Mari Shimizu

I had good impressions about Yext when I interviewed with Brian, a co-founder, and the marketing leadership team. The interviews were well-organized by the recruiting team and I thought everyone I spoke with was very professional. I even had a short conversation with the CEO, Howard, before I joined. To have an interview or a meeting with the CEO and a co-founder for an APAC marketing role is rare, so Yext is very special. For the past two years, I've set milestones and goals of marketing for Japan that I luckily keep achieving.

I have more than 25 years of experience in sales and marketing. I started my career at Dell as part of the first Enterprise Sales team and then moved to a marketing role to build their first-ever server brand. After Dell, I worked at Symantec starting as a SMB/mid-market campaign manager and eventually led the enterprise marketing team before I left. After Symantec, I moved to Salesforce to learn about cloud technology. I wanted to build something from scratch at a start-up company rather than working at a large company, so I joined Marketo as one of their first marketing hires to build their marketing automation market. Throughout my career, I've strived to be the "first" in new roles or teams.

When I was a university student, I wanted to become a psychologist and learn how people think and behave. I never intended to be a marketer, but I believe that psychology and sales experience helped create my successful career in marketing. Aside from work, I have 8 birds and they are comforting when I work at home!

I run Public Relations and Marketing by myself, so my job is to determine strategies and goals, then plan programs to achieve those goals, and then execute the programs. I try to use my time effectively to plan and execute the program at the right time. Sometimes I try to focus on ideas and get information from someone with an outside perspective to come up with the strategies. Some days, I focus on executional work all day. In the near future, I would like to recruit and create a team to be even more strategic.

When Howard thanked me for my work efforts. I've never had a direct thank you from a CEO at any of my previous companies. What I like about Yext is that we have a close relationship with the executives at headquarters.

I was lucky enough to be able to visit the HQ in NYC before I joined Yext and meet the leaders of each marketing function beforehand, so I knew what kind of people I would be working with, but I was also curious about Yext's vision for the future before joining.

I think it's important to be open to many things, and not be too set on what you want to do. Don't be afraid of trying new things.