Pamela Koo, NVIDIA’s Senior Director of Integrated Digital Marketing, embodies a global career spanning multiple industries and continents.
Born and raised in New York City, Pamela’s journey brought her to Europe for more than a decade before leading her to her current homebase of California. Her robust career within the fashion, entertainment, finance, and now technology field has cultivated exceptional skills in change management and impactful communication. At NVIDIA, Pamela orchestrates a variety of connection points, from integrated digital campaigns and social media strategies, to paid media amplification across consumer, enterprise, and developer realms. Her passion is fueled by NVIDIA's audacious purpose to redefine computing boundaries.
We asked Pamela about how her career background has led her to where she is today, the most rewarding part of her current role, and the advice she would give someone starting on the journey she’s on.
Tell us about your career background. How has it led you to where you are today?
My team manages amplification of our NVIDIA campaigns and messaging. This is the third team that I’m leading at NVIDIA. Prior to NVIDIA, I worked in the fashion, entertainment, and financial industries. My more than 20 year career has given me the opportunity to learn how to navigate different perspectives and find solutions to complex problems. Global experience in change management, strategic thinking, and concise communications have been key to getting where I am today. I will admit that moving back to the U.S. and navigating communications has taken some getting used to after being in Europe for so long!
What piece of advice has played the biggest role in your career so far?
Always think three steps ahead and be prepared for multiple contingency plans. If something changes, how would you approach it?
When presenting to senior level management, make sure you have your top five points that you want to communicate, expressing them clearly and concisely. You don’t want to trap yourself with 20 different points. What is the one thing you want to achieve coming out of this meeting?
Where possible, tailor your messaging to your audience. Personalized messaging will always perform better than generic messaging—whether it's in your marketing messaging or in a presentation. Who are you speaking to, and how will you help them solve their problem at hand?
What problem does NVIDIA solve? What are some of the most meaningful impacts your company has had to date?
Our purpose at NVIDIA is to accelerate computing far beyond its previous limitations, enabling technology to address challenges that were previously unsolvable. NVIDIA technology has opened the door to artificial intelligence, which requires crunching enormous amounts of data to extract intelligence from data. This is driving breakthroughs in virtually every industry, from robotics and autonomous driving, to drug discovery and medical imaging, to cybersecurity and new forms of energy.
What is the most rewarding part about your current role?
My role in digital marketing has given me the opportunity to collaborate across the business at NVIDIA, working closely with our enterprise, developer, and consumer campaign teams, PR, analytics, product, sales, and regional teams. I get to learn from the best every single day.
What leadership skills are you most proud of having honed?
Strategic and critical thinking is going to be the most important skill to have, especially using AI on a daily basis as a productivity tool. The ability to take a look at the work that my team is doing and provide clear and concise feedback is important for what we’re amplifying and communicating out to the world.
We are in a world now where information is abundant and people are talking through a variety of communications channels all day, every day. Something typed over an email or a Slack message can be easily misconstrued. The ability to help translate and mediate communications between people and teams helps greatly. At the end of the day, everyone wants to do a great job. It's just getting everyone on the same page so we can collaborate better together.
NVIDIA technology is driving breakthroughs in virtually every industry, from robotics and autonomous driving, to drug discovery and medical imaging, to cybersecurity and new forms of energy.
What’s something you do outside of work that makes you a better leader?
Having had the opportunity to live abroad and travel has enabled me to continue to meet new people, embrace different cultures, and see things from a perspective other than my own. I also try to take time for myself to focus on my health by going on hikes with my family and to the pilates studio. I show up for myself so that I can show up for others.
What’s been the No. 1 lesson you’ve learned about hiring since you started at NVIDIA?
Building a broadly diverse team isn’t just the right thing to do, but the breadth of experiences and perspectives it brings leads to better decision making, team dynamics, and ideas coming to the table. As a company and team, you can’t continue to grow unless you are hiring people with different backgrounds and points of view that will help to push boundaries.
What advice would you give someone starting out on the journey you’re on?
Details matter—they ladder up to the strategy. You can’t be strategic unless you understand what’s going on under the hood and how everything connects.
Always be learning. Once you start to feel complacent, ask for another project/stretch assignment, take a course, or learn another skill set.
