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Robert Berkeley  0:02  

Hello and a very warm welcome to another episode of Inside Jobs with me Robert Berkeley. Now, if you don't know already, Inside Jobs is the podcast for in house agencies. And it's where we get to meet really interesting in house agency leaders and just trying to see what makes them tick. Now Inside Jobs is brought to you by the In House Agency Forum, or IHAF in partnership with EACs. Hilary Shay is an unusual guest for Inside Jobs. Not only does she lead her brands, marketing, but she also holds the reins for the in house agency at Children's Minnesota. Her career has long focused on healthcare. But actually Hillery had another career before that in newspapers, remember them? Well, I certainly do you remember them? Hillery? I do I do. Well, welcome to Inside Jobs Hillery, do you do have to manage conflicts between each side of your management brain?

 

Hillery Shay  0:55  

Sometimes, you know, arguing with myself is you know, it's just part of the job. But it's fun.

 

Robert Berkeley  1:02  

Ccan be can be absolutely. So, very briefly, please introduce yourself and what you do. And just tell us a little bit a little bit more before we dig into your backstory.

 

Hillery Shay 1:12  

Okay. So thank you for having me, Robert. It's really an honour to be here. I have long supported I have, it's an organisation near and dear to my heart. And I have actually had more than one organisation in house agency join IHAF have throughout my career. So I am currently the vice president for marketing and communications here at Children's Minnesota, in Minneapolis. And I lead a wonderful team of marketers, creatives, communications, experts, and PR. So I've managed to kind of dabble in all of those areas, but they now kind of can all come to a head but I still consider myself a creative. And the designers on my team would tell you so because I, you know, often comment or dive directly to them and say, you know, this is really great. I'd love to see a little bit more what were your thinking? So I'm still a Creative At Heart.

 

Robert Berkeley  2:20  

So does that mean you will also attend and see to dive in and say, What on earth is this?

 

Hillery Shay  2:26  

Actually, I try not to do that. That's not very Minnesota night.

 

Robert Berkeley  2:29  

That's true. Focus on the positive. That's the main thing. Exactly. Let's go right back to the beginning. Can you tell us a little bit about your, your background, your childhood, where you grew up? And what kind of environment you grew up in?

 

Hillery Shay  2:40  

Absolutely. So I happen to have the world's greatest single mom, she always went above and beyond. And I miss her every day she passed away in 2008, unfortunately, but she raised myself and my brother out in the suburbs, because we grew up in Massachusetts. And you know, busing was not conducive to the entire learning experience. So my mom wanted her children to be able to participate in after school sports or extracurricular activities or play an instrument and then be able to have an instrument lesson. And so she just did not subscribe to the intercity busing that is that was happening at the time in Massachusetts. And so she moved out to Melrose Massachusetts so that we could walk to school and walk home and actually participate in the sports that we were wanting to participate in. Because we she basically said, I'll do the commuting, and then she would take drive to the train station and then and then take the train into work every day. So she basically reversed it so that we could actually have a more inclusive childhood.

 

Robert Berkeley  3:50  

Wow, wow, that was hard work for her. Then she said a good example to you. 

 

Hillery Shay 3:55  

She did…She did. She was she was a great mom. And every day, she is the standard bearer for what I what I think when I think something is done, I'm like, Yes, Bonnie would like that.

 

Robert Berkeley  4:06  

Yeah yeah. So she she obviously wanted to make sure that you had a great education. What was it that you wanted to do when you were young? Do you remember?

 

Hillery Shay  4:13  

So at some point in my life, I know I wanted to be a solid gold dancer. And over here in the US that actually has a whole different meaning. But there used to be this this TV show that would come on weekly, and the dancers would dance around to the top 10 music because it was before we had videos I guess and so I always thought that was the most elegant job and I wanted to go on TV and be a solid gold dancer. So that was you know, the fun eight year old in me as I as I grew and took on more things like learn to play the cello and

 

Robert Berkeley  4:46  

Oh, really? A cello player. Wow.

 

Hillery Shay 4:49  

I am a CellistCelloest And interesting. Things just sort of took root. I was interested in going to a boarding school, Chapel Hill, Chelsea Hall, and I was able to do that and come back home on the weekends. But it was great because I got to live in a dorm with about 20 dDifferent women, young women at the time, and formed friendships that I still have to this day, all around the globe really shocked the world. And it was hard, but I had to keep a really good GPA. Because it was not, it was not cheap. But again, my mom sacrificed so that I could have the best opportunities and like I said, there were good programmes and good scholarships, and keeping your grades up as a great way to move ahead. And people will pave the way for good students.

 

Robert Berkeley  5:37  

So you have focus then as a student, there wasn't any kind of distraction for you it seems like it seems like your your your your smart pupil.

 

Hillery Shay  5:44  

I was a smart pupil, but I was also my friends would like to say I was the of the group of friends that you have I was the attorney and that I could actually talk us all out of getting into trouble no matter what situation the situation was.

 

Robert Berkeley  5:59  

When did they when did the call for journalism start to to make itself heard then for you.

 

Hillery Shay  6:04  

So it wasn't journalism so much as it was photography in general. I started in high school at boarding school, Alice Salado was very inspirational, and she just encouraged me to get to know a camera and have a way to speak through my photos. It was it was so interesting. She didn't really I don't know if she realised that she was giving me another voice with my camera. But she gave me a whole new way of storytelling. And it was it was very liberating. And so then I went to school, and went to have for college. And I was a fine arts photography major.

 

Robert Berkeley  6:38  

Oh, really. So that's, that's really what you focused on because and then that led to kind of repertoire, style news photography,

 

Hillery Shay 6:45  

I actually knew photography was a way to pay bills. I was an artist at heart. And so that was something that I really took to work with me every day I wanted to make, I wanted to make artful photos for living the idea that somebody's going to pay me to take pictures. And this is what I really love to do was phenomenal coming out of college and as a two year intern at the Baltimore Sun, and I really enjoyed getting to do some of my first things like covering Major League Baseball, I was there during the time where Cal Ripken was was hitting his 2131 goal for consecutive games played. He was a very kind soul. But I was actually there in the dugout. You know, as with a camera, I got to cover Pope John Paul in in Baltimore. And so I just I realised that my camera had the ability to open doors that normally don't open for kids who come from, you know, who have a single mom who worked really hard. I realised that I was very much the anomaly in somebody's statistical story, especially being a young African American Girl.

 

Robert Berkeley  7:57  

So the the photography seemed to have taken you pretty much across the country across much of the country anyway. Yes. Was that without you being restless, that caused them?

 

Hillery Shay 8:07  

No, it was really the opportunity. So I was the two year intern at the Baltimore Sun. And because they were union newspaper, I would have to either formally apply there or I could actually, you know, go and work at another. Another newspaper, I actually did go and work at the Fort Worth Star Telegram because I've never been to Texas. I enjoy covering them. You know, the, the Rangers at Arlington Park. I really enjoyed working through, you know, the Texas Motor Speedway opened while I was there. So I got my first taste of NASCAR. So again, I was a young African American woman for whom my camera and my ability to take and compose pictures and tell stories with pictures. It was opening an entirely new world for me that, that I don't think anyone could have imagined. So it was powerful. I was my camera took me around the world, literally. But the interesting things that I have gotten to experience have just been, you know, amazing. Such that yes, I was snapped up by the Associated Press in DC. I was able to work there for three years. Unfortunately. I am I had some some stories go by that were historic. But the one that I'm sort of known for is 911. I was the photographer who was at the Pentagon and, and it was really just a normal workday for me. I woke up I saw that something was happening on TV, you know that the twin towers had been hit in New York. So it didn't surprise me that my pager went off. And the photo director wanted me to head over to the Pentagon. And so I headed over to the Pentagon. And I had my badge and everything just like I was going to sign in and I pull immediately pulled over onto the side of the highway just outside of the Pentagon, because this giant, it was like a flash.

 

Robert Berkeley  10:10  

So the Pentagon had not been attacked at this point,

 

Hillery Shay  10:13  

Aand had not, but the flight happened right in front of me. So a plane flew into it, but it was so it was moving so quickly, that you didn't actually know what happened until you heard, or I heard the streetlight hit the hit the pavement on the highway because the wing had actually sliced through a street lamp as it was coming down to go into the Pentagon, because the Pentagon is actually a lower sitting building.

 

Robert Berkeley  10:41  

Oh, my goodness, it must have been awfully traumatic for you to witness such a thing. It was weird. Did you have your news head on at the time and it was more about the observation,

 

Hillery Shay  10:51  

I was terrified. I honestly there was that point at which I thought, okay, I might die today. And then it it sort of kicked in that, you know, I might die if I don't take pictures, my photo editor will hurt me too. So either way, I needed to be in the mind frame of working. But I consider myself a spiritual person. So I was praying while working, you know, just hoping that that everything would would be okay. And that, you know, that understanding would come out of what was happening. But you know, I basically was just trying to do the best I could I didn't know at the time that all of my colleagues had been locked out of Arlington, Virginia because they had been locked into the DC city. So they closed all the DC bridges and tunnels and put DC on lockdown. So I have no backup coming. It was me. And so you know, I just went to work and started recording what I could. But again, you know, I think that when you step back and you see everything that had happened that day, whether it be New York or Pennsylvania, or the Pentagon, that this was a moment in time that I realised that I was like, okay, my cameras carrying me and cementing me in history at the same time.

 

Robert Berkeley  12:02  

Yes, well, what a what a thing to have happened to you and to be the right person than the right place at the right time. I mean that those those things don't come together in quite such a dramatic fashion for everybody in their lives. Life must have seemed rather quiet after that. You did go back to St. Paul. I think actually,

 

Hillery Shay 12:20  

I went to after DC FAAP I went to Florida. And Florida is a very important chapter and I tell the story because at some point, my family will hear this story and my daughter will be like you have to talk about Florida. It's where you met dad and where you had me. So you have you can't let them skip over Florida. And so I was actually working and covering news in the state of Florida. And then I was the acting Florida photo editor covering a maternity leave for my my boss at the time. And of course, we then had yet another shuttle crash and so of course, yes. Space Shuttles crap. Exactly. I just felt like news is

 

Robert Berkeley  13:07  

Yeah but not in a good way.

 

Hillery Shay 13:11  

So there was there were times where I was like, Oh, my goodness, I realised that I'm I'm a witness to a lot. But I'm also I'm a witness to a lot. Yeah…yeah. So very, very, very interesting. But all the while always still a true creative and thinking about how to make how to tell the best story. It's funny. I actually had an interview in two I had two interviews in one weekend, I went from the St. Paul, Minnesota to tell new Waukee Wisconsin because Milwaukee had an opening for a director of photography that I was into interviewing for and St. Paul had an opening for directory adept deputy director of photography. So you know, the number two spot in the photo department. And so I ended up choosing St. Paul. And I think it was a lot more to do with the fact that my husband was a native Minnesotan. And the fact that the staff was so engaging. And so I was literally like four years and 10 months before I gotten back into a Knight Ridder newspaper. But what a four years and 10 months a PAP it has been.

 

Robert Berkeley  14:18  

Yeah, yeah. Well, so nevertheless, your career was progressing, I guess five, six years, seven years after you got to some St. Paul, you were moving across out of photojournalism, into into healthcare.

 

Hillery Shay 14:29  

Yeah. And it really was that the market was terrible. I was I was in my early 30s. And the newspaper had been through two rounds of layoffs. When I had joined the newsroom was about oh, I want to say almost 400 people by the time I departed, there were less than 200.,

 

Robert Berkeley  14:48  

less than 200 Yeah, Yeah and it's a lot smaller now and a

 

Hillery Shay  14:51  

Llot a lot smaller now and, and and it's It's shame that the business model was what it was, but that's kind of What sent me to business school, so I went back to school to get my masters. And

 

Robert Berkeley  15:04  

And so you kind of saw the writing on the wall and you thought, Hmm, this, this is not going to be a career for me now, this, their rugs being pulled out, so you need to change direction. So it was a conscious decision to go and kind of get yourself more educated. Right?

 

Hillery Shay  15:18  

Exactly. And I was working with really talented designers at the newspaper who were wonderful. I Diana Bulger was a wonderful designer who worked in our features department. And she and I actually decided to co teach a course on visual communications at the University of Wisconsin River Falls. And that's really where I started, you know, really incorporating the whole visual communications platform into the things that I was doing. I was also on Thursday night attending class for my MBA. And so my very first job after getting my MBA, and unfortunately, being laid off from the newspaper was to, to work for the hospice hospital system that took care of my mom. And so my first job was at health care system, as their manager of brand services. And I was doing very similar work to what I was doing in the newspaper, I was leading creatives and an in house agency. And so it really most people didn't realise how seamlessly being, you know, Director, photographer and multimedia, and multimedia at the Pioneer Press, really would translate into, you know, the marketing world once you really understood what needed to happen and really opened that door to leading in house agencies. And so from there, I went to the star went to St. Jude Medical medical device. Again, they were about to launch a new product that could have literally saved my mom's life. So the significance was Hi there. So I was excited. Because I felt like this is an opportunity to help bring to market a technology that that would save more grandmothers. Like my mom wasn't there any longer. My daughter was one year old. My second daughter was one year old and my mom passed. And you know, I said, you know, I, I'm sad that she won't remember my mom and I will tell her wonderful stories. And I can show her some videos, that she won't remember her. And I want to be able to help more families have more time with grandma.

 

Robert Berkeley  17:23  

Right? Absolutely. I mean, what a calling and certainly can see that gives you focus. So you so you carried on in healthcare, I guess you felt that that was a Nisha a vertical that you had particular interest in. And we're gaining experience in the ways and means of talking to your customers and so on. Right?

 

Hillery Shay  17:41  

Exactly. I really enjoyed the purpose behind the work that we did, but still being able to be in the creative space. And so it both, you know, I was sort of humming on both tracks, if you will. And as I like to say, my vocation and my occupation were aligned. And I like to say that now,

 

Robert Berkeley  18:00  

Cclearly, you went through a lot of a lot of sort of phases there a lot of changes. Can you characterise your progression there? Was it five years or so you spent there?

 

Hillery Shay  18:09  

Yeah, it was seven years. And it was a whirlwind of you know, I started as a manager of creative services. And pretty soon they said, Okay, you've you've, you've turned that department around, how about we make you the manager, Senior Manager of Korea services, but also give you responsibilities abroad. And then we were going through a brand transition where we realised that, you know, we really needed a brand refresh to talk about who St. Jude Medical was today. And I was promoted to the the Senior Manager of brand management.

 

Robert Berkeley  18:45  

This is a marketing role. Right. So sorry to interrupt Hillary, but there's a marketing role more than creative at this point. Right?

 

Hillery Shay 18:51  

Exactly. It's really at that point, I'm still really leading this, the creative services team, but also branching out into marketing. And then along came Abbott to acquire St. Jude Medical. So I set my sights to basically protect that in house agency. Because everybody kept saying, Oh, well, you know, Abbott has their own in house agency. I said, yes. But medical devices really specific. And we there's a lot of technique, and actually trying to appropriately, you know, diagram what we do. And so, as people began to learn what we do, and from an abbot perspective, they were they were looked at the team and said, You know what, we really do need the creative services team in St. Paul, to stick around because St. Jude Medical, which is now Abbott has an enormous utilisation of their in house agency, and to find that level of expertise with medical device is really hard. So I had a team of designers who can tell you whether or not the Pacemakers upside down should be positioned on the left or the right. They can actually mean their anatomical knowledge and placement. It's when you stop to think about it that that team needed to No more about the product. And they really needed to be business partners. And so that is what I had ingrained in them. It's like, you've got to actually double down and learn the devices in your business, so that you can actually be a valuable business partner for the projects that you work on. And that is something that I've carried forward in everything I've done. And in everything that I work with teams today is that my goal is to whenever there is a creative team that now rolls up to me to make sure that they understand the importance and where they are and how they affect the business and how they help it to run more efficiently. And I think that really not sort of dismissing the creative team, and recognising them as needing to understand the business and our ultimate goals, really gave a sense of pride to people who had worked on different teams of mine, I'm proud to say that I have, you know, some some directors that are now out there that have worked for me and are now leading their own creative teams elsewhere. And I like being a part of that legacy.

 

Robert Berkeley  21:10  

Well, I think mid mid pandemic, you decided to change again, from Abbott right to your current position.

 

Hillery Shay 21:18  

I did, I was ultimately in the neuromodulation division. Abbott is a little bit more siloed. Whereas St. Jude Medical centralised. And so while I was allowed to continue living in Minnesota, I was on the road to Austin and abroad very frequently. And so the pandemic really helped me slow down and recognise that I needed to be a little bit more accessible for my family. And the the death of George Floyd, here in Minneapolis, and my children being African American as well. And growing up here, I felt the calling that I needed to be able to work closer to home to really affect change in the community where I was raising my children. And so I took a call from a recruiter and, you know, it just sort of blossomed from a conversation to I think I've had like six rounds of interviews and all honesty, but it was very important to children's to find exactly the right person to lead what they needed to basically become in terms of a not just a marketing, healthcare marketing department, but they really wanted to be a multicultural, communications and thought leadership driven. organisation and so they needed then value exactly value driven. So uh, you know, again, there, there goes, my occupation and my vocation just like, lining up in thinking and I sent this is, this is my next step, this is where Wow. I will make an impact.

 

Robert Berkeley  22:51  

And again, it's not an obvious step, you're, you're kind of in the big corporate world of habit. And that's not in any way to put them down. But that was a very different environment to what I think is a relatively speaking quite a small environment at Children's Minnesota. Yeah.

 

Hillery Shay 23:05  

Yeah. I mean, we are a small healthcare system, but we are a leader in we serve this five state region with over 60, you know, unique specialties. And we really, you know, make sure that we are meeting the specialised needs of kids and as the kid experts, that tiny tagline we are, we're sure that we do a lot more advocacy work, and that we're out in the community more, and that we're not taking our role lightly like, Oh, we're just the doctors over here. No, we are the people who literally study kids, right? We know them very well. And we're the experts, and we want to help raise healthier children. Wow. And so that's calling I couldn't turn down

 

Robert Berkeley  23:46  

Ttotally well, so I said right at the beginning that you kind of you straddle both the marketing and the in house agency, can you describe what it is you you kind of oversee there, and particularly, how marketing in the in house agency both under your purview, how they interact and how they how they kind of produce good work together?

 

Hillery Shay 24:05  

Oh, certainly. So actually creative services in marketing. So my, the Senior Director of Marketing Mariano QuirogaDoga, has direct responsibility for the creative services team and marketing operations team. So they really do handle our work with vendors and agencies. We have three really talented designers, and a wonderful videographer and photographer, which, you know, it tells we've got all these cute kids around here is actually a very big need at that children's at a paediatric care system. Yes. And so having that team and having them work together, for service lines and for really bringing home the messages of what what the quality of life that we're able to give back to patients and actually use that to propel people to say ultimately, if If you have a child who has an extraordinary need, we're here to give you an extraordinary care. Yeah…And and the team does that extremely well, they partner well, they, they work with the marketing managers and attend meetings, they come in to really understand what it is that they're going to need to be rolling out from a design perspective, or what deliverables are coming out of a particular campaign. And then they also partner with well with when we have to use external agencies for things that we're just not necessarily equipped to do. So I'm going to watch TV commercial, and we're using an external agency for that,

 

Robert Berkeley  25:38  

Rright for the production agency, I guess, for that. And so what what capabilities do you have in house and which capabilities do not choose to take on within your team,

 

Hillery Shay  25:48  

Ookay, so we do have design and production, we also have all of the vendors, so you know, printing and storage and promotional items as well, we also have to handle our own in house internal communications. And that's where the videographer lives. We're just now realising that because that's really turning, telling the story of children's Minnesota, so we have the ability to, you know, produce high quality video documentary style video, but the the animation and the some of the the high end, motion graphics, those are things that we do send out house, out of house, I mean, like, our designers can certainly handle, you know, simple gifts. But when we actually need, you know, animating, and the animated lungs, we need to go and work with an external agency, where as you can imagine explaining what's going on to children actually requires some really interesting animation capability. When you're creating materials, because you really want the patient and their parents to understand what's about to happen.

 

Robert Berkeley  27:02  

This is educational, this isn't this isn't promotional, necessarily. A lot of this is educational for your quote, customers, unquote. Right,

 

Hillery Shay 27:10  

Eexactly. And then we also managed to make sure that on the other side that we are aligning our, our education needs as part of our content for our for our marketing automation. So really reaching out to referring physicians, by making sure that they have, you know, the latest political highlights on a particular procedure or keeping things relevant. So there really is a lot that runs through this team, from a commercial communications perspective, from an advocacy perspective, from a marketing perspective, and from a operational and deliverables perspective,

 

Robert Berkeley  27:47  

Aand how do these needs filter into marketing from the business and then through to your creative team, and so on? What's the what's the process by which that happens effectively? Because I assume the businesses obviously aware of you as a as a, as a resource within the company, but yeah, how do you how do you actually make sure that you're always part of those conversations that they know that you can help them get the message out?

 

Hillery Shay 28:07  

Exactly. So I recently restructured the team, I've been here about nine months, but I recently restructured the team to make sure that we actually have marketing leads, and the marketing leads actually partner with the service line. So that if you can imagine there is a marketing lead that has cardiovascular, there is a marketing lead who works in neuroscience. So people actually have their marketing lead at the table. And then the marketing lead brings all of the stakeholders that they might need from within our team. So if they are going to need creative, if they're going to need internal communications, like if there's an internal launch, to what something that they're doing as well, they bring internal communications to the table. So the marketing lead is really tasked with pulling together the right stakeholders for what they need. And the other teams are really structured to support that. So the team, the marketing team is the larger of the team. But there are internal communication specialists who work directly with service line or internal patients and families and or different parts of our organisation from the advocacy team, to our community outreach team, in terms of making sure that we're we're all on message that we're utilising the content that we're creating, and that we're really helping to lift the awareness of all the children's Minnesota is doing in the organisation. So I might have a a small team of you know, almost 40 But they they are mighty. Well, they certainly

 

Robert Berkeley  29:41  

Aare although 40 isn't necessarily a small team and other people would love to have 40 people, but they are you measured in any way and do your internal business, sort of requesters, your stakeholders do they pay for your services internally or anything

 

Hillery Shay 29:58  

Hhow internally they do Not but we have, they do not pay for services. However, we do have prioritisation, that really keeps us from getting overloaded. One of the things that I brought on was a trained production agency that can actually work directly with service lines, who have work that's needed. That's not priority, but they can actually decide, you know, if we need this, here's an agency that we can work with, you know, $110 an hour, it's a really wonderful fee. And this particular agency is just wonderful at becoming sort of an extension of your in house team. So they learn your nomenclature, they learn how you're filing your files, and then they actually put those store those things away. So even though my team internally cannot necessarily do all of that work, we have a way of making sure that the work that we're doing is essential and aligned with the strategic plan. And then if there's other work that comes along, we have a place to put it. And really, it allows the customer to decide if you really need it, then it's worth paying for. Yeah, and you you can find budget for that, because it doesn't fit into our priorities right now. But we are here to make sure that you are on brand and supported by making sure that we have partners who can actually step up and help you.

 

Robert Berkeley  31:14  

And it also lets you focus on what you do really, really well, which is the creative side of things. And

 

Hillery Shay 31:19  

I work in house, I move the cutsy work out house.

 

Robert Berkeley  31:23  

Absolutely. I would advocate that every step of the way. But then I run a production agency to always think over that. And I just want to also thank Emily foster of our esteemed partners I have and my producer Amy MacNamara for making these wonderful interviews happening Prerna at BIDI KCS thank you so much for handling the podcast editing. Now if this is your first episode of Inside JobsInside jobs that you've heard, then please a very warm welcome to you. Ddo take some time to visit our website at IJ podcast.com You're going to see an evergrowing extremely long list of episodes back catalogue there. You can also subscribe to our newsletter and please click the link say Hhi on LinkedIn. I always enjoy hearing from people who work in and around in house agencies. Thank you very much till next time.