Hello Norma Jean

May 13, 2022

I heard a story when I was young about Marilyn Monroe. As I recall, she was working in a diner in LA when someone, a famous movie director or a talent scout, saw her and decided to put her in movies.

If any parts of that story are true (I’m not looking it up), I believe that Marilyn Monroe experienced a lot of doors closed to her along her journey to becoming an actress. So she made a plan to be in the right place at the right time so the right person could make her dreams come truel.

Suffice to say, I am not Marilyn Monroe. I’m a Black girl from Virginia with no desire to be an actress. However, I have fixated on the idea of someone with the power to change my life identifying and amplifying my potential. To that end, I am really good at my job. 

Recently, a campaign I developed broke all sorts of records. The campaign benefited from elements… or I should say, I leveraged all the tools in my toolbox to make the campaign a success. 

First - new technology on the site enabled a friction-less sign in experience from our largest channel. Second - fuel prices skyrocketed. Third - my analysis of past campaigns guided my decisions. Fourth - relationships I cultivated helped move the campaign along the development cycle quickly.

In 4 weeks, the campaign delivered  a number of new users equal to all of 2021! I am ecstatic to see the fruits of my labor blossom so brilliantly. Privately, I have received congratulations from the management team.

Publicly, after the first 10k, credit was given to the global gas crisis.

Publicly, after the first 100k, the team was given a half day off.

Publicly, after we hit our annual new user goal in May, the team was congratulated on all their hard work. 

None of those acknowledgements mentioned my name.

I feel like a gardener who has carefully tended a garden, selecting all the right plants and amending the soil in just the right way to yield a bountiful and fruitful garden only to have all my efforts be attributed to everything from the person who cleared the land to the sunshine.  

Not to take away from the existence of those things or their importance, but I was the gardener who pulled it all together. Shouldn’t some of the public acknowledgement shine on me? Shouldn’t this lift me to bigger and better opportunities? Or am I still auditioning for people who still do not recognize my full potential.