The Why? It’s not just the diversity and inclusion at Fox that Steele seeks to improve—her impact stretches into the rest of the advertising industry. She’s a co-chair of the Fox Ad Sales Diversity and Inclusion Council, and last year she helped launch the Fox Ad Sales Training Program that focuses on helping emerging professionals grow into their careers in ad sales.
She Says… “I’ve been fortunate to have had a number of brilliant, supportive bosses at pivotal points in my career who recognized my talent and who mentored, encouraged and advanced me along the way.”
First event attended IRL when live reopened? Fox was one of the first major media companies to announce an IRL industry event, a daylong series we dubbed “Content Drives Commerce..”
Organization you’re proud to support? As co-chair of Fox’s Ad Sales Diversity and Inclusion Council, one of our first commitments was being an inaugural sponsor of The Boyd Initiative. It is the brainchild of Steven Golus, a digital marketing trainer who we’ve worked with at FOX for years, launched as a way to address the widely acknowledged lack of diversity in our industry. Named after Edward Boyd, the innovative Black Pepsi-Cola marketer who helped develop the concept of niche marketing at a time when Black consumers were largely ignored, Boyd Initiative provides 10 hours of media and advertising industry training to HBCU students and recent grads in classes such as The Media Buying & Selling Process and Digital Ad Buying & Ad Tech, and in interactive sessions with sponsor companies. Over its two plus years, Fox Sales D&I has been a financial supporter and is active in engaging speakers who’ve shared their expertise and advice with more than 15 student cohorts that have taken the curriculum so far. Since its launch in the summer of 2020, over 800 students have completed the program and over 200 now have roles in the media and advertising industry. We are incredibly proud to have contributed to this growing pool of engaged candidates and to the changing face of our industry.
Who has kicked down a door for you? I’ve been fortunate to have had a number of brilliant, supportive bosses at pivotal points in my career who recognized my talent and who mentored, encouraged and advanced me along the way. I started on the agency side of the business and worked under Betsy Frank, a very high-profile face at the time who innovatively led research at Saatchi & Saatchi and then Zenith during significant media and platform transitions in our industry, and whose enormous shoes I stepped into based on her recommendation when she left to run research & planning at Viacom. Further, part of the reason for my long tenure at FOX is the great heads of sales I served and whose reputations I worked to burnish with inventive thought leadership, starting with the statesman-like Jon Nesvig and my now dear friend, Toby Byrne, who elevated me to play an integral strategic sales role well beyond research. I’m incredibly grateful for them all—their inclusive appreciation for differently-packaged skill is an integral part of my career success.