Three Questions with Account Manager Rachel Shepheard

NAME: Rachel Shepheard
TITLE: Account Manager
OFFICE: San Francisco
TIME AT LAUNCHSQUAD: 1 month

What made you decide to come to LaunchSquad? 

I moved to San Francisco from Melbourne, Australia in late 2015. I was working for an Australian start-up that wanted to expand into the States and I came over to assist with that.

A few months later my husband went on a ‘Tech Walk’ through San Francisco and one of the stops was the LaunchSquad offices. He started chatting with one of the editors from [our content agency] Original9 about football. They suggested I get in touch to say hello. It was completely serendipitous and perfect.

As soon as I read more about LaunchSquad, I knew it would be a great fit. LaunchSquad combines all my loves: writing, editing and pitching all in the name of helping to build great companies and tell great stories.

The lesson in all this is: follow your feet and your passions, and, if at all possible, marry an Irishman who could talk the leg off a chair!

Do you remember your first day at LS? What was it like?

It was slightly disorienting as all first days are. It’s hard being new. I don’t enjoy the feeling of not knowing where the coffee cups are or how the scanner works (even though everyone was very nice and showed me). The day started with an orientation session and then I was sent into my first client call, so it was straight in the deep end but in the best possible way.

If you could give one piece of advice for someone looking to break into the PR industry, what would it be?

Honestly, my personal opinion is that if you want to be good at PR, you need to be a good all-rounder (to borrow a term from cricket). You need to be a rock star generalist, comfortable in many hats, able to walk a mile in a dozen pairs of shoes, and the only way to achieve that is to read, read, read. Read everything you can, as much as you can, as often as you can. The bigger your brain, the better you are at this job.

Want to meet more of the Squad? Check out our other interviews here!