The 'Soft Skills’ Helping Amanda Bopp ’01 Succeed in a Data-Driven Fashion World

With nearly two decades of experience working with some of the world’s top consumer brands, Amanda Bopp ‘01 has seen first-hand how the rise of “Big Data” has changed the game in retail.

Brands now have access to more consumer data than ever before, but with that data comes the challenge of leveraging it to create the efficient, emotionally attractive and personalized service that shoppers now expect.

While technical skills are key to navigating that landscape, Bopp, who is currently vice president of digital marketing & analytics at life and style brand Kate Spade New York, says the “soft skills” she learned as an undergraduate at Saint Joseph’s have also been crucial to her success.

“The world is changing so quickly, and the rate at which we’re able to learn things and understand them has increased exponentially,” she said during a recent lecture on campus. “But you have to make sure you have a solid foundation, and that foundation should contain communication skills, critical thinking skills, the ability to think creatively and to be open-minded.”

Bopp visited Saint Joseph’s as part of the “Conversations with Interesting Women” lecture series in conjunction with the University’s 2020: Focus on Women initiative. The series continues March 26 with a scheduled lecture by Toni Pergolin, M.S. ’97, CEO of Bancroft, which offers services to adults and children with disabilities.

Bopp grew up just outside New York City and attended a small all-girls Catholic high school. When it came time to start thinking about college, she considered several smaller Catholic universities, but remembered visiting Saint Joseph’s the summer before senior year and having “a really great visit, and thinking it would be a good environment for me.”

“I wanted to go somewhere close to a city because I felt that access to culture and access to business was important to me in terms of thinking about internship opportunities and career development,” she said.

Bopp chose to major in international relations because she wanted to gain a global perspective and liked being able to take classes in political science, history and economics without having to choose one discipline.

“I wanted to understand why things in the world were the way they were, how things had been and how we got to where we are,” Bopp said.

Although Bopp hadn’t initially considered marketing as a possible career, a summer internship at an advertising agency ignited a passion for being able to do work related to something tangible that she could point to out in the world, whether it was a billboard along the highway or consumer goods in a department store display.

During her senior year, she interviewed with several companies, but after offers didn’t come initially, she visited Saint Joseph’s Career Development Center for advice. She shares one of the tips she received there with friends and colleagues to this day: “[Prospective employers] want to know you have the capability to be successful,” Bopp says. “You need to be able to explain how one success led to another success, and explain why you were a key participant in that success; it didn’t just happen to you.”

She got an offer on her next interview, with Nestlé, where she ended up working for more than seven years. It was while working there as a business analyst that she realized the value of a skill she had honed as an undergraduate taking economics classes -- the ability to link data to insights or outcomes, and being able to explain that connection clearly to different audiences.

“That was a pivotal place in my career,” Bopp said, noting that it also emphasized for her the importance of getting an education that focused on areas like writing and critical thinking.

“When I’m interviewing people to join my team, even as I think about people who are going to work on the data or analysis side, it’s important to find people who can share that information with the rest of the world, either verbally, in a presentation or as a data visualization,” she says. “Having that information is important, but it’s equally important to bring understanding of the information to others

Bopp went from Nestlé to working for two different analytics consulting firms where she was able to build on her passion for data by working side-by-side with scientists to develop and interpret insights for clients including L'Oréal, Estée Lauder and Michael Kors. From there, she was recruited to join Michael Kors as a Vice President focused on building a customer loyalty program and digital marketing strategy for the luxury fashion brand.

“It was a great opportunity to work with best-in-class tech companies like Google and Facebook. I also learned a tremendous amount about media,” Bopp said. “I took the previous chapter of my career -- data analytics -- and fused it into actionable marketing tactics.”

She joined Kate Spade New York after a former colleague was named CEO and asked her to come aboard for a few weeks. “Now a year and a half later, here I am.” The brand, which includes handbags, clothing, accessories and home goods, was founded in 1993 by Kate and Andy Spade, and was acquired in 2017 by Tapestry Inc. (formerly known as Coach Inc.)

Among her projects at Kate Spade New York has been to work at creating a “full funnel” digital marketing strategy with messaging crafted to each stage of the customer journey.

“I’m an intellectually curious person, and as long as there is a problem to solve or something to learn, I’m always really happy,” she says.

Another aspect of her Saint Joseph’s education that has helped her along the way is having a service-oriented mindset. “Teams today have to be highly collaborative,” she says. “Every tech discipline has grown up and accelerated quite rapidly in the last 5-10 years, but a lot of people in the workforce have grown up in very traditional disciplines before technology and data became a big deal. It’s really critical that if you have expertise in an area that is newer that you bring others along on the journey and find ways to partner and learn from each other.”