Busy days, long hours, unforeseen challenges — Fueled by a love for marketing, media and advertising, Victoria Lins '86, mom to a six-year-old
son, embraces those days, hours and challenges.

Lins is an executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Clear Channel Outdoor (CCO), an out-of-home advertising company based in New York. She accepted her position to oversee the company's marketing and communication activities across North America in early November 2012. "This is the first position I held that has global impact and global responsibilities," Lins says, "which means I collaborate with my international colleagues on the strategy and development of our global business."

Her career path to CCO was full of both opportunities and risks. Lins' previous employers, Adlink and Comcast, were in cable television. While Adlink was based in Los Angeles, Comcast was national, but domestic. "I took a lot of risks in my career and made some changes that turned out to be worthwhile, well-calculated risks," she says.

When Lins moved from Comcast to Adlink, she went from working in a corporate job in telecommunications to a small cable interconnect. However, she says, that risk ultimately helped her move from working with clients to media, as well as progress from corporate America to a privately held company.

"I was able to expand my responsibilities as well as take on new ones, build a function and a team from scratch, become part of a management team charged with running a business, and do industry impacting work which led to increased exposure and recognition for me," Lins says.

As a full-time working mother, she has also needed to establish a work-life balance. "There are never enough hours in the day to do everything I want and need to do, so every day is a challenge in prioritization and juggling," she says.

Having understood her passion for communication early on, Lins kick started her college education as an English and communications major at Albright. But she valued the opportunity to study other subjects as well. "Albright was an opportunity to experiment and explore different subjects and opportunities that helped me define my thinking about who I am," she says.

"Professors challenge you to look at things differently, and they try to work through the different dimensions of learning that exist," Lins says. After graduating, Lins worked for a short time in Los Angeles and attended graduate school at Annenberg, University of Southern California. Going from a small liberal arts school like Albright to a large university like USC was getting "the best of both worlds," she says.

Having received a master's degree in marketing, Lins says she could have never predicted her career path, but she is happy with the direction it's taken. "Your career is a patchwork and as long as it's all sewn together to create a broader image, you're good," she advises.

– Shanna Salmon '13