Cavan Kinne / Full 360 Digital Producer
March 29th, 2023, marketing professional Sulyn Kulick visited a Delval classroom to give a presentation about digital marketing.
I was honored to have to opportunity to talk to Sulyn more about her life, where it all started, and how she became a marketing guru for some of the biggest companies on the planet such as Meta and Johnson and Johnson. “I grew up in a very small town in Lebanon, PA. My parents were refugees from the Cambodian genocide and ended up at Fort Indiantown Gap and then just stayed in the area. After growing up in rural PA, I knew that I wanted to go to school in a city and narrowed my focus on Philadelphia schools. I ended up going to Drexel University for Business & Engineering.”
Sulyn’s path wasn’t always very clear, but thanks to Drexel university where she attended, they made it rather easy for her to find and pursue her interests. “I was very fortunate that Drexel University has a strong co-op curriculum where you have the opportunity to do a 5-year program, including 3 coops at 6 months each. It was through these coops that gave me a diverse experience to understand what I liked, what I could achieve, and experience different company cultures. My 1st coop was with Sunoco Marketing, my 2nd coop was with a procurement start-up, and my 3rd coop was with Johnson & Johnson Procurement.” It was during these coops where she really established what it was, she would be doing as a soon to be professional in the industry. “My last coop experience was so enriching that I decided that I wanted to apply to multiple JNJ jobs when I graduated. I had no idea it was going to influence the next decade and a half of my life. I ended up joining Johnson and Johnson through a rotational leadership development program called the Global Operations Leadership Development program. It was a first of its kind – a cross-sector of pharm, consumer, and med device and cross-functional in engineering, supply chain, and operations. I loved the diversity of the experience, but it also helped me realize that I loved the more tangible aspects of sales & marketing. In the end-to-end journey of a product from making it to being in someone’s home. I loved the downstream side where you are understanding consumer behavior and creating products to meet unmet needs. It was really an awesome experience to understand a completely different part of the business to help me realize that I loved the commercialization of a product and wanted to make sales & marketing my career.”
College can be hard, worrisome, and even defeating at times. However, for Sulyn, college is exactly what aided her in finding her true passion. The opportunities that came with college, are what helped her land her first job. For any college students out there, that may be interested in similar fields, I made sure to get some advice from the professional herself. “To offer advice to any student wanted to go into this field, I would recommend developing a growth mindset and lead with curiosity and empathy. What is most exciting about marketing is that you often are on the bleeding edge of culture. Projects, initiatives, campaigns, products can change quickly and being nimble enough to act, and not be fearful of failure can be very rewarding. This is especially true in the world of digital marketing, where iteration is a key to success because you want to fail fast and learn quickly. This is having a growth mindset. I also think that being an empathetic leader is important and when you lead with curiosity, you’ll find more opportunities through connections with people, concepts, ideas, and gain a better understanding which continues to lead to more empathy… driving a great cycle of learning and becoming a better leader.”
More information about developing a growth mindset can be found here.