Her Magazine is New Zealand’s only women’s business lifestyle magazine! Her Magazine highlights the achievements of successful and rising New Zealand businesswomen. Her Magazine encourages a healthy work/life balance.
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After working in public relations for Presence Limited (now Creo Communications) and Telecom, Annie moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006. While there she furthered her public relations career working as an account manager for Text 100. A shift to Sydney in 2008 to a position with Google made the most of Annie's qualification repertoire. "They were looking for someone who knew New Zealand really well and had strong media relations there, had worked in technology and who knew Silicon Valley and the Silicon Valley vibe. Unwittingly I'd been gathering these attributes, and again it would have been almost impossible to tell from the beginning where I would end up. I now have this real trust that things are working out as they're supposed to. As long as you stay open to opportunities, things are going to happen." Two years later Annie returned to the United States to take up her communications role with YouTube. Within two months she was at The White House helping run a YouTube interview with President Obama. It's opportunities like this, she says, that are truly remarkable, even though they may be completely unfamiliar territory. "Being at The White House was one of those moments when you're sitting there thinking how did I get here? The attitude I take to those types of challenges is one of thinking like a beginner. There's no way I can be expected to know how to do these things, because I've never done them before. In many cases YouTube is so new that nobody has ever done them before, so we're working it all out together as a team. I wasn't hired because I had done everything before. I was presumably hired because I'm open-minded, I'm smart, I have a go, I work really hard to get the right answer and I believe in the mission of Google and YouTube." "Being at The White House was one of those moments when you're sitting there thinking how did I get here?" At only seven-years-old, YouTube makes a large impact on the social media scene, with around four billion views per day and 60 hours of video uploaded every minute. "YouTube is a pretty amazing place to be in terms of the magnitude of what you're dealing with," says Annie. "There's also an enormous amount of change in the industry and within YouTube, and it's our team's job to keep up with that and work out how to communicate with the 800 million or so people that use it every month." Part of Annie's role involves the YouTube For Good initiative, an internal effort with a focus on developing products and features to assist non-profit organisations deliver their message through video. "YouTube For Good is the opportunity to take the scale of YouTube and put it to good use," explains Annie. "Video is such an amazing tool for influencing people and getting a message across. I think what gets us so excited at YouTube is that it's such a level playing field. You don't need to be buying advertisements on television or putting up massive billboards all over the city. If it's the right video you can get the world's attention." YouTube for Good also turns its interest to education, working with a number of the world's top universities to make their lectures and courses available online through video. "I can easily think back to moments in my schooling where I've had a great teacher who has changed my life and set it on a new course," reflects Annie. "However, it used to be that we just had access to the teacher who happened to be employed by our school. In most cases that was wonderful, but in some cases it was not! Now anyone with an Internet connection is able to go online and see the lectures that a student at university will see – and we're talking here about establishments like Harvard, Stanford, www.hermagazine.co.nz | 17