Live from Los Angeles — where I was born and raised
Alisa Valencia Gowing
I entered the social media industry as a freelance copywriter with a boutique marketing firm in 2012. A year later, I joined the Konnect Public Relations team where I built the foundation of my social media knowledge working with clients across many verticals. Together with the CEO and COO of Konnect PR, I helped lead the establishment of Konnect Interactive, a sister agency focused on social media. I was honored to receive the 2014 Bulldog Stars of PR award for Social Media Innovator of the Year for my work with Konnect Interactive, as well as an AVA Digital award on behalf of the agency.
Ready to take on an in-house challenge, I accepted a position as Social Media Manager with lifestyle footwear brand SKECHERS in 2015. There I led a team of 3 social media marketers domestically and oversaw a team of 20-plus international marketing partners. I developed strategies and campaigns that led to massive growth in followers and engagement across all Skechers social accounts. I moved to San Francisco in 2017 and shortly thereafter accepted a position leading social media for InVision, a fully-remote digital product design platform. At InVision, I had the opportunity to create one social media strategy to unite all stakeholders, implement social-led campaigns, work with hundreds of influencers, and ultimately help InVision grow their social following by 74%, increase engagement by 110%, and generate 4.8M sessions in just 2 years. I joined Slack in September 2019 and it’s quickly proven to be my best adventure yet. I plan to stick around for awhile, but my mission to help brands create connection and achieve business goals through social media isn’t changing any time soon.
“I spent months looking for the right person to run social media at InVision. I hit the jackpot when I found Alisa.
It didn’t take her long to create a positive impact on our social platforms. Aside from accelerating growth on our core social accounts, she also spun up new social properties where she quickly grew a following. She’s equal parts creative and strategic, and always backs up her efforts with data.
Alisa is a tremendously hard worker, clever thinker, and a total pleasure to work alongside.”
“Alisa is the kind of person who accepts a challenge, strategizes, and delivers results three times better than what you hoped for. She constantly executes at the highest level across projects and teams, and does so with humility and kindness. When it comes to challenging situations, Alisa is a pro—her ability to handle conflict, tight deadlines, and many moving parts is one of her best qualities, and it’s also what makes her an exceptional leader. As a teammate, she’s always willing to go out of her way to make you smile or help you think through something on your own to-do list. Beyond her strategic mastery of content and communications, Alisa is an exceptional person who would (does!) enrich any team she contributes to.”
“There is no question that Alisa is a social media maven. In short order she transformed InVision’s social presence from all business, all the time, to one that is more human and heart-centered. She worked closely with my team on event programs to ensure our social amplification efforts benefited the community as much as it benefited the org. With a strategic eye, creative chops and an empathy driven approach, she had the instinct and fortitude to ensure our efforts were always authentic - immeasurably contributing to our community’s affinity and love for our brand. Sure Alisa has a way with words, but more profoundly, she has a way with people. This is her superpower. She challenged those she worked with - both up and down the org - to do and be better. If you have the chance to work with her - run towards that opportunity. You and your brand will be all the better for it.”
“Every once in a while, I come across someone whose talent for building strategic, interesting, impactful, and creative programs *from the ground up* stops me in my tracks. Alisa is one of those people. From her first day (literally, we worked an important panel event together on Alisa’s first day and she completely nailed it), Alisa has been demonstrating why serious companies treat social media marketing as the crucial, highly strategic marketing program it is—and invest in serious professionals who get results.
Through everything from tying social programs to core marketing goals to changing the way the entire company engages with the community on social channels, Alisa has completely transformed InVision’s social media program and impact. Alisa thinks strategically, really gets high-level messaging, has a strong eye for data and measurement—and understands how to integrate across the marketing org and beyond to customer-facing, people, support, and executive teams too. She’s also organized, thorough, responsible, and highly creative.
Not only is she a slam-dunk hire as a marketing professional, but she’s also one of the warmest, most empathetic, collaborative teammates I’ve ever worked with. She’s willing to go above and beyond, maintains incredibly high standards for her work, and makes every day better for her team. You may see a lot of glowing reviews for social media professionals who check all the ‘skills’ boxes—but I promise you none of them will be as much of an all-around all-star as Alisa. I would hire, work with, or work for Alisa in a heartbeat.”