Team Leader

The Managing Director of segment marketing for New York Life Investments is Tara O’Brien. She is my manager’s boss. During the last week of the internship, I had the opportunity to work one on one with her as my manager, Susie was out of the office. My last project was the email analysis for the first half of this year. During my last week, I had to finalize the presentation and the excel spreadsheet I had been working on. I made a copy of the email tracker that one of the junior analysts made. The tracker records the performance of the emails segment marketing sends out to finds trends and learn insights. I took this data and converted it to charts and developed insights, which I placed in an aesthetically pleasing slide deck. I had been sending the presentation to Susie and receiving encouraging feedback, but her comments were less direct and did not help me move forward with the project. The week I worked with Tara, she gave me such constructive feedback that I was able to display the data in a more efficient manner, which made it easier for me and the rest of the team to create insights. I really enjoyed working with Tara because she gave clearer instructions about what she wanted. I think I could have figured it out through trial and error or by asking better questions. However, Tara made it easier to do my job, which I believe to be a sign of a good leader. Because of her leadership, I did my job better and more efficiently than I had when compared to the 2 weeks before. 

COVID impacted the segment marketing team the most in terms of social interaction. They seem like a really close-knit group and all know about each other’s interests and families outside of work. They start every weekly zoom meeting asking about everyone’s week and weekends or commenting about something in a person’s background. They crave the social interaction and collaboration experienced in the office. Tara does a really good job initiating these personal conversations, always in a respectful manner. It speaks to the relationship-oriented leadership style I experienced all over New York Life Investments, and I really enjoyed it.