Stef’s passion for her role, which includes helping with all online initiatives, like fundraising, emails, social media, and helping departments across the agency get their information on the internet in any way that they need—“it’s a mix of making sure we’re raising money to keep everything going but also brand awareness”—often comes out when she speaks about her job.

And it’s a job she had her eye on for a while before she finally started here in December 2015. She heard about Mercy Home from friends who worked here and had a positive experience.

“It seemed like a really great place to work with a great mission,” she said. “And if there was ever a job opening, I let them know that I’d be open to applying.”

Stef began as a coordinator of digital marketing and was promoted last year to manager. Before coming to Mercy Home, she studied graphic design and had a background in art. Wanting a stable career, she worked as a graphic designer but always found herself gravitating to marketing jobs. She did marketing for a start-up company as an intern before moving to another corporation, where she was the lead graphic designer and did all the company’s marketing.

“I just really started liking analytics and getting into that,” she said. “So when I had the opportunity to take this job here and really dive into marketing, I really grabbed the bull by the horns. I was really excited to just make that my full purpose.”

With Mercy Home’s help, Stef also recently went back to school to broaden her digital skills and is studying web development. She hopes that eventually this will help Mercy Home further optimize things with the website and avoid needing to reach out to third party developers as often and do more in-house.

One part of her job that she particularly enjoys is that every day is a bit different. But among the tasks she completes, optimizing the way our website works keeps things especially interesting.

“We’re always trying to optimize everything,” she explained. “So if it was staying the same, it means we’re not doing our jobs. [We ask], what can we do better? What can we be looking at? What data can we be looking at and how can we raise more money? How can we bring more people in? How can we make sure all the departments’ needs are met? So that makes each day a little different.”

In addition to raising money for Mercy Home, Stef also explained how important brand awareness is just as important to our mission.

“[We want] to show what a great mission we have and what a great place this is and [how] it’s actually making a difference in Chicago and just trying to get that out into the world—that this place exists for the kids here and even if they don’t live here, we are such a resource in Chicago,” she said.