VIQTORY was founded by 3 Navy Veterans in 2001 and our overarching goal has remained the same ever since: to connect the military community with civilian opportunities. Whether that be joining the civilian workforce or exploring educational and entrepreneurial opportunities, we’re proud to say that we have been doing just that for almost two decades. We pride ourselves on our company culture and believe that its strength is rooted in and reflected by the quality of talent we employ.
For this Employee Spotlight, we’re taking a look at our Senior Manager of Ad Operations and Strategy, Alysha Tuma.
The success we as an organization have experienced for nearly two decades derives from our ability to employ and retain top-quality talent and subject matter experts who are able to meet client expectations and drive results. Alysha is no exception.
As the Senior Manager of Ad Operations and Strategy, her role is to help manage the day-to-day campaign management for all of our programmatic clients. For VIQTORY, this means building personalized digital marketing campaigns, designed to fit a client’s specific needs, that target our military audience and streamline the employee and student recruitment processes. The role also includes providing support for her campaign managers and working directly alongside our Customer Success, Sales, and Audience Teams to ensure that campaign expectations are being met for our clients. She is responsible for the overall performance of all of our campaigns, our processes, as well as our internal and external KPIs. It’s safe to say Alysha is leading the charge on our digital front.
I asked her to go a bit further about her average workday, and in her own words, “Same game, different players, sometimes different rules! Meaning, there are a lot of recurring responsibilities and tasks, however, depending on the campaign objective, the type of account we’re working with, or the external factors we’re navigating such as a change in platform targeting or pixel tracking issue…no two days are ever quite the same!”
While the busy schedule, workload, and responsibility that comes with Alysha’s role may be daunting to some, Alysha is perfect for it. She attended Washington and Jefferson College, where she graduated with a degree in International Relations. While working on her degree she managed to juggle schoolwork, cheerleading, sorority life, and the Model United Nations team that competed at the Harvard Model United Nations Conference annually.
Upon graduating, Alysha accepted a job offer at The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette where she would spend the first 6 years of her professional career. Alysha was the first Digital CSR that the company ever hired to work on their (at the time) new programmatic digital advertising product. “I worked my way through the advertising department before moving over to Ad Operations, and eventually ended up on the flagship team of their internal ad agency, BENN. I gained most of my experience and institutional knowledge from a lot of on-the-job training!”
The VIQTORY team quickly noticed her work ethic, deep knowledge and understanding of digital advertising, her winning personality, and our need to adopt new advertising technologies/strategies. Fast-forward 3.5 years and Alysha is managing the Ad Operations department that she was instrumental in building from the ground up. Here’s what she had to say about her career change, “I knew I was ready for a change. It just so happened that VIQTORY had reached out that they were looking for someone to help establish an Ad Operations department and build a team. I had had some familiarity with always being on the “new team”, so I was up for the challenge. The one thing that attracted me most to VIQTORY was its sense of purpose that literally everyone in the company seemed to get behind. The true feeling of people to the left and right of you, all working together towards one common goal was a very refreshing perspective coming from a larger organization.”
Like any other marketing company, we are constantly changing and adopting new processes, procedures, technologies, and best practices to ensure that we are delivering the best results in the military recruitment space. Here’s what Alysha had to say about the changes and advancements VIQTORY has made during her time here, “The company has truly transformed into a performance-based marketing company, with a strong company culture around a team mentality. We measure performance from every angle, on every team, and every member of the organization is cognizant that we can only be successful if we’re all successful.”
Alysha is originally from the South Hills of Pittsburgh but moved around quite a bit before landing back close to home in Canonsburg, PA, where she lives with her husband (celebrating 9 years!) their adorable 18-month old daughter, and they are expecting a second little one in the fall. Alysha described herself as an extroverted introvert, here’s what she said, “I love to spend time with my friends and family (I’m lucky most are within a 5 min drive). But I’m just as happy spending any free time I get, which is in very short supply with a toddler, reading. My nightstand typically has a small stack of books on it at all times.” Once the toddler goes down for the night, chances are Alysha is in her happy place, on the patio, reading, watching a Marvel movie, or rooting on the Pittsburgh Penguins alongside her husband.
Alysha has been instrumental in taking our organization to new heights on the digital advertising front. Her understanding of our digital products, targeting tactics, and advertising as a whole are unmatched in the industry. She was brought onto the VIQTORY team with high hopes and had equally high expectations placed on her, and she rose to the challenge and has designed, built, and is managing our AdOps department to help drive results for our clients. For anyone that knows anything about programmatic advertising, they know it’s not as straightforward as one might think. “The greatest challenge has been the evolution of programmatic advertising itself and keeping up-to-date with all of the nuances. Working to balance both the shifts in the programmatic advertising landscape, while maintaining the knowledge-base for our sales and support staff, and ensuring that the products and services that we provide our clients perform. Overcoming this challenge has been a team effort through and through, I’ve not done any of this alone. Our client success team keeps themselves informed; our sales staff ask all the right questions to ensure they are equipped, and our campaign managers and executive leadership ensure we are set up for success and can deliver the results for our clients.
It was no surprise when she told me her favorite part about working at VIQTORY, “The people. 100%. I can honestly say that I enjoy working with every single employee here at VIQTORY. I don’t know how many people can say that about their colleagues. We’re all committed to our mission to provide opportunities to the military community and we have the true mindset of one team, one mission.” Our team’s unified commitment to connecting the military community with civilian opportunities has allowed us to become the premier military marketing company for employee, student, and franchisee recruitment.