#WomenOfWonder: You Can’t See What You’re Learning Until You Come Out The Other Side
Meet Andrea Bibbs: Vice President, Ad Sales Marketing & Studio Operations, WarnerMedia GroupWritten by Myrna L. DatilusSpotlight Blogger, SIS Andrea Bibbs is the VP of Ad Sales Marketing & Studio Operations at WarnerMedia Group and has an impressive resume that details exactly how she has worked so diligently over the past two decades to get where she is today. During our conversation I was able to learn how many things we had in common, including our West Indian cultural backgrounds, and how driven Andrea is about getting to the next level in her life both professionally and personally. As teenagers from Guyana, Andrea’s parents moved to London separately, and when they met one another for the first time in the early-’70s, they decided to migrate to Canada together a few years later in the mid’70s. That is where the story of Andrea Harry Bibbs begins. Andrea is a Guyanese- Canadian woman who prides herself on her cultural identity and embraces the values that have been instilled in her from her parents. Andrea is also “a wife and a mother to two amazing young children; my oldest is my 8 yr old daughter Bailey, and my youngest is my 5 yr old son, Braeden.” Since the children were born in the USA, and surrounded by American culture, Andrea and her husband, Trey, find that it’s important that they learn about their Canadian and Guyanese roots and history. “So it’s just, I think, similar to sort of what my parents did. They didn’t want us to lose that piece. And I feel really, it’s funny how life works. It’s like such a circle because I feel like the same thing. I don’t want them to lose that piece of who they are.” Based on all I have learned about Andrea in such a short amount of time, I am sure the children will never lose but only gain more of who they are in this world, just like their mother did. In the first Wonder Woman movie, the love interest of Wonder Woman, Steve, made a strong statement, “It’s not about what you think you deserve, it’s about what you believe,” and it made me ask Andrea about her own life’s values and beliefs. I want to know how exactly they help her to reach the level of success she has in both her personal and professional life, and she simply responds, “One of my core values is leading with kindness. That’s something that my parents would always talk about.” Kindness and an added core value of relationship building is what has helped Andrea remain and thrive at WarnerMedia for about 21 years now. In 1998, Andrea started off as an Intern at CNN at the age of 21, right before graduating from Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. A year after she graduated, she was offered an opportunity to come back to work for them. “I think that’s something that has never really changed about me. In this business of media and sales, it can be a really cut throat, competitive type business. I just never changed who I was in terms of being kind first of all, being empathetic, but really focusing on relationships and making sure that I was respecting folks just as what I wanted in return.” Andrea prides herself on forging genuine relationships, and not ones based only on ‘what can you do for me? How can you get me ahead?’ Andrea always kept a ‘how can I help you?’ approach with most if not all the relationships she has built throughout this business. Nonetheless, Andrea learned that being a kind, empathetic person doesn’t always go hand in hand with being a leader and moving up the corporate ladder. “I feel like I’ve just always led from a place of trying to be helpful while focusing on the right type of relationships.” This approach may have had her go up the corporate ladder at a slower pace, but by getting to where she is now by remaining true to herself and not stepping on any necks to get there, has helped her to be a true advocate of authenticity & integrity within the sales industry. That one trip to Atlanta right before graduating college, led Andrea in 2000 (2yrs after graduating), to work at CNN/Sports Illustrated as a liaison between their website and on-air shows. She then went on to CNN.com in 2002 as an Associate Producer where she also served as a liaison between the site and shows, as well as working on interactive content for the site. “Working closely with the TV network and the site, again, was through relationships. I’d only been there for like a year and a half, but I think I had forged really great relationships where we kind of knew that something might happen with the network and the person who was then the lead of CNN digital whom, I’ve worked with before, said if anything happens to come find him….as soon as we found out that the network was shutting down, I reached out to him and I got a job there within a couple of weeks.” To prove Andrea’s consistent message of relationship building, a fun fact about her is that almost every single job she has had at Warner Media has been through the relationships she has built these 20 + years that she can hopefully expand a bit more of. Being a people person and genuinely helping people will always keep Andrea at a place of success, because she has proven herself to be time after time again, a very selfless person; and from my own experience, those types of people make it very far in life. Another part of the first Wonder Woman movie which I loved so much, is when Diana realized her own strength while catching her own fall off the side of a building; she recognized one of her superpowers while in that moment and then she became unstoppable. That scene made me wonder, when did Andrea realize her own strength and that she too, was unstoppable? Andrea responded surprisingly by saying, “I’m still trying to find that strength.