Anne Roland

Area Director, Nordics, Meltwater Press

Birthplace: Drammen, Norway

Joined Meltwater: August 2006, Oslo

 

Who inspires you: Tony, Dennis, Anna and Christine – the management team for Nordics mPress. Also other people I have had the pleasure to work with closely before like Christian Finstad, Heidi Islann, Kaveh Rostampor and Kevin Lorenz. A lot of Meltwater people inspire me every day!

My three words to describe Meltwater: Ambition, “anything is possible” and challenging.

If you asked Anne if she was a risk taker, her answer would have to be yes, because it was deciding to take a risk on her first job that has seen her move from student to teacher and then on to being part of a team who built the mPress branch of the Meltwater Group from scratch.

“Thinking about my career, I knew I wanted to be a part of building something (a start up), I wanted to work with management and to be in an international environment,” Anne explains. “I had met Ingolf (then at the Bergen Meltwater office) and some other people at my university. I had never heard of the company before, but Meltwater seemed to be a young company, they seemed to employ a lot of fresh talent, and it also seems that the company had high ambitions to grow, not only in Norway, but internationally.”

Taking the first steps

Anne was understandably a little wary about taking such a risk in joining the then small team at Meltwater, but it was the ambitious spirit that existed within the business that really drew her to them.

“I hadn’t learned that much about Meltwater prior to my first interview because their homepage at the time had very limited information to offer.”

When asked if what she had learnt was an accurate reflection of the company, there were two words that really shone through for Anne.

“I remember Kaveh, who did the phone interview with me, spoke a lot about drive and ambition, and asked me several times about my own drive. When I met Jørn, CEO of  Meltwater Group, and the panel for the group stage of the interview process, I quickly realised that this was an ambitious bunch of people, and that drive and ambition were reflected by the people who worked there and the company itself.”

Anne continues to discuss her thoughts when the all important job offer finally came through.

“If I’m honest, I wasn´t sure I was going to take the job if I got it. Compared to what my friends were going to do, this was completely different. No one had heard of the company nor the products, it was a small company, and I had never done sales. It all felt very risky.” Anne says of the risk she decided to take on her first full time job, “In the end I decided to go for it after all – I was only 23 at the time and I really wanted to work for a smaller company with an entrepreneurial mindset and decided that I wanted to do my own thing – not follow what everyone else did.”

A new beginning

When asked what three words best describe Meltwater, Anne chooses belief, “anything is possible” and challenging. These are all words that describe Anne’s next steps within Meltwater.

“I have done a lot of cool things while I’ve been at Meltwater, but joining the mPress team, and being a part of a group of people challenged with building the mPress petal from scratch has been by far the coolest experience so far.” Anne explains, “We started in the US market to learn about both the product and our competitors. Then I moved back home to start building up the organization in the Nordic countries, with offices now in Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Helsinki.”

Looking back on that time, Anne reflects, “Having the opportunity to work with inspiring people from both Europe and the US, seeing how the product is improving and developing, and working with developing sales methodologies and strategies have been, and still are, really inspiring and challenging!”

When asked about the biggest challenge Anne has had to face during her time at Meltwater so far, she highlights one of the reasons she enjoys working at Meltwater so much.

“Throughout my entire career there have been challenges. As a Sales Consultant it was getting the sales right, as a Sales Manager it was being successful in teaching other people sales, as Managing Director it was running and growing a large office and making it successful, and as an Area Director it is all about getting good people on board and help developing new management talent.” Anne continues, “In general that´s one of the things that I love about Meltwater – it is a challenging job, and once you master one thing, you will be presented with new challenges. I have always gotten great support from my managers and they have been good at communicating that they believe in me, which has made it easier for me to step outside my comfort zone.”

Speaking about the environment within Meltwater, Anne says, “I think the Meltwater culture is competitive, in a good way. The “no-sharp-elbows” policy is clear, and people have a fundamental respect for eachother. However, the competitiveness is something that makes me push myself further, always trying to improve what I do and the way I do it.”  Anne continues, “I think working with sales is great fun, especially with the experience you gain from setting up a new part of the business, or petal as we would say in Meltwater. You are able understand how important sales can be, how essential it is to learn what the strengths and weaknesses of each product are, and how we should tailor each to fit different needs.”

Nurturing the future of Meltwater

Anne takes a moment to think about the future faces of Meltwater.

“I would say Meltwater is a great place to start working immediately after graduation.” Anne insists. “When learning sales you develop key skills that are valuable almost regardless of what you will do at a later stage in your career. You learn to communicate, drive processes from start to end, teamwork and to be solution oriented”

Anne continues, “To be a good Meltwater employee you need to be smart, humble, driven, social and flexible. The kind of person who probably wouldn’t cut it at Meltwater is someone who wants to do the same thing every day and who wants to work alone…”

Describing her favorite part of her job at Meltwater, Anne replies, “When you hire someone, and you watch that person grow to take on more responsibility and to become a manager.”

Anne is clearly very proud of working at Meltwater and is looking forward to her future within the business.

“I am proud that I work for a company that have managed to get international success with a young and inexperienced team, and that we can offer more young and inexperienced individuals the opportunity to build their own international careers within our business.”

Anne says, “I think in general ones strengths and weaknesses are a part of ones personality, and will stay there in one form or another. As you get more responsibility and grow as a manager and as a person you continue to develop your strengths and weaknesses, but I don´t think they will disappear.

Throughout my career in Meltwater I have gotten a lot of feedback, and through that learned to be aware of my strengths and how best to utilize them. Likewise with my weaknesses, I am aware of them and how they can affect me, and continuously work on them so that they don’t influence me and my work in a negative way.”

Anne continues, “One thing that I have learnt at Meltwater is to understand what young people are capable of, if you just believe in them. Anything is possible – if you dare to try!”