Education
From math class to marketing
Mary Catherine Nebel, ’10, C’15, and GC’17, is living the best of two worlds. With a passion for both marketing and education, she took her career from marketing coordinator to middle school teacher. Now, as a digital marketing manager at Age of Learning, she can have both.
As an undergraduate, Nebel planned on studying education, but then she fell in love with her marketing classes. She wound up pursuing a marketing career, continuing to feed her enthusiasm for education through volunteer work.
Then she returned to UR for a master’s degree in education.
“You’re helping the students not just learn the content, but learn how to be better citizens, better classmates.”
After that, Nebel taught elementary school, then middle school math. Her instruction style focused on “teaching the whole child,” she said. “You’re helping the students not just learn the content, but learn how to be better citizens, better classmates.”
Nebel found some teachers were leaving the traditional classroom for education technology, also known as edtech. She combined her interests and joined Age of Learning, a startup within ABCmouse, where she is responsible for digital content creation.
Nebel’s familiarity with the traditional classroom informs her audience-based approach. For example, she knows teachers will be interested in free access to supplemental materials, whereas administrators want building-wide progress reports. Although she is now outside the classroom, she still provides critical support to both staff and students.
“There’s a certain amount of passion that has to be there if you’re part of education,” she said. “It’s not easy work. But the more the work base truly understands what it’s like to be in a classroom, the more authentic and helpful [edtech] will be.”