Q&A With Trae Turner, Estland’s New Marketing Director.
Get To Know Trae Turner, Estland’s Newest Marketing Mastermind
Meet Trae Turner, Estland’s new Marketing Director.
After decades of experience in multiple Marketing Director roles, Trae brings a seasoned, strategic mind to our team. She’s passionate about purposeful work and refuses to settle for anything less than the best results.
Day to day, Trae will lead our clients’ marketing initiatives—from onboarding to final execution. She’ll make sure every campaign is delivered on time, within budget and to the highest quality standards.
We can’t wait to see the impact she’ll have.
During her first week in the new role, Kaitlin Pomerleau, Estland’s Content Marketing Director, sat down and got up close and personal in a Q&A session with Trae.
Get to know her better from their conversation.
Q&A
I’ll dive right in with the biggest question on everyone’s mind:
Coffee or tea?
Coffee.
How do you take it?
I love an iced mocha.
Fancy! Do you get them at coffee shops or make them at home?
If I’m out and about, which isn’t very often because I work from home, I will definitely hit Starbucks as a treat to myself. But most of the time at home, I just do a pour-over method and make my own iced mochas by adding a little Ghirardelli chocolate powder to the bottom before I pour in my coffee.
That sounds like a great way to start every day…
Dogs or cats?
Both.
Have you had both, or do you just like them both?
I am currently in a ‘no-pets phase’ very intentionally because I used to have three dogs and two cats. They all kind of aged out at the exact same time, so once they all went to little pet heaven, I decided that I wanted to be able to travel and not have to worry about leaving the furry little ones behind. I know that someday I will have pets again, but not at the moment.
Are you an early bird or a night owl?
I am not an early bird or a night owl. I’m a ‘middle of the day penguin.’
I love that. I’ve never heard that term before. Did you make that up, or is that like a real term?
I think I heard someone else say it at some point, but it fits. I’m a very middle of the day penguin.
Where do you call home?
I live in Nellysford, VA.
If you weren’t living in Nellysford, where would you be living?
The boring answer is probably Harrisonburg because that’s where Estland is, and it’s also where my fiancée is from. But she just moved over here a month or two ago, and we’re loving that for now. As far as a more interesting answer, I’ve always wanted to live in Manhattan—that’s always been like a pipe dream of mine.
What is something surprising about you that not many people know?
I used to own a vintage shop called Gasoline Alley, where we sold petroliana (gas and oil related vintage merch.) We had a great time traveling the country picking up great finds to sell at our shop.
That’s really cool!
I’m ready to shift the conversation to your professional background and what brought you to Estland. Are you ready?
Absolutely.
So far in your career, what is one of your proudest moments? And why?
At a previous job, I was selected to speak to the American Bankers Association at their annual bank marketing conference. That was really fantastic and a proud moment.
I also brought a lot of improvements to some of my previous companies.
I feel like that’s a strong suit of mine. For example, when I was a corporate Marketing Director in the financial technology industry, I established an online Client Resource Center for clients to access shared marketing resources for our products and services. It helped over 300 of our client banks and credit unions, which made a big impact.
Can you speak a little bit about what your role at Estland will consist of?
As the Marketing Director, my role is primarily to lead all of our clients’ strategic marketing initiatives. I’ll develop high-level strategies based on each client’s unique needs and determine what will make them most successful. I’ll serve as a direct point of contact for our clients and coordinate with our team to ensure seamless execution of strategies and campaigns.
And if and when things don’t perform as we expect, I’ll be there to monitor performance and adapt tactics to get the results our clients deserve. I’ll also be working on doing the same things for Estland’s marketing strategy and will make sure we are always working on ourselves as well.
What makes you the right fit for this role?
Let’s see. When I first started talking to Vada, I already felt really in sync with the team. I followed Estland on social media because Estland had done a website for a former company I worked for. It felt like a really great personality fit, just based on what a great job Estland does sharing the corporate culture online. That made me feel like I was right because I felt like I aligned with what was happening here.
I have deep roots in the financial industry, which aligns well with many of our clients. I also have strong ties in the building and industrial space. So, when I saw the client list, I felt comfortable because of my diverse marketing experience. Estland’s broad client portfolio really speaks to me. I also lived in Harrisonburg for ten years, so I’m familiar with a lot of our local clients.
Do you have a favorite quote or motto you live by?
I have to think about that. Something along the lines of “working hard versus hardly working” because working hard can sometimes just become busy work.
I believe in strategy work. And so if you’re just doing something to run out the clock, I feel like that’s such a waste of time. If you give your mind time to open up, that’s when the creative thoughts are going to come in. You have to give your brain space for the big ideas. So probably working hard versus hardly working is one of the things that I always keep with me.
Thanks for sharing all that, Trae, I know our team and our clients are in excellent hands with you joining the team. I wanted to finish up by getting to know you on a little more personal level again. Is that OK?
So today, you’re Estland’s new Marketing Director, but what did you want to do when you were 12?
I wanted to be a poetry professor.
Did you have somebody in your life who inspired that, or where did that come from for 12-year-old Trae?
So when I was in the fifth grade, we were doing a little Halloween poem exercise, and whatever I wrote—I’m sure it was something about ‘witches and brooms and cats and moons’ or something like that, and my teacher used it as an example and made a big deal and said, “Look at this poem that Trae did!” They put it in our school’s newspaper, and I mean, I thought I was a celebrity. So I was like, “This must be my thing.”
It sparked something in me, and then I was always just the kid who wrote poetry. I did it all the way through high school, and when I went to college, I signed up for English and Communications. I thought I was going to be a poet or a poetry professor and that I was going to get to read all the time.
Are you still a big reader? You mentioned you’re in a book club. Do you have a favorite genre?
Yeah, my book club has been together for many, many years in the D.C. area. I manage the website for the club. I’d say fiction written by female authors is my jam.
There’s a website? This is an established book club!
We had to have a way to keep our list! We used to go to a different restaurant every month, too, and we didn’t want to repeat authors either, so we had to have those lists available. Eventually, as we grew, I decided, “I guess I need to put together a website!”
What makes you smile the most?
I guess my fiancée right now. Other than that, it’s probably just to be outside. I like to do a two-mile walk every morning. I love being outside with friends. I live on route 151 in Virginia, so we go and listen to live music all the time together, and I love to sit around with my friends and laugh with them, too.
What’s your superpower?
My best friend Marc would say that my superpower is being able to authentically connect with people in an open way. I think I just bring out that kind of open conversation and connection with people.
If you could switch lives with one person for a day, who would it be?
Maybe I’d want to be one of the women on the Supreme Court, like Sonya Sotomayor, or any of them, really. I used to say Sandra Day O’Connor. I just think that it would be really fascinating to be a woman who’s in that kind of a powerful position. I would be interested to feel what it’s like being there and making those decisions, experiencing the debate happening on the bench. That would be fascinating.
What would your perfect weekend look like?
There are two types of perfect weekends for me, and they both have to happen for each to be perfect. The first is to go away for the weekend. I’m doing that this weekend, going to D.C. and going to a Nationals game. Or traveling to see a concert or something like that with friends.
But for that to feel perfect, I also have to have the other type of weekend which is to do nothing. No plans, sleep late, get up and make myself some coffee. The kind of weekend where you don’t even know what you’re going to do, maybe we go somewhere, maybe not.
What is one vice you wish you could give up?
I wish I could give up my addiction to my phone or checking social media. I feel like it’s changed my brain and I cannot just do one thing at a time anymore!
What makes you feel the most like yourself?
My book club.
OK, final question—this one’s just for fun, but we ask it to everyone who joins the Estland team: Do you consider a hotdog a sandwich?
No.
Why?
Because a sandwich has two flat pieces of bread, and a hot dog is this very special, other thing. It’s got its own shape and type of bread, and hot dogs have different types of toppings. It’s in a different kind of container!
Okay, that’s fair. Those were all my questions! Thanks for taking the time to chat, and enjoy your first few weeks at Estland!
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