Jane Ziegler Sojka
Alumni Spotlight: Jane Ziegler Sojka
Yes. I know. You looked at my job title, and you’re ready to stop reading. Another English major who sold out to the dark side of business. And I get it. The last career I ever thought I’d be doing after graduating with honors in English from IU was an academic career teaching marketing and, gasp, sales. While I wish I could say it was my plan all along, the truth is, my career path was more trial and error and eventually connect-the dots. But it worked. I have taught over 2000 students (mostly women) how to take risks, practice resilience, build confidence and ask for what they want—i.e. skills required for sales and life. Turns out, the skills I learned from my English degree were the perfect foundation for a career in business.
My dream to become an English professor, like the IU English faculty I so admired, was crushed by the economic reality of job prospects for Ph.Ds in English at the time. So, needing a paycheck, I found my way to business—a HVAC equipment manufacturer no less—and became the first (and only) woman manager in my division. How did I parlay my English degree? Because it was recognized that I knew how to write—every memo (email had not yet been invented), that my VP sent to his superiors, was first edited by me. Knowledge is power and I had access to more information than the boys shared in their Friday night poker games. Though my colleagues were more impressed with my MBA financial coursework, the truth is that many of the exams were essays—not number crunching, thank goodness—and, as an English major, I could write my way out of a paper bag. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that advertising and branding copy were very similar to poetry—every word counts—and I was hooked on the language of marketing.
Fast forward and I revised my dream of teaching English in college to teaching marketing in higher education instead. Once again, my English degree served me well: first, in writing my dissertation, which felt like writing a longer version of my English honors thesis with Terry Martin; and, second, when my committee, though sometimes underwhelmed by my statistical analysis, agreed it “read like a novel” and passed me. The topic? What could be more appropriate for an English major than studying professional selling—a dialogue between a buyer and seller, not unlike the dramas I studied as an undergraduate.
And remember those pesky foreign language undergraduate requirements? After acknowledging I had no talent for learning French (full disclosure: my lowest grade at IU), I took three Russian Literature courses to fulfill the requirement. Little did I know those courses would benefit my business career. At an unexciting sales conference, I fortuitously found myself sitting next to a New York Times best-selling sales author. Bored with the conversation about sales, we started talking about Russian Literature. (This is where my mind fails—I have no idea how we got onto that topic. But we did, and it worked). We made a connection over literature that cultivated a powerful professional contact, enabling me to establish an award-winning Sales Center at my current academic institution.
And now, after ten years of teaching my national award-winning course, “Women in Sales,” my book, Women and Power: Your Guidebook to Risk, Resilience, and Confidence, is forthcoming this summer. Where did I learn to write? You guessed it. IU Department of English. I would not be here without it.
Recommendations for other English majors? First, instead of trying to imagine yourself in five years, look at the options open to you right now and take the next step. Place less emphasis on the long term and focus instead on what’s available now. Your first job will lead to your second job and so on. What did I learn from my first job working at a bank with my English degree? I learned I hated numbers and sitting behind a computer all day. Great insight when searching for my next job.
My second piece of advice is don’t get stuck on the degree—focus instead on the invaluable skill set you learned from your studies. For example, I learned how to ask probing questions to uncover customer needs in an anthropology qualitative methods course—not a sales course. Yet the science and art of asking good questions is a vital skill set for sales.
Finally, look for alternative outlets for the best parts of your degree. For example, I teach college marketing. My first love is teaching; marketing is a vehicle to satisfy my passion. I have a friend who is a journalist who writes about Africa. Her first love is Africa—journalism is a way to pursue her passion.
Most importantly, remember your alma mater. I am truly grateful for all the IU English faculty members who made me who I am today.
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Jane Ziegler Sojka is marketing professor at the University of Cincinnati where she teaches women to practice resilience and take initiative in her award-winning “Women in Sales” course. She speaks on women empowerment in her publications and her TEDx talk, “Empowering Women Benefits Everyone.” Her book, Women & Power: Your Guidebook to Risk, Resilience, and Confidence, was published in August. She graduated from IU with a BA (English) in 1976.
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