“While I’ve enjoyed a rewarding career as a marketer, there’s always been this nagging feeling within that I should pursue, by night, the things that bring me joy (and, no, I’m not a lady of the streets).”

ayanna-waters-wiggins-marketer-blogger — Ayanna Wiggins

Global Residential Luxury Marketer @ Marriott International

I’ve always been a firm believer that my purpose was greater than whatever job I was fulfilling—even though I was fully committed and dedicated to the tasks at hand.

With that in mind, I mentally approached each new opportunity as a stepping stone to something greater—preparing me for the things that I likely hadn’t envisioned for my life. While I’ve enjoyed a rewarding career as a marketer, there has always been this nagging feeling within that I should pursue, by night, the things that bring me joy (and, no, I’m not a lady of the streets).

You see, I’ve always been creative.

In fact, I was voted “Most Creative” during my Senior year in high school. Creativity, for me, meant doing the exact opposite of what everyone else was doing—to include how I dressed and expressed myself through clothes and words. I was on my “non-conformist” kick and prided myself on being uniquely me. I had fun with colors, wore huge earrings that weighed my ears down and a tiny diamond nose ring that sealed my signature look. Never one to wear clothes that actually fit, my closest friends and I went through a spell where we wore baggy jeans (men’s 32’s) and Polo shirts that were wayyy too big. Hey, we were channeling our favorite girl group, TLC, and trying to be “Crazy…Sexy…Cool." Little did we know that someday we’d look back longing for those cute, thin 115 pound bodies that we chose to cover up. [Admittedly, my “corporate” self is much more tamed than the colorful person that I was. Slowly, I’m getting back to me.]

But I digress…

I was a newly married young 20-something working in a bullpen setting selling classified ads when “marketing” piqued my interest. It was love at first sight.

I sort of fell into marketing while living in Griesheim, Germany, and working at European Stars & Stripes Newspaper. While I loved the idea of working for a company with “European” as the first word, I didn’t love feeling like I had somehow failed because I wasn’t using my English Arts degree in the way that I had imagined for life after college. I mean, clearly there had to be more to life to warrant the student loan debt that I was paying back monthly.

I didn’t know what marketing was, but I was sure it was calling my name…

On the other side of our office sat the “Marketing Team.” At the time, I didn’t exactly know what marketing was, but I had this nagging feeling that I should be doing “it.” Whatever it was. There was a girl who couldn’t have been too much older than me working on this team as a Marketing Coordinator. The name alone had a cool ring to it, and it seemed like they were always doing the fun stuff while my colleagues and I sat on the other side of the office taking calls from customers and building display ads in QuarkXpress.

Then one day, lo and behold, the HR department disseminated an email with a job posting for a Marketing Account Executive position in Heidelberg, Germany, approximately 30 minutes from where I worked. My current job was literally just three minutes away from the quaint German neighborhood that my husband and I lived in, but I was willing to forgo the convenience (and assume the risks of driving on the Autobahn daily) for a chance at the job that I had been daydreaming about in between calls. As I prepared to hit send on my application, I panicked and was elated with joy all at once because I felt this job was mine—even though I didn’t have the specific job experience. I believed that I could…and I did.

Today, I am a marketer at Marriott International, the largest hospitality company in the world, and I manage luxury and lifestyle branded residential projects across the globe with top real estate developers. Did I know when I was starting out that I’d someday be in the mixed-use real estate development/brand management space working with world-class brands that consumers love so much that they make them a permanent extension of their lives? Of course not…but I’ve always dreamed big.

And I’ll forever be indebted to a feisty, smart, classy woman named Dale who was the Chief of Marketing and gave me my first opportunity to foray into a field that I immediately fell in love with. Since that time in Germany, I’ve held many high-visibility roles, worn many hats and had the kind of meaningful experiences that #dreams and #goals are made of.

#GoalDigger