What brought you to Iowa?

At the time, I was working for a brain injury rehabilitation center called ResCare Premier. That’s an interesting story simply from the fact that I was planning on going to Missouri for six weeks, and I was leaving on a Monday. The Friday before, I got a phone call saying, “April, we’d like for you to go to Iowa instead. And if you like it there, you can stay.”

What is AMA Iowa?

We are a group of marketing professionals. We bring together and try to give to them thought-provoking educational materials and information that they can utilize in their professional lives. So one of our top priorities as an organization this year, and I think in the past years, has been to really give our members and offer our members top-notch programming that’s timely and relevant to what’s happening in the industry. We want them to be able to really take some value back with them. We have several new programs that we put together this past year. For example, we had our first annual golf outing, first annual Agency Crawl. We also do some networking throughout the year.

Talk about your goals.

We have a strong foundation as a group. We’ve had a lot of great leaders in the past, which I really think is going to help our board move forward, and we’re going to continue to focus on building on that foundation and striving to take the chapter to new levels. The top priority is to continue to offer timely and relevant programming for our members that adds value, not only to their professional life, but to their personal life. Since we have put some new things in place, I think our main goal is to take some of those lessons learned from the events that we had this past year and really build upon those.

How does AMA Iowa mesh with your role at Marsh?

I’m responsible here at Marsh for implementing and executing strategies from an aggregate level all the way to the campaign level, so really looking at our marketing as a whole, for my assigned clients. That’s essentially what we are doing here in the marketing association. My favorite thing, I think, to say about the association is that there has not been one time where I haven’t been able to come back with some piece of information – whether it’s about what I do on a daily basis or not – that provokes creative thinking. That’s one of the great values that I get out of the luncheons and the meetings and the networking opportunities. You can provoke creative thinking.

What is AMA Iowa doing to usher its members into the social media age?

Our clients, our customers, the people that are going to purchase our products or services or whatever it is we have to offer – we are challenged by clutter and how to break through the noise. I think when we look at what we are bringing in – our programming – that is top of mind. I feel like we are really trying to bring that piece to the table. I think we are all learning together.

What else is AMA Iowa up to?

The theme around the year is “grow, give, get.” Out of that, we’ve started our first “give.” We introduced it this week at our monthly meeting. What we are really excited about is that we are going to be partnering with the American Cancer Society. I’m very passionate, personally, about the fight for cancer. I think just about anyone you talk to has been touched in some way, whether it is a friend, a parent, a mom, a grandparent. Anything we do this year from a community relations standpoint, we’ve decided that it is all going to be based around cancer, whether it’s breast cancer, lymphoma, any kind of cancer. … We’ve had five people pledge $1,000 so far.

What keeps you busy outside of work?

I like to exercise. I’d rather be doing kickboxing or something of that nature. Spending time with my children and my family is important, a priority. I have to plan, because we live busy lives. I like to read; I don’t always get to read as much as I’d like. I fiddle with my iPad, my Android phone. I have to have one of each, because I’m a marketer. My motto is to work hard and play hard, and I think I do a little bit of both.