At Movable Ink, our vibrant culture is a big part of what makes us unique. In honor of Pride Month, we are spotlighting members from our LGBTQ+ employee resource group, Inklusive. The goal of Inklusive is to inspire, engage, and inform LGBTQ+ individuals and allies while working to create a space where LGBTQ+ individuals can share their stories with their peers and allies and feel even more at home at Movable Ink.
In honor of Pride Month, we’re spotlighting Inkers who are part of the LGBTQ+ community. In this post, you’ll meet Roger Lopez, Senior Client Experience Manager at Movable Ink.
Roger Lopez, Senior Client Experience Manager at Movable Ink
What is your name?
Roger Lopez
What is your title?
Senior Client Experience Manager
What office are you located in?
Remote, Portland, Oregon
How long have you been at Movable Ink?
3 years
What department are you in?
Client Experience
Can you talk about how you changed departments while working at Movable Ink?
I actually have moved around with the Client Experience team in order to meet needs for the organization. My first move was to Partner Experience when MI wanted me to focus more on the new Mexico market accounts and market growth. In the middle of 2019, I started to transition back into a client experience team that manages clients in the Pacific Northwest region of the US due to moving to Portland, Oregon for personal reasons. However, my latest shuffle has really paid off since the region’s director needed a more tenured individual to manage a bulk of the tier 1 accounts in the area.
What do you do at Movable Ink? What makes you excited about your role?
On a day-to-day basis, I am a client’s main point of contact for any of their needs and questions as well as taking the lead in developing a trusting partner relationship with a variety of points of contacts. In addition, I further evangelize the use of our platform to meet each client’s marketing opportunities and challenges – always trying to keep Movable Ink top of mind for the organization.
What I really find exciting about my role is being able to listen to our clients and identify what their current pain points are in order to find an impactful solution. One of the best parts of my job is when I am meeting with a client to conduct the data iteration process of an API integration (internal or external asset) and we start to pin point the data points we want to leverage and the business logic we want to apply. I love this part of the process because the client is always so pleasantly surprised at the flexibility of our tool to meet their different audience needs.
What has been the highlight of your time working at Movable Ink?
The highlight of my experience with Movable Ink was getting to work with the Democratic National Committee and the Bernie 2020 Presidential Primary Campaign. It was very rewarding to see how I was able to influence the marketing tactics that the DNC implemented in their fundraising efforts during the 2018 midterm elections.
Not only was I proud of being able to grow their donations by 2x on total amount raised and average individual donation amount, but I felt like my work was helping to make an impact on the direction of our community. The other great outcome was the opportunity to meet and develop a lasting relationship with Robin Curran, Vice President of Digital Strategy at Aisle 518.
Can you share some professional milestones that we can celebrate that are related to your experience as a professional in the LGBTQ+ community?
The largest milestone for me has been the work we completed with the DNC being featured in an Adweek article. It took many late nights and working on weekends to get the work done, but I felt very motivated by what the client was hoping to achieve and I felt that MI had a stake in impacting our national dialogue as well.
The other milestone came most recently when I started to work with the Nordstrom Rack and Hautelook brands. I was able to come into the relationship and develop trust quickly with the point of contacts and leadership there by being an active listener and adjusting how material and strategy was presented to their needs. This work earned me internal recognition at MI, and I was part of the team that won the Most Improved Account Award at our annual kickoff this year.
In a few sentences, can you tell us about Inklusive and your role in it?
Inklusive is an employee resource group that focuses on educating the rest of MI at large about the LGBTQ+ community while also celebrating the unique characters and voices that shape a part of this community. The ERG also has a focus on ensuring that our efforts are also outward looking by volunteering and fundraising for community non-profits. We also engage the LGBTBQ+ community by finding ways to bring in outside knowledge to MI. I was on the planning committee until I moved to Portland, OR in July 2019. At the time, I felt that it would not be impactful to continue in the position since I would be working remotely and the events were taking place in our headquarters and satellite offices. Although, while in the planning committee, I did focus on education on the community by leading a group discussion on the book Less by Andrew Sean Greer.
What does Inklusive mean to you as a resource at Movable Ink?
Inklusive is a meaningful effort by MI to recognize the different life experiences that its individuals bring to the organization. For me, interacting with the LGTBQ+ community has always come with some friction, even though I am a gay male. Within the community, we sometimes break ourselves down into smaller communities (twinks, bears, and so on). I never really felt that I belonged to any particular group, nor did I want to. When I started to meet with the rest of the Inklusive planning committee and participants, I saw that there are such rich and vast differences even within the LGTBQ+ community that should be celebrated, and so many inspiring narratives that have to be told.
Pride looks very different in 2020. How are you celebrating?
For me Pride in 2020 has been very different. I have been using the month of June to read and watch additional content on the transgender community. The transgender community is still very susceptible to physical violence and discrimination. For example, Tete Gulley, a transgender woman, was found hanging from a tree in Portland, Oregon park in May 2019. This was just over a year ago, and like her many more members of this community continue to suffer physically, mentally and economically. For me, Pride 2020 is about being introspective and identifying the brothers and sisters of our community that still need us to stand by their side and show them someone in this world still cares and loves them.
What are you excited about for 2020 as it relates to Movable Ink?
2020 has been a whirlwind, and as an organization we have shown how responsive and responsible members of society we are as an organization. I am excited about how we will continue efforts to show we are true partners to our clients during the harshest of times, and active participants in our communities.
What advice do you have for others in the LGBTQ+ community working in or looking to break into Mar-Tech?
My advice is to take to heart the the mission that so many marketing technology and technology in general companies state. Most of them have the aim of changing the world through their innovation. I would say that as organizations and brands become more active participants in the development of society, we ensure our efforts are aligned on leaving this world better than when we found it.
Are you involved in other LGBTQ+ non profits, organizations, or volunteer based organizations that you would like to highlight?
I would like to call attention to the support and help that local AIDS service organizations still need. I have walked and donated to both the Cascade AIDS Project’s and the Gay Men’s Health Crisis’s AIDS walks in Portland, OR and New York, NY. The reality is that HIV & AIDS still impact a lot of the LGBTQ+ community, and there is still a stigma for those who have contracted the virus. Efforts on education and prevention are still very much needed, but just as much is needed in support and changing the dialogue on members who live with this as a part of their daily reality.