My name is Tyler Lessard and I am VP marketing at a company called Vidyard, which is a technology company, It provides video solutions for businesses and we're about 200 employees. We started about 10 years ago, and I've been with this company for about six years now. But my career path didn't start as a marketer. I was actually an engineer by trade. So I went to the University of Waterloo, which is where I live here today. I studied systems design engineering program, where I focused on areas such as software development, database technologies, and so on. Out of school graduating as an engineer I did start my career as a software developer, actually worked at research in Motion the creators of BlackBerry smartphones many years ago. In 2001 I started at BlackBerry, and I started off my career developing software. I then moved into working with third party companies who were developing applications for blackberries and developer support related role. And in doing that, I actually learned that I much more enjoyed working externally with people with supporting them, helping them and, communicate with them, then I did actually programming and being a developer myself. And so I really focused on that and built down a developer relations program, evolved that into a bigger sort of global business development program. A number of years later, I found myself doing much more business partner management, much more marketing, and communications than actual software and technology, which ultimately led me to where I am today, which is a great reminder that our paths don't always take us where we expect them to. I think every experience that we have along the way helps build on who we are, and what we are. I think my most important take away for that journey that I went on is to not be afraid to try new things. Take on new challenges even though they may not be something specific that you've studied for or prepared for. New opportunities give us a chance to learn new things and expand our horizons and that's absolutely been critical to what I'm doing here today.

So as the VP marketing here a Vidyard we have a marketing team of about 15 people. Our company is about 200 people overall and again being a software technology company journey of what we do is remote. And so I typically work in the office or now these days I'm working at home. I do some travel out to industry conferences to meet with customers as I need to. But the majority of what I do is back in the office, in terms of what kinds of responsibilities, what typically goes into my role. There's a lot of things and what's really interesting about the world of marketing in particular that I really enjoy is that it's a very complex, multi-disciplined area. So I have folks in my team that manage our external marketing, communications, and brand. We have people managing our digital marketing or websites or advertising and so on. We have people managing our customer marketing and communications. We have lead generation programs. There's always lots of different things that we're doing, and so a lot of my job personally involves actually working across those teams and making sure that we have an efficient and smart and consistent approach to the market. We are testing and optimizing things every day in what we do a huge part of marketing. Today is actually also about measurement and tracking because a lot of what we do is online and is digital that we can know very quickly if we do this or if we spend some money here or we try this, do we see a quick return on the number of new people that we're reaching the number of new leads that we're generating and so on. So we also spend a lot of time looking at the data, measuring our performance, and then working across the team to figure out okay, what should we do next? Based on what we've seen, what new programs should we try? What should be dropped? So it's a constant iteration and that's what keeps it fun and exciting.

One of the biggest challenges which is of course also an opportunity as most challenges are is that things change very quickly in today's business world, and particularly in the world of marketing that I live in right now. So to be perfectly honest, what works one year or one month may not work the following year or the following month, and we're constantly looking at new ways to do things, new technologies to use, and new channels to reach our customers. I think the really important idea there is to be a continuous learner. Always search to learn new things, to test new things, and to iterate because business like anything else, doesn't standstill. And in fact, more than ever, it's changing so quickly, and I honestly think that the people who are going to be the most successful in business in the future are those that are lifelong learners that are proactive in trying to adapt to new skills to experiment and try new things and to not be afraid to fail.