Employee of the Quarter: Amy Arnold

designIQ: High-Quality Creative Solutions for Any Business

DesignIQ’s Newest Employee of the Quarter: Amy Arnold

DesignIQ strives to embody the core values of strength in community, progress through passion, action with purpose, and belief in people. We pride ourselves in welcoming challenges of all sizes, all while consistently collaborating and owning our commitments. For these reasons and more, we’re proud to announce Amy Arnold as the Employee of the Quarter. Amy exemplifies our commitment to delivering outstanding solutions to our non-Gannett partners and our clients. Amy has been with Gannett for over 13 years, with her first position being at the Nashville Tennessean as a graphic designer. In 2009, she transitioned to her designIQ role, where she now serves as Senior Manager, Onboarding and Implementation. Amy believes trust and communication guide great managers and customer service representatives. Her passion and dedication are why her peers recognized her as an employee worthy of this honor.

“My favorite part of working at designIQ is our customers,” Amy says. “I am very involved in the customer side, and I love meeting our customers and interacting with them and building those relationships. I have made lifelong friendships with some of our customers.”

Client-Facing Solutions Using Communication Skills

Her role is uniquely client-facing, demanding, and reliant on the ability to communicate clearly. She assesses customer needs and executes strategies flawlessly. Amy’s job is to ensure product launches with designIQ run smoothly, from the initial meetings to post-launch. Under her leadership, her talented team builds a strong relationship with clients that continue long after their product has launched. Preparing a new site partner requires considerable coordination and tireless legwork, and Amy oversees anything the site needs, including in-person training to daily tasks related to product implementation.

Challenges are a significant part of any job, and Amy has a simple philosophy for resolving them: communication. “That’s the most important thing. When people come to me with an issue or a concern, they really just want to be heard. So I give them the opportunity to talk.” She says enabling her clients to air their concerns or questions allows her team to focus on finding quicker and more effective resolutions to those problems.

Common-Sense Solutions, No Matter the Location

Travel is a critical component of Amy’s job. Most of her time is spent with customers, with 10 to 15 percent of it spent at conferences. There, she meets prospective clients and explains how designIQ can help with creative services ranging from websites to print products. She spends time with our non-Gannett partners and helps clients transition to a new world with new products.

The secret to resolving problems, according to Amy, is drawing inspiration from the past and trusting her clients’ judgment. She tries to put herself in her customers’ shoes. Most of the time, she says, the customers’ methods will work just fine when executing new digital strategies. Amy and her team use their clients’ past successes to deliver results once control of the project is handed to her. Trust in her team is also a factor.

“A lot of it comes down to trust. That’s a big thing for me,” she says. “You really have to trust your teammates. I was very lucky that I got to choose my own team. I made sure I chose individuals who were stronger in other areas than myself. It’s important to have folks who can complement your skills and bring new skills to life for you.”

For instance, over the last few months, Amy helped oversee the rollout of ATOL V6, a new version of the ad delivery system enabling designIQ to provide valuable services to our clients. The undertaking required extensive collaboration, and its success is integral to our ability to provide a quality product to our clients. Amy credits her team with coming together to help make the project a success, an accomplishment she’s proud of.

With Ten Years of Experience, Amy Knows What to Do

Ten years is no small amount of time to be filled to the brim with passion and excitement, but Amy exemplifies this day in and day out. She credits designIQ’s product and customers with motivating her to excel. “We have an amazing product, and we are helping people,” she says. “We are helping media companies to grow. We are helping them in the sense of giving them new products to offer their customers. We’re out there trying to help folks to grow and increase their revenue.”

So, what does the next year bring? Amy is looking forward to finding new ways to deliver outstanding products to the clients she’s grown close to over the years. She embraces change and innovation, and she’s built a team that believes the same. Amy is an invaluable resource to our team. “People see me as the go-to person at designIQ. I have a really good grasp on the entire organization as a whole.” Most importantly, Amy wants to continue building open and honest relationships.

Despite all her hard work, jet-setting across the country to help her customers, Amy is an avid traveler in her downtime. She and her husband love to explore new places. If you run into her in her neighborhood, you might see her walking with her officemate, her dog Lucy. And if you live in one of the cities Amy visits for work, you might find her dining at a respected local restaurant. DesignIQ is proud of what Amy has accomplished this quarter, and we can’t wait to see what she has in store for us next.