No matter what you want to be when you grow up, it’s not always easy to launch your career. Many people spend their lives seeking opportunities to turn their passion into their livelihood, but Katherine Tancreti chanced upon the opportunity to do just that at Brafton. She is now a member of Brafton’s Consulting team, serving as the Arch Premium Coordinator where her main focus is on design. But she wasn’t always designing landing pages and calls-to-action for Brafton.

Katherine's love of design is matched only by her love of pizza.Katherine first joined our Boston office in May 2016 as an Associate Market Research Executive. Armed with both a degree in Business Administration and Marketing from the University of New Hampshire and real-world experience in database marketing, she found an opportunity to step into a creative-oriented company.

Around the time I applied to Brafton, I was finally buckling down and applying for jobs that would help me move toward a career,” Katherine said. “I majored in marketing in college, and in terms of content marketing, Brafton seemed like one of the best at what they do, so when I saw the AMRE posting and felt qualified, I applied right away.”

Katherine’s interest in the industry shifted toward content marketing when a post-graduation internship at a small creative agency uncovered a hidden passion for design.

“I just really love making things, so this eventually let me to enroll in a graphic design program at the [School of the Museum of Fine Arts],” Katherine revealed about her newfound interest.

Opportunity knocks and Katherine answers

This past fall, Katherine had a chance to sit down with Tom Agnew, Brafton’s founder and president to talk about her role, her department and the business as a whole.

“During our talk, I’d mentioned my graphic design background, which kind of turned out to be the magic words that put the gears in motion.”

A few weeks later, VP of Product Meredith Farley reached out to Katherine with a job offer that just so happened to fit Katherine’s talents to a T. Not only did she get a chance to put her design skills to work, but she found other aspects about taking on a new job in a relatively new department to get excited about.

I love that I now get to create something (or several things) every day.”

“I’m only one week in and I’ve already learned SO much. It seems like a role that even as time goes on I will be learning new things all the time,” she told me in October. “I love that I now get to create something (or several things) every day. Also, the coordination aspect of the role allows me to interact with a lot of people throughout the day.”

Not only does Katherine get to work with people across Brafton’s three offices (and a boss who works remote in Seattle), but after three months in the Coordinator role, she’s finding her groove and enjoying the variety and challenges that come with her position.

“With my workload now, each day is different,” she shared. “But my favorite part of the workday is probably when a project comes in from a client with good brand guidelines. I enjoy brainstorming design ideas when I have good branding to work with.”

Hard work pays off

As with any new job, Katherine also had a lot to learn and adapt to when she transitioned into the Consulting department.

Always smiling, Katherin faces each new day and new challenge positively.“The learning curve was challenging. There is a lot that goes into this role and the Arch product in general, and it definitely took me some time to wrap my head around all of it. I had to learn several Brafton proprietary programs that were new to me, and those were tough because I couldn’t just google what to do when I had a question about something. And like I said, every day is different, where before I knew exactly what I was doing every single day. Now I need to be much more conscious of time management and prioritization.”

The hard work has been well worth it for Katherine, who’s had the opportunity to meet and work with most of the account managers as well as folks from our other creative departments. She’s already gaining plenty of confidence in her role, and looks forward to all the new projects she gets on a daily basis. She especially enjoys the more complex requests that allow her team to fully utilize Brafton’s Arch technology and especially to embrace her creativity..

“As a person who values design and creative, I’ve felt very inspired by some of the work I’ve seen come out of our company. And now that I’m getting a closer look, I can’t help but wonder how there is so much talent under one roof! Not to mention, I love the free fruit on Wednesdays.”

Interested in a creative marketing career? Check out our open positions and future opportunities in Boston, Chicago and San Francisco!

Samantha Gordon is the Managing Editor of Brafton.com. With a diverse background writing and editing everything from blogs and whitepapers to romance and sci-fi, Samantha strives for greatness in grammar and quality.