband. While it’s not exactly an “upper” of a song, something about it fits within my vocal range and I know I could deliver it confidently every time.
Q: One food you could eat every day for the rest of your life:
A: Pickles. Duh.
(Duh only because the interviewer/author agrees 100 percent).
Q: You get to trade lives with any person, living or dead, for one week. Who are you Freaky Friday-ing with?
A: Definitely Meryl Streep. There’s just something so badass about her. I feel like one day with Meryl energy would be enough for me, I wouldn’t even need the whole week.
Q: Comfort show or movie that has no rewatch fatigue for you:
A: Gilmore Girls. No contest.
Q: I know this one is a particularly touchy subject for your friends on the digital marketing team, but HOT TAKE: is it “JIF” or “GIF?”
A: Oh man. Guys, listen, it’s “GIF.” It’s always been “GIF.” Much love and respect for the people who are committed to “JIF,” but that’s peanut butter.
Want to see how Heather and her marketing & strategy team can drive results and lead your brand to bigger and better things? Contact CID to get started!
"Bring in the Klinkhammer," they said...and we did! Amy is part of our award-winning marketing & strategy team where she writes for ads, email, the web, video and so much more. She also drinks too much coffee and spends too much time debating the Oxford comma.