From Corporate Finance to Scrappy Startup: #inmyMM with Rebecca Spencer

June 02, 2016

Each week, we look inside the fascinating lives (and closets) of our favorite customers. Here, Rebecca Spencer, a director at the New York-based media startup Tasting Table, talks long commutes, after-hours emailing, and career inspiration from Jennifer Aniston.

I WORK at Tasting Table, where I manage the audience development team. We’re a media brand that takes what’s cool in the food and drink industry and makes it accessible to everyone through online recipes, events, videos, and other content. A regular day involves looking at the site analytics—how we’re doing in terms of traffic—and evaluating what channels are working well and what aren’t. And then we adjust accordingly.

I STARTED OUT as a men’s pants buyer at the Burlington Coat Factory, believe it or not. It was right after college, and I was interested in fashion, but the job wasn’t a good fit, and I left after seven weeks. I jumped around a lot at the beginning of my career—I worked for a day spa, an event planning company, and a caterer, all within a few years. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do. I eventually got recruited to work at the Bank of New York, which is now BNY Mellon, as a marketing assistant, where I helped put together pitch decks and organize conferences. The finance world was very different from my previous jobs, but my experience in catering came in handy, because I worked very closely with our events staff. I was there for five years, and it was the first place where I really settled in. Because it was such a large company, I was able to grow and take on new roles internally.

I LIVE in New Jersey; my husband and I bought a house there a couple of years ago. The commute is long, about an hour and a half each way, but we live 20 minutes away from my parents, which is great. We’re like Gilmore Girls. I go over to their house for dinner almost every weekend.

WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER, I wanted to work in advertising. There was this really cheesy movie that came out when I was in high school called Picture Perfect, starring Jennifer Aniston as an ad executive, and I was like, “Oh, that looks really fun.” When I got to college, at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, I decided to major in marketing, and I loved it.

Rebecca wears the Williamsburg skirt in cream and the Davis top in watercolor citrus.

I NEVER check work email before I get into the office, or after I leave. If my team needs me, they text me or call me. I started that policy when I was working for an international job board called E-Financial Careers, after BNY Mellon; I worked with a lot of global teams, so I’d get emails from Europe and Asia all night long and all weekend, and if I didn’t deliberately disconnect, I would never get any peace of mind. So I made a conscious effort to move my work email off the home screen of my phone when I was out of the office, and I still do. We’re not curing cancer, and if my staff needs me, they can still get in touch. I’m not on Mars.

MY STYLE is classic and a little bit trendy. Tasting Table, like many startups, is very laid-back. I lived in leggings and buffalo-check flannels all winter. I’m still getting used to the whole flats-at-work thing; when I worked at a bank, I trained myself to wear four-inch heels all day, every day. Now all my heels are either sold or relegated to the back of my closet—and I’ve spent a lot of money on shoes over the years! I wear my MM dresses to fancier things or to external meetings.

I RELAX by knitting, mostly baby blankets for friends. I do it almost every night while we’re watching TV, because I can’t just sit there—I need to be doing something with my hands. I have a task list on my Google calendar of when people’s babies are due and when their blanket needs to be finished.

MY GO-TO MM DRESSES are the Narie in the winter and the Lydia in the summer. They’re both made from that really comfortable jersey material. When I used to travel a lot for work, those were the dresses that I’d put on at four o’clock in the morning before flying someplace for a day of meetings. They don’t get sweaty, they don’t wrinkle, and they look good. I can sit in them on a plane for five hours and not want to kill myself.