It’s shaping up to be a huge first quarter at UpBuild. Today I have the pleasure of announcing the newest addition to the UpBuild team – Ruth Burr Reedy!
Ruth will be serving as UpBuild’s Director of Strategy and will be working closely with me and the senior team to take us to the next level. I’m excited to see how Ruth and the team will be able to work together to put even more power behind moving the needle for our clients.
The Backstory
Ruth and I go way back. I think the first time we met in person was when we spoke together at SMX West back in 2013. At the time, Ruth was the Lead SEO/Inbound Marketing Lead at Moz and I was the Senior SEO at SwellPath. We were instant “SEO friends” and stayed in touch via Twitter and at other conferences over the years. I was always impressed by her incredible SEO skills and ability to “speak marketing” to make geeky SEO stuff relatable to “normal” marketers. Plus, I mean, she managed the SEO side of the SEOmoz -> Moz rebrand, and that’s nothing to shake a stick at.
Instant Alignment
When I posted that UpBuild was looking for a Director of Strategy back in January, everything just kind of fell into place. Ruth and I got to talking about it and the short version looks a little something like this:
Ruth – “Hey, I saw that job posting today. We should talk.”
Me – “Yes, we should”.
::conversations ensure::
Me – “I really think this could be awesome.”
Ruth – “Okay, I’m in!”
What does this mean for UpBuild?
Well, it means that we have a great new addition to our leadership team who will help support our team and drive even better results for our clients. Ruth is all about UpBuild’s vision and culture and the team clicked with her right away. With her on the team, I’ll be able to take a bit of a step back from the day-to-day and focus on biz dev and UpBuild’s evolution and simultaneously allow Ruth to devote her full time and attention to something I’ve admittedly only been able to dedicate 50% of my time to: making awesome things happen for our clients and our team.
I wanted to include a quote from Ruth here, but couldn’t think of a great segue, so…here’s a quote from Ruth!
“I love that UpBuild wants to be an agency that does good work, but also is a good place to work – it’s exactly the kind of company I want to help build. I’m excited to help grow this awesome team and connect great companies with the technical SEO they need to succeed.”
Oh, and to answer an FAQ – No, Ruth’s not moving to Portland. UpBuild is still a distributed team and we all think that’s just awesome.
