Britney Ross, Senior Marketing Manager at McGraw-Hill
Britney Ross wants to make biology relevant to students who aren’t science majors. She manages and markets multi-million dollar lists in the non-majors biology and environmental science portfolios at McGraw-Hill.
Ross planned and executed the marketing strategy for a new digital product that teaches students biology content by themes relevant to their lives like cancer and climate change.
She started in sales at McGraw-Hill in 2012 and moved into marketing. A large part of her work is training sales representatives to be confident and excited to sell the products in her portfolio. She conducts high level sales and training presentations to both internal reps as well as more than 8,000 customers and instructors.
“I enjoy working with the instructors and want to help them instill an appreciation for biology in their students,” Ross said. She was named the McGraw-Hill Marketing Manager of the Year in the higher education division in 2017 and 2019.
“Britney has generated tremendous success in the early launch of this groundbreaking product. The digital product is closely aligned with the corporate mission to drive better student outcomes and affordability,” said Dr. Jennifer Burds, who nominated Ross. Burds is a physician at Tri-State Family Practice.
A lifelong learner, Ross recently earned two master’s degrees: One in organizational leadership and the second in business administration from Clarke University. Her graduate capstone project involved designing, resourcing, coaching, motivating and leading a group of 31 first through sixth grade girls plus their adult mentors through a 10-week 5K training program with an emphasis on leadership development and self-esteem building. Some of the girls hadn’t run even 1/10th of a mile before beginning the program.
“The project was two-fold, to encourage them to have a love of running but also to build their self-confidence as strong, independent young women,” Ross said. “By investing my time and energy in them and showing I truly cared for each of them, we all remained motivated. We met twice per week for eight weeks and they energized me and inspired me every session to give them all my effort and attention.”
Running fuels her volunteerism in the community. As an active runner, Ross put together a program to collect gently used running shoes and distribute them to women who can benefit from the joys of running but do not have the funds to purchase their shoes. In 2019, the first year of the program, 125 pairs of running shoes were collected and distributed.