By Meta Careers
Melinda P. is the Regional Director of Sales in the Global Gaming team in Asia Pacific. In this interview, she shares about her most challenging leadership experiences, career journey, opportunities within her team and advice to others looking to follow in her footsteps.
When Melinda relocated from Sydney to Singapore to join Facebook’s Global Gaming team as a Regional Director of Sales two years ago, she came face-to-face with her toughest leadership challenge.
“I was leading a team of 13 people from 7 different countries who had vastly different backgrounds and personalities, and more than half of them spoke English as their second language. Before Facebook, I was used to holding team meetings where people would openly speak up and write updates to share their learnings and highlights. I quickly realized that while I could hold great one-on-one sessions with my team members, they would stay silent during team meetings and were cautious about expressing their opinions. This was something that we needed to change quickly as it limited our ability to learn from one another.” she says.
She launched several initiatives to improve the situation. First, everyone on her team, including herself, had do a strengths finder test so that they could all discover and share their top three strengths - which included strategic, analytical and communication skills. Through the test, they were also able to map out the strengths that they lacked as a team so that they could proactively hire for these in the future. Next, they participated in a Cross Cultural Communication Course which taught them how to effectively communicate with one another based on their personalities and cultural upbringing. Finally, she encouraged her team members to join English speaking courses that were designed to help them be more proficient and confident in communicating in their second language.
“My biggest takeaway from this experience is to always to give my team time to prepare for meetings by sharing a clear agenda in advance... it’s an approach that I’m still using today. I've also learned to be much more culturally sensitive, and I spend time understanding and appreciating the many different ways to communicate across cultures. Empathy is really important at Facebook.”
Today, her team members communicate more openly at meetings, and collaborate closely on regional and global projects. Melinda considers this as a good sign that she's headed in the right direction, however, there's still more to be done.
“I see this journey as a work-in-progress. We've made a lot of improvement, but I still continue to work with many people in my team to raise their profile and better communicate. It brings me much joy and pride when I witness how far my team has grown in their careers over time.”
Transiting from e-commerce to gaming
The dynamic executive is a veteran with 20 years of digital marketing, sales and leadership experience under her belt. Melinda started her career working for nimble e-commerce start-ups in Australia, and over the years, she has held several senior roles at Fairfax Media (an Australian publisher), where she led teams to scale and commercialize digital businesses across Oceania. She is also a director at OzHarvest, one of Australia’s prominent non-for-profit organizations, and had previously served on the Salvation Army’s Australian Media Advisory Board, as well as the Vine.com.au board.
In 2013, Melinda joined Facebook in Australia as the Head of Industry, leading the e-commerce team in Oceania before relocating to Singapore to join the Global Gaming team as a regional sales director.
“My team and I consult and support game developers and publishers who use our global marketing solutions to reach new and existing users around the world. We travel across Asia Pacific to speak to our clients, learn about their businesses and build successful partnerships that help them to grow their businesses by building, growing and monetizing their games through our platform.”
“Coming to Singapore has enabled me to work on a true regional role. Effectively, I look after every market within Asia Pacific except China. Asia Pacific is a complex region with many different countries and cultures, hence understanding how to communicate across cultures is a necessary step in learning how to conduct businesses effectively in the different markets.”
She credits cognitive diversity in her team as a key success factor. “Their deep understanding and knowledge of how businesses work in different markets, the cultural nuances and how to communicate effectively helped Facebook to penetrate 'hard-to-reach' markets.”
When asked about why she joined Facebook, Melinda gave two reasons.
“I believe in Facebook’s mission of building community and bringing the world closer together. The gaming team's mission is to build and nurture the world’s biggest gaming community to discover, play, watch, and share the games they love with their friends and family. Ensuring that we’re consumer-first is important to us, because then we can build all the tools for our clients to connect to over 2 billion people connected on Facebook.”
“The gaming industry is very exciting to be in as companies are building incredible products to wow and delight consumers. It is a rapidly growing industry that has generated more than USD125 billion in revenue, and is set to grow even bigger in 2018.”
Growing the gaming team
Today, there are over 800 million gamers on Facebook and Instagram, and this community is growing. Facebook is committed to growing the gaming community through investing in innovative solutions and products.
For example, in 2017, we launched Instant Games for Messenger to allow the 1.2 billion people who use Facebook Messenger each month to easily discover, share and play games. The platform has continued to evolve with more games and features for developers to build flexible and rich gameplay. We are also enabling developers to monetize their games by introducing new add in-app purchases as well as interstitial and rewarded video ads.
All these developments mean that Facebook's gaming team is poised for further growth, and there are openings for Client Partner, Agency Partners and Client Solutions Manager roles across markets and regions.
“We are looking for professionals with a variety of experience, backgrounds and skills, and they include sales managers, digital marketers, user acquisition managers, analysts, strategists, business development managers and gaming developers from the digital and gaming industries. In Asia Pacific, we are seeking Korean, Vietnamese, Mandarin and Japanese native speakers who have excellent English speaking skills. If they have the experience or knowledge in Facebook marketing solutions, that is highly desirable.” Melinda says.
Embracing work-life integration
As a leader who wears many hats, Melinda says that her favorite role is being a mom to her three young sons and her step-daughter. She says that work-life integration is possible because Facebook is committed to being a great place to work for employees with families, with programs that make it easier and give an extra hand to ensure families feel cared for.
“Life with three energetic young sons is crazy, and it really helps that I love my career and wake up happy to go to work every day. I take regular time off - on average one week at the end of every quarter - to spend time with my family. Having a regular break not only allows me to connect with my family and create memories, but I return to work energized. I'm so grateful that Facebook has holistic benefits and allow parents to work flexibly so that they can meet their professional and personal commitments.”
“I have always been very open with my team and colleagues about my personal life, and they understand that my family is my number one priority. I try really hard to balance work and life, and always put important events in my diary and ask colleagues to cover for me if necessary.”
She added that she would never been able to achieve her career aspirations without her husband's support.
“He's an amazing life partner. Nick and I are both professionals, we have both supported each other’s careers and for us that means there are times when we make sacrifices for one another. Moving to Singapore was a huge sacrifice for him as he had to leave his job plus continue and finish his PHD remotely.”
Career advice
Regardless of whether you want an executive career or you are happy to succeed in your current role, Melinda's advice is to always go above and beyond in your job as no leader will ever say no to someone who demonstrates initiative and capability to help grow and improve the business. If you are great at your core role, and can find ways to work across the business to build your experience and stakeholder network, you will go far in your career.
She distills her advice into three tips:
1. Dream big, work hard and tell people what your career goal is. In this way, you will find that you have created a support network to help you achieve your goals.
2. Be authentic and work hard at being balanced between high IQ and EQ.
3. Make time to build relationships with executives and ask for guidance along the way. This will help you establish a network of trusted advisors who know your strengths.
Opportunities in the Global Gaming Team:
- APAC
- North America
- EMEA
Stay Connected!
- Learn about Life at Facebook on Instagram via @facebooklife.
- Join our Facebook Careers Talent Community Page for the latest updates.
Careers
Follow us
Equal Employment Opportunity
Meta is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, reproductive health decisions, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, political views or activity, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. You may view our Equal Employment Opportunity notice here.
Meta is committed to providing reasonable support (called accommodations) in our recruiting processes for candidates with disabilities, long term conditions, mental health conditions or sincerely held religious beliefs, or who are neurodivergent or require pregnancy-related support. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, fill out the Accommodations request form .