Andrea Ingham
Andrea Ingham’s (’89) incredible career journey within advertising and sales
For our July Old Scholar Story, LOSA would like to recognise Andrea Ingham and her career journey so far, one that has led to her heading up the commercial ANZ team at BuzzFeed. Andrea shares with us her experience in advertising and sales, as well as her personal development journey since leaving Loreto.
Andrea in her own words:
“Timely to be writing this having recently returned to Adelaide for our class of ’89, 30 year reunion. It was fantastic to see many from the year again and felt like we had only seen each other yesterday. Since leaving Loreto I have worked in advertising and media sales, for a short time in Adelaide and for the last 18 years in Sydney.
When I left school I didn’t really know what I wanted to do and decided not to undertake further study. A friend was working in advertising and I thought that sounded like fun and, went and sought work experience at various agencies. One of the agencies needed a receptionist and that was my first full time role. It wasn’t long before I was promoted from the front desk to an account management role.
From there I moved to the media department at another agency and that is when I met lots of sales people from various media organisations. I really enjoyed connecting with them about media which led me to seek out a role in sales and shortly after was working at 5AA in media sales.
I moved to Sydney with the launch of the first NOVA station which was an incredible experience to work at a company as employee number 3, in a business that had no office, name or brand and grew to be such an amazing media network.
I then worked in different sales roles and eventually lead the channel 9 Sydney sales team before heading up sales for Southern Cross Austereo (Hit, MMM, SX TV etc) with a team of 180 across 5 markets. It was at Southern Cross that I had the pleasure of working with a true digital innovator Clive Dickens who inspired and gave me the courage to make the move to digital. My first pure digital role was at Spotify as their Head of Sales for ANZ.
Whilst taking on a role in an area that I knew little about was challenging, I soon found that my experience in sales strategy and leadership made up for what I needed to learn about digital; and I am now leading the commercial ANZ team at BuzzFeed.
Again I’ve had a lot to learn, and my experience and knowledge from offline roles still stand the test of time. Some of the things that have held me in good stead over the years;
Information isn’t powerful, relationships and people are
The hard times pass quicker than it feels at the time
Personal development is just that ‘personal’; own it and don’t wait for someone to offer it
Curiosity beats smart nearly every time
I am very lucky to have 2 gorgeous children – Hunter 12, and Isadora 9. And a fab husband who has supported me and my career.”