Crushing It in a Male-Dominated Industry
Colleen Quinn
BS in Business Administration and Economics
Current Role: Sales Activation Manager at Gallo
Colleen Quinn remembers vividly how she felt upon reading her letter of acceptance to Saint Mary’s College. “They quoted a line from my essay,” she reflected. “No other school bothered to prove they’d actually read my college essay. That one gesture told me Saint Mary’s saw me as a person, not a number.”
Admittedly, Quinn feared getting lost on a massive campus, and as well as getting lost in a crowd. The personalized acceptance letter from Saint Mary’s sealed the deal for her, and four years later (2017), she graduated with a major in Business Administration, with a concentration in Marketing, and a minor in Economics. Soon after she moved out of her dorm room at Saint Mary’s, she began her first job at E. & J. Gallo—now Gallo—the world’s largest family owned alcohol beverage supplier—and moved to New Hampshire to begin her professional career.
It’s been nearly 10 years since Quinn began at Gallo. Since then, Quinn has earned several promotions, all of which brought her from Saint Mary’s to New Hampshire, New Hampshire to Connecticut, Connecticut to Upstate New York, and now back home in the suburbs of Chicago. Today, she serves as a Sales Activation Manager, managing the top line communication from Gallo to distributors of Gallo products across 11 states.
Reflecting on her growth since being launched into the “real world” from college, Quinn noted that in the beginning, as a young woman, it was “very jarring” to be one of few, and sometimes the only, woman in a room of a male-dominated field. At 24 years old, Quinn accepted her first managerial position.
“I had a team of six sales reps, all men,” Quinn recalled, “all over the age of 45. I was 24, and several of them had all, for the most part, been in the industry longer than I had been alive.” But, remembering words of wisdom given to her during office hours one day, by her former Business professor, Jim Rogers: “You can do this. You will do this, and you won't even just do it. You’ll do it well, and you'll be outstanding.”
So, when Quinn began this new position managing six experienced colleagues older than she, “There was a confidence in me. I didn't go in with an ego. I didn't go in thinking ‘I am the best, and therefore you all will listen to me’, and then come down with a hammer. I approached my team with knowledge I could bring to them, but I also wanted to learn from the knowledge my team could share with me, too.”
She believes the way she chooses to posture herself as a leader and manager is because of lessons taught in and outside of the classroom at Saint Mary’s. She learned that a well-rounded confidence comes from knowing one’s worth, and understanding one’s value, but that neither can be rooted in ego. “It’s rooted in the idea of being a lifelong learner, and wanting to challenge yourself. It’s rooted in not being uncomfortable if you don’t know something, and not feeling uncomfortable to ask a question.”
“At Saint Mary’s, I was never taught that I needed to know everything, be the smartest person in the room, or outperform my peers…There's this acceptance, a willingness, an eagerness, even, to learn from the people around you.”
Quinn brings this mentality with her wherever she goes: “I think the lessons in confidence and leadership I learned at Saint Mary’s continue to be reasons why I feel successful. I think Saint Mary’s is the reason I have the ability to improve the work I do.”
Quick Takes
- Tradition: Midnight breakfast
- Dining Hall Meal: Soup
- Class: Brand Marketing
- Spot on campus: A bench close to the Bridge on Lake Marian, looking out onto The Island.
- Place to live: Le Mans Hall