Sanky Spotlight: Lian Petrie
Welcome to the Sanky Spotlight, where we shine a light on the talent we have at Sanky. For over 45 years, we have succeeded because of our team of trailblazing fundraisers — who are not just invested in what fundraising looks like today but what it could look like tomorrow. This month, our spotlight is on Paid Media Manager Lian Petrie.
If you’ve ever seen a fundraising post on our clients’ social media or even one of our own social posts, it was probably posted by Lian. Lian started at Sanky three years ago — fresh out of college — as an assistant in what was then a joint Insights & Data team (now, that team is split into the Insights department and the Paid Media team). “At the time, I had hardly any paid media experience, so digital marketing was a new world to me,” she says.
One of her quarterly tasks at the time — and a project she is especially proud of — was creating each client’s website, demographic, social media, and SEM appendices in Google Sheets. Our appendices have a range of information from client website analytics to donor demographic stats to conversion and revenue results. “Manually creating reports wasn’t a difficult task, but it was about as tedious as it sounds,” she says. “Since then, the appendices have moved from Google Sheets over to Tableau, which is a software you can use to create data visualization reports. The upgrades we’ve made are much more comprehensive for clients’ eyes.”
Lian’s day-to-day responsibilities now are a little different. As Paid Media Manager, she follows trends, monitors social media platform changes, provides strategic insights, and a lot of the time, actually posts the social or SEM content the Creative team makes. It’s work she really enjoys. “I love collaborating with my team to come up with new content and paid media strategies. Although it may seem like a fairly simple task, there’s so much more strategic planning and content review that we do on a daily basis to keep up with platform changes.” And her love of her team is mutual. Paid Media Director Victor Van Valen says, “She’s the heart and soul of the Paid Media Team… with a 10-foot-tall personality!”
Outside of work, Lian does a lot of community outreach and has since she was in high school. “I volunteered in a number of local organizations such as soup kitchens, animal rescues, and retirement communities. When I was in college, I joined a community service based Greek org, that actually Sanky-alum Perby Senal was a member of as well. When I look back at my college career, I remember a lot of great experiences with this group and I have met some of my very closest friends there.” Currently, she’s assisting a local LGBTQ+ advocacy organization in Florida with brand awareness through social media, as well as attending in-person events to get people interested in the organization’s goals.
Music has always been a major part of Lian’s life. “My dad is really into music, so at a young age he had me listening to a variety of artists and genres.” She started taking classical piano lessons when she was five and continued all the way through high school. In middle school she took trombone lessons, but “that didn’t last long since I had to walk from my house to school with the trombone that was much larger than me.” Instead, she switched to percussion, where she got to learn a lot of different instruments, including timpani, which she says was her favorite. “I learned the guitar, a little ukulele, and bass from my older brother. He’s a great musician and who else would teach me the basics? I’ve learned on both acoustic and electric guitars. At one point in middle school, I was really hoping to be in a rock band, but that didn’t pan out.” She’s also really into making playlists. “If any staff members want to swap playlists or share their favorite artists, my Slack DMs are OPEN.”
Like what you read? Check out this related post: