Meet Courtney – The Newest Labber
Photo: Michael Cassara Photography
Hi all - I’m so excited to join the incredible team at Pathlabs!
My name is Courtney Packard, the newest addition to the Pathlabs sales team, and I’m coming to you from the beautiful beaches on the south shore of Long Island. As a born and bred Jersey girl, I never envisioned living out here and working from home, but here we are! Life has a way of being beautifully unpredictable and surprising.
I grew up in Howell, NJ (about 20 minutes from the Jersey Shore) with my parents and older brother. My parents were both educators and instilled the importance of a commitment to learning and curiosity at a young age. My dad was a high school soccer coach and my mom was in the choir, so sports and performing were an important part of my early life. I played field hockey from 8th grade through my sophomore year of college, performed in all the high school musicals, and was a member of our high school acapella group. Yes, the competitions are just like in the movie Pitch Perfect and no, I cannot beatbox, but I can still harmonize. You can now catch my performances while driving and at the occasional karaoke night.
I attended a high school that specialized in the performing arts, so I was lucky to have exposure to media early on, where I joined the video program in my senior year and learned what goes into producing television and movies. It was thrilling to make tv and film and it combined my love of performance and telling a story, so I decided to head off to college majoring in Communication to see what it was all about.
I attended William Paterson University, a state school in New Jersey, participating in their production program, which then helped land me a coveted internship at NBC Sports. For a year I would commute back and forth from Wayne, NJ to New York City getting exposure to some of the most famous producers and sports broadcast stars in history through administrative tasks like creating and sending them DVDs of their shows. In this digital age, it’s funny to me now that my role consisted mostly of hauling and organizing tapes and making DVDs.
After graduating in 2009, I moved to Hoboken, NJ and I was privileged to land a role as a Production Assistant at NBC Sports, where I would participate in live and taped productions as a Graphics Coordinator. I got to travel the US working on shows like the Dew Tour, Football Night in America, horse racing, and golf. I even have a credit in the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. While this was an exciting space to work in, it was also really challenging. During this time, production work was all freelance – I never really knew where my next job was coming from, and competition was fierce. Combine that unease with working every weekend, missing out on big moments for family and friends, and not being able to afford health insurance on my salary– I knew I needed a career change. It was also during this period of my life that I discovered Yoga, and the practice’s ability to anchor me throughout the waves of life.
Graduating Yoga Teacher Training
Once I decided to leave the production world behind, figuring out what to do next though was the hard part. My best friends were working at a software company in sales, and they thought I could be successful in a sales career. So I figured, why not give it go? The worst thing that could happen was not getting a job, which I already didn’t have, so it was a risk I was happy to take. I am so grateful to these friends who believed in me – they helped me with my resume and coached me through the interview process, showing me how to relate my experience to sales so I could land a job. As I would come to learn, skills like discipline, attention to detail, preparedness, grit, and keeping cool under pressure were essential to sales success.
Because of my friends’ commitment to preparing me, my college network, and being on Facebook at the right time– I was able to find a role in sales at a new digital startup backed by AOL called Patch.com. It was here that I found success (and health insurance!), met the man who would become my husband and formed a lot of great relationships with colleagues who remain friends today. After leaving Patch, I worked in sales roles across social media, native advertising, and even in research, picking up tools to put in my toolkit along the way. I learned a lot about what I did want out of a career, and most importantly - what I didn’t want.
I found a lot of what I wanted in 2016 at a mobile location company called GroundTruth (formerly xAd) and it was there that I experienced exponential personal and professional development. With the encouragement and support of my manager Evan Ladensack and the incredible people within the organization, I flourished. As a founding member of Women@GroundTruth, I championed a more gender-equal workplace, helping lead initiatives that encouraged women to embrace their power, purpose, and value. In 2017, the same year that I won Salesperson of the Year, I also completed my 200-hour Yoga Teacher Certification program, which I believe was kismet. In yoga, they say that the work on the mat prepares you for life off of it, and my commitment as a practitioner made me a better salesperson and colleague.
Leading a panel discussion for Women@GroudTruth
It is also my yoga practice that has helped me navigate life’s latest transitions with more ease. Prior to COVID upending our worlds, my husband, Ryan, and I had a very different life in Jersey City than we have now. We were always traveling or commuting somewhere and scheduled up to our eyeballs with activities. During the pandemic that all came to a halt, and we were lucky to have the choice to leave the city and move out to Long Island where Ryan grew up. Now, our time is spent doing yoga, going out on our boat and to the beach, and hiking and playing with our puppy, Willow. We’re still doing as much traveling as we can, with our most recent trip to the islands of French Polynesia for our honeymoon after celebrating our wedding in June.
Photos: Michael Cassara Photography
This brings us to today – how did I get here? Well, this is what I know for sure:
Transitions are not easy. Sometimes they can be slow and clumsy and sometimes they can be too quick and painful. We are all constantly in some sort of state of transition, so learning to find grace for myself and for others has made all the difference.
Each experience in life has taught me something about myself - especially the parts where I’ve stumbled and failed. As corny as it sounds, it’s always come down to my own reactions to those perceived failures than the failure itself.
To become competent at something takes much more practice than I ever imagined. For me, “success” is in the consistency, the effort, and continual assessment of the actions I’m taking to get there.
Vulnerability and empathy are my superpowers that drive genuine, authentic connections.
It’s through a genuine connection that I find myself working with an authentic leader, Evan Ladensack, once again. In my role as a Partner Manager, I will be responsible for bringing the incredible services that Pathlabs offers to our agency partners, helping them deliver scale and performance for their clients more effectively. I am so grateful to be embarking on this new journey at Pathlabs and I’m eager to work with you all - and most especially, to learn from you.
Courtney Packard
Partner Manager
