>> Originally published on LinkedIn on August 23, 2017

When I explain to my friends the scope of my current role at LinkedIn—I’m an associate insights analyst who spends close to half my day writing SQL—I usually get the same response: “Wait, that doesn’t make sense… didn’t you major in journalism?”

“Yep!” I respond, already knowing their next question.

“Then how do you know how to code?”

I’ll answer that question in a second, but first a story.

It’s fall of 2011, and I’m a freshman at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University ready to begin my training to become a journalist. I was in the closing weeks of JOUR 201-1: Reporting and Writing (the introductory journalism course) and had been working on the class's final assignment: writing a relevant trend story. I focused my piece on the rise of location-based marketing. For context, remember, I’m talking about a time when less than 50% of Facebook’s daily active users came from mobile device—that number is greater than 93% today.

For the story, I chatted with different local Evanston, Ill. businesses to see how (and if) they were using location-based marketing to drive foot traffic and revenue. In the process of writing the article, I had a realization: I was more interested in learning about what I was reporting on than actually reporting the story itself. I became fascinated with the nuances of marketing and how technology was suddenly turning the industry upside down.

Here’s pivot number one: I shifted away from becoming a journalist and transitioned to becoming a marketer.

I needed to explore this newfound interest. During my sophomore and junior years of college, I centered my coursework (I pursued a certificate in integrated marketing communications) and my professional experiences (I interned at three advertising/branding agencies and on the product marketing team at Spotify) around soaking up as much industry knowledge as I could.

As I wrapped up my summer-before-senior-year job as a product marketing intern, I reflected on all my industry experiences before starting the full-time job search that fall. I knew that to be successful in the search—finding a job that offered me the ability to make an impact and develop skills at a company I love—would require deep introspection.

As I reflected, I realized that the reason why I was first drawn to journalism and then to marketing was simple. I love telling stories. As a journalist, I had enjoyed telling stories about breaking news, interesting people and rising trends. As a marketer, I enjoyed telling a company’s story and crafting narratives that could influence a brand’s strategy.

For me, storytelling was and still is the common thread between both. It connects journalism and marketing, and thus it became and remains the skill I'm still currently obsessed with mastering.

Here comes pivot number two: I shifted away from becoming a marketer and transitioned to becoming a storyteller.

Howard Gardner, a distinguished Harvard professor, said, “Stories are the single most powerful tool in a leader’s toolkit.” It’s because stories are how people connect with each other, how products are sold, how talent is recruited, how customers are cared for and how ideas travel. It simultaneously was an important business skill I needed to master and a passion I needed to pursue.

So in looking for a full-time job after college, I focused my search on ensuring that my prospective role would push me to develop my storytelling skills. In joining LinkedIn as an associate in its Business Leadership Program – Global Sales in the fall of 2015, I knew that I'd be able to pursue new and practical use cases for telling stories. Specifically, BLP offered me the chance to develop my storytelling skills for three key business functions: recruiting, operations and sales.

As I grew comfortable at the company and familiar with its personal development opportunities, I realized that my prior storytelling skills had been centered around only two of three components of what I now consider to be building blocks of a great story.

As a journalist, I had practiced weaving personal narratives and testimonials together to tell a qualitative story. As a marketer, I had experience using primary and secondary research to tell a slightly more quantitative one. However, after being exposed to a company with one of the richest structured data sets in the world, I realized I had little experience gathering and using data to tell powerful and data-fueled stories.

So brings us back to the original question that inspired this story of how (and why) I learned to code in SQL. The answer, as I’m sure you can now guess, is that it was the logical next step in developing my storytelling skills. Learning how to use data to tell a story was a blind spot I wanted (and needed) to fill. Becoming a data-savvy storyteller is essential to both round out my passion for storytelling and become a better writer, marketer, salesman and business professional.

Actually learning how to write SQL took support from my mentors (thank you David Berning, Chris Pham & Danielle Lachance for answering a silly number of questions), a few hours using LinkedIn Learning (shameless plug) and lots of patience. My overarching passion for storytelling kept me focused and determined on learning the basics of SQL as I knew it aligned with my long-term goals.