Alumni Profiles: Holly Gage

What made you decide to do a degree in American studies?

I decided I wanted to do American Studies because I was interested in studying history, literature, politics and a wider range of subjects. I wanted to do specifically modern political history and in my A Level we did modern political European history. And I’d studied a lot of literature, but I wanted to focus on one country. I wanted to focus specifically on America. I could focus on another country without having to learn another language as well, which was definitely, probably a key factor.

What did you study prior to your degree?

I did A Levels in History, English and Sociology.

And how did a degree in American studies equipped you for your future career?

I would say American studies equips you in the same way that History degree would, or an English or Politics degree. Because you learn to make a compelling argument and you learn to do research and really get to grips with a subject. But I would also say that because of the third year going abroad, going to the United States in 3rd year really equipped me. I had points in my career where I was given the opportunity to work overseas but often at short notice. It was exactly 20 years ago almost to the day I was working as a marketing manager for a conference company and they said, in London, and they said to me could you go to Singapore tomorrow for a month? Because our two marketing managers have just resigned and we need someone over there. So I didn’t go the next day for a month, I went after the weekend and stayed for five months and I think that having spent that year in the US you have to be a bit brave. I think that’s a really good way that equipped me because I had that experience of living and working overseas.

What has been your create trajectory so far?

When I left university, because of American studies, I went and lived in Canada for a year. I mean literally a week after I graduated. But then when I came back and started looking for work, I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to do. General business was an idea, so I ended up working in sales and telesales for a couple of years, running sales teams. That was really interesting and a good start. Then I made a move from sales into marketing. I then stayed working as a marketing manager, running marketing teams, in a couple of different companies and then I moved from being in an in-house marketer.

I’m a B2B marketer – “business to business” marketing – which is much, much more interesting marketing than the slightly sexier and more popular “business to consumer” marketing which a lot of people go into. What’s changed a lot over the course of my career in marketing is the massive explosion of marketing technology. So marketing automation and all the different marketing tools that help marketers to do their job. I moved into marketing consulting, specifically around marketing automation. I was doing that for a number of years and then I decided to work for myself as a consultant. To give myself more flexibility, not work full time. Which was great because it gave me more flexibility. I had two 7 year olds at the time, and then I finally made the leap back in the last six months to work in-house, so working for Okta, in marketing operations.

And what has been your proudest career moment to date?

Probably when I made the leap to work for myself four years ago. I had no clients lined up and I just knew it was something I really wanted to do. But I didn’t want to focus on what I was actually going to do until I left the company. I was focused on what I was doing, then I made the leap and then I started working on what it would look like and where the clients would come from. And my proudest moment is the fact that I managed to sustain that and find the projects, keep working, keep the income coming in and keep it at the level that it was before I left this other company.

Could you tell me a bit more of your experience during the study abroad?

I went to the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, which is about two hours south of Chicago, and it was fabulous. I mean it’s a huge university. I was at Manchester in the UK so that was already a big university and also very much student city. Moving from a city university to a campus university in the middle of farmland was a complete different experience. I moved with three others from my course, and luckily we all got on very well. But we met so many other people because there was a big study abroad programme there as well as lots of Americans that we were living with. There were also people over from Australia and other parts of the UK.

What was great was that because American Studies is so broad and you study lots of different subjects, we had quite a wide range of courses that we could pick to study while we were there, so we did all sorts of interesting things. We did a few film studies courses, we did some anthropology courses. I mean it’s such a wide range. I did some great American literature courses that were probably the stand-out ones for me. But what was also great was travelling and seeing America. So we did a spring break tour across from Illinois to San Francisco by Death Valley and Yosemite and Las Vegas, which was a very whistle stop tour but it was amazing to see these places. We went down to Mardi Gras which, because New Orleans is directly south of Illinois, it’s about a 13 hour drive, so a lot of us got in the van and we drove down to Mardi Gras. We all got to see lots of different things and the university organised trips as well, that we got to go on.

So what did you enjoy the most about your degree studies?

Combining the different subjects together was the most interesting thing. For example, we did a course on American history and literature in the 60s and 70s. And what I really liked was we learned the context of the book, so what was going on at the time. But then we thought about the impact the book had on society – this is how people were feeling and so things like the paranoia came out in the literature that we were reading. You weren’t studying a book in isolation, which we had done in literature in the past with A Level. But when you’re actually thinking about “What’s the impact on the wider culture?” that was much more interesting, when you look at the politics with the history and

Do you have any advice for people considering a degree in American Studies?

I think if you are somebody who really likes studying the humanities, and you have got to the point where you want that breadth of subjects, you want to learn much more about one particular area, I think go for it. I think it’s really helped me for work – I think one of the ways it’s helped me in the work situation is that I’ve gravitated towards working for American companies. I like working with Americans, I like working for American companies, and I think having spent those four years doing American studies has been a really great foundation for that. I think that experience of going to the US for me was a critical part of it as well.

If you could travel anywhere in the Americas, where would you go?

Hawaii, because when I was travelling around I did an Amtrak trip at the end of my year in the States, and I went literally around the whole of the continental US, except I didn’t go to Alaska and I didn’t go to Hawaii. And there were a couple of states that the Amtrak does not go through, like Oklahoma So even if I didn’t stop somewhere, and even though it was a quick tour, I got to see a lot of the US. But I would love to go to Hawaii because it just looks so different and I am fascinated by the fact that it is still part of the US.

And finally, are there any books, records, films, and / or TV shows that you would recommend to prospective students?

I would recommend Tennessee Williams, any of his plays. Watch them, or read them. I just think, I just love the emotion and the characters. They’re a world away and I just think it’s brilliant.