{"id":10583,"date":"2017-02-21T19:24:16","date_gmt":"2017-02-21T19:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.prd.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/?p=10583"},"modified":"2017-02-28T14:51:54","modified_gmt":"2017-02-28T14:51:54","slug":"hallmarks-of-a-great-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/hallmarks-of-a-great-career\/","title":{"rendered":"Hallmarks of a great career"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kim Newton, MBA\u201996, took a very different path than most MBA graduates when she joined the world\u2019s largest greeting card company<\/em><\/p>\n

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Kim Newton, MBA\u201996, speaks to prospective students at an Owen recruiting event in 2014. Photo Credit: John Russell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kim Newton might be consulting with a greeting card executive at Hallmark in Kansas City one day. The next day, her team might be addressing a challenge for the company\u2019s Crayola, ornament or home d\u00e9cor businesses. Then, the following week, she might be focused on the digital intersection of greeting cards and Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all part of the routine for Newton, vice president of corporate strategy and business development at Hallmark. And if it sounds much more complex than the average consumer might expect from a company whose reputation was built on printed cards sold on retail racks, Newton can quickly set you straight.<\/p>\n

\u201cHallmark is a very diversified business,\u201d says Newton, who has been with the company now for two decades. \u201cWe have a cable network. We have a home and gifts business. We have a jewelry business. We own about 500 stores and have an independent owner network where retailers license the Hallmark name. And we\u2019re in 90 countries internationally. We have a lot of permission to be part of people\u2019s lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her position, Newton leads a strategy team that fulfills the role of internal consultant, helping various business units within Hallmark address challenges and opportunities, helping leaders within the company build their capabilities, and helping the company evolve in a changing field.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a misperception about our business,\u201d Newton says. \u201cThe greeting card industry has been in decline for a long time, but the decline is less than 1 percent a year. It\u2019s not like DVDs or film. It\u2019s still a relatively healthy category. People still send cards\u2014even millennials send cards\u2014and now they\u2019re connecting more than ever with digital options.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, she says, one of her responsibilities (at least one of the ones she can talk about; \u201cmost of my work is pretty confidential,\u201d she says) involves cultivating partnerships across categories with West Coast companies such as Amazon to strengthen Hallmark\u2019s digital capabilities.<\/p>\n

Newton\u2019s diverse array of experience within the organization prepared her well for her current role. When she joined Hallmark in 1996 after earning her MBA, she went into the company\u2019s rotational leadership development program. That enabled her to work in a variety of positions\u2014from marketing manager of Hallmark\u2019s ethnic business center to senior manager of Hallmark Gold Crown Stores to product director of everyday greetings.<\/p>\n

A decade ago, Newton joined the company\u2019s business transformation team, which was tasked with looking at Hallmark\u2019s business end to end. \u201cWe changed about 80 percent of our processes as a company,\u201d she says, \u201cand that experience gave me an opportunity to look at how our entire company worked\u2014and should work.\u201d<\/p>\n

In many ways, Newton\u2019s work has an entrepreneurial flavor\u2014and her time at Owen helped equip her for that responsibility. \u201cI think Vanderbilt really nurtured my entrepreneurial spirit,\u201d says Kim, \u201cand I think that fueled my confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bolstering and validating her confidence to press boundaries, in fact, was perhaps one of the most important lessons from Newton\u2019s Vanderbilt experience. Going against conventional wisdom, she eschewed an offer from Morgan Stanley after completing her undergraduate degree from Nashville\u2019s Fisk University and applied to the MBA program at Vanderbilt instead.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was one of five people in my class at Owen who went straight through from undergraduate,\u201d she recalls. \u201cAfter majoring in accounting, I realized I didn\u2019t want to make a career of it. \u201c<\/p>\n

A part-time job in college with an African American art gallery piqued her interest in combining business and the arts, and that in turn attracted her to Hallmark. Channeling that boundary-pushing spirit, she directly approached the company. \u201cThey didn\u2019t recruit at Owen at that time,\u201d Kim recalls. \u201cI knocked on their door.\u201d<\/p>\n

She became the first of six Vanderbilt MBAs to join the company. \u201cI think a lot of people (at Owen) became interested in the brand after that,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In retrospect, she\u2019s very happy she didn\u2019t listen to others\u2019 advice to start a career before pursuing an MBA, or to pursue opportunities after Vanderbilt to follow a more traditional management path, including an offer from Procter & Gamble that she declined. And, for that matter, she\u2019s happy she went against convention and has spent her entire career with one company rather than following her initial plan to move to her native Northern California after two years.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople will put limits on you if you allow them to,\u201d she says. \u201cIf you listen to what everyone tells you, you can miss out on great opportunities. Vanderbilt didn\u2019t put any limits on me. In fact, they helped me break down walls.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kim Newton, MBA\u201996, took a very different path than most MBA graduates when she joined the world\u2019s largest greeting card company Kim Newton might be consulting with a greeting card executive at Hallmark in Kansas City one day. The next day, her team might be addressing a challenge for the company\u2019s Crayola, ornament or home […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":368,"featured_media":10584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,64,56],"tags":[99],"class_list":["post-10583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-departments","category-homepage-highlights","category-how-i-did-it","tag-kim-newton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/368"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10583"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10586,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10583\/revisions\/10586"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}