Communicator Spotlight: Mixing Board founder Sean Garrett
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Photo illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios. Photo: Nico Zurcher
As founder of Mixing Board, Sean Garrett has created a space for communicators and marketing professionals to share what's next in the profession.
- Why it matters: Garrett helped build the first communications team while at Twitter (now X) and he currently is building a community of experts through Mixing Board.
State of play: Since its founding in 2021, Mixing Board has gathered over 375 members who work in corporate America, venture capital, nonprofits and as consultants.
š£ What he's saying: "Running a community, as it turns out, is a bit of a misnomer. You can guide it but, if you are doing it right, it mostly runs you," he told Axios.
šHow he got here: Garrett got his start in California and internationalĀ politics before jumping into tech in the late 1990s. He later co-founded 463 Communications, the first firm working to bridge the divide between Washington and Silicon Valley.
- Garrett joined Twitter in 2009 as its first communications executive and helped to create its comms, marketing, public affairs and government relations functions.
- From there, he founded the strategic advisory firm Pramana Collective, supporting clients like Slack, Comcast and Greylock Partners. He also served as an outside adviser to the Obama administration in 2015-16.
Yes, but: Even with all of his communications experience, Garrett says he's "not even the best communicator" in his own home.
- "My wife runs a youth mental health consultancy and non-profit and they do ground-breaking work in using marketing, communications and product development to get people the care they need."
šTrend watch: The evolving definition of what it means to work in communications.
- "Twenty years ago, comms people were all generally doing some variation of the same thing," Garrett said. "Now, five people with the same title could have five different experiences and priorities. ... Unfortunately for those buying or hiring the work, in the absence of clarity, they tend to tilt toward the lowest common denominator of the function's purpose."
š±Content plate: He's always been a news junkie, which he says made him a natural Twitter user.
- "Thank goodness for Elon [Musk], though. His destruction of the platform set me free. And, now I am on a methadone-like social media treatment that subsists on dips into private Instagram, LinkedIn and Threads."
š§ Best advice: Keep moving forward.
- "My first boss told me to treat a career like crossing a stream. You should know what you want to have accomplished when you reach the other side, but, in the meantime, don't focus so much on how far you get with each step. Just try to keep moving toward your goal."
Disclaimer: Hawkins joined Mixing Board in 2022.
