Joining the Incubeta family over 7 years ago, Jessica discusses her expectations for 2021, and how she will be ‘Choosing to Challenge’ this International Women’s Day to champion female success.

1. If you could describe yourself in three words, for the benefit of those that aren’t familiar with you, what would you say?

Optimistic, Shrewd and Persistent!

2. As the DQ&A by Incubeta EU Strategy Director, what are you most excited about in 2021 – both from a personal sense and work sense?

From a personal sense, I’m looking forward to reading more books and culminating more articles. It’s a simple excitement, as I could have probably mentioned virtually anything else, however, pushing a competitive vocation path and managing a diligent household can draw me away from the more simpler things.

In a work sense, I’m looking forward to the unfolding of our incipient organisational structure across our Northern and Central European divisions. After a challenging 2020, I am still in awe of what it has edified us to do. Our perspective of what people in our organisation can do when having to suddenly re-adjust has been magnificent to witness. Our competency to expeditiously and prosperously acclimatise during trying times has shown that we are a strong organisation. I’m exhilarated for the boundaries that we can now dare to challenge in 2021. We have managed to secure fantastic brand partnerships this year, with exciting projects ahead of us.

3. Where is there opportunity for growth at Incubeta?

Within our people. The attraction of our organisation is that we do not operate on the ‘chain to your desk’ model. We offer employees the opportunity to transmute vocation paths with ease. A simple conversation with managers can lead into an incipient personal development path, as long as individuals can show they are able to prosperously take on the required responsibilities. For individuals who are set on a career path, we support continued growth, using our Learning Management System, active training forms or mentoring. In addition together with individuals we form Personal Development Plans and incentive models to promote continued success.

4. What’s in store for DQ&A by Incubeta in 2021, and how will you contribute to that?

This year we continue focussing on attribution and creative optimisation, as well as our Digital Transformation projects across multiple global clients. We will also look at the anticipated Privacy Changes, where we have prepared a Privacy ready track, that allows our clients to be prepared and to succeed in the changing ecosystem.

I will continue to drive our organisational tasks across Incubeta Europe as well as strategically driving key large client accounts, focussing specifically on organisational restructuring, preparation and orchestrating for transformation and creative conceptualisation, audience strategies and data direction for our Dynamic Creative Optimisation projects.

5. The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is ‘Choose to Challenge’ and as a female leader how will you celebrate women’s achievements, and strive for gender equality within the business? 

It is comforting to see that in the past years we have made progress in gender parity, however, progress is slow, so I specifically ‘Choose to Challenge’ that more people accept gender parity as a priority and that we’re still not doing enough. 2020 undoubtedly set back this progress, as numerous research now shows that women are more likely to suffer from stress and burnouts due to COVID, as a result of taking on the majority of responsibility to manage work and home. This can result in more women choosing to take a step back from their careers to manage their own personal lives to ensure that families are not brutally impacted by the changes.

This year, I will continue to champion success in females – I want to change the idea that two vocabularies exist; “men are seen to be driven” and “women are seen to be bossy” when in equal leadership positions – that ‘idea’ must change.
I want women in our organisation and outside of our organisation to know that I support professional development in women. I have taken on one-on-one mentoring to see how I can transfer my knowledge and perhaps even prime a stronger female leader than I can be. I will continue to use my influence to help others advance.

Click here to see the full series: International Women’s Day: Daring to Lead