Today, we’d like to introduce you to Rocy Gomez O’Keefe.
Hi Rocy, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
After graduating from Rutgers University, I started my professional career in pharmaceutical sales at Merck Pharmaceuticals. I spent numerous years at Merck, first in sales, then in International Marketing, and lastly in sales leadership.
After having my first daughter, I decided to take a break from the professional world. I spent six years at home and had another daughter. After being home for six years, I went back to work with Merck. After working for a few years, I decided the pharmaceutical industry had changed, and I wanted to try something different.
I joined Kaplan, one of the largest test prep companies in the world at that time. Having a strong healthcare background, I helped develop and grow their nursing business. After numerous years at Kaplan, I joined Elsevier for a year and then went to work for a German company called Lecturio.
Lecturio was wholly based in German, and I was brought on to build the US division. They specialized in Medical School curriculum and test pre. We then moved into nursing (and nurse practitioner) and physician assistant.
After four years at Lecturio, I joined Teachstone, an early childhood education company. After a year there, I joined a national nonprofit called LENA. LENA is also in the early childhood space and is a company focused on increasing adult-child interactions to help with literacy, school readiness, IQ, social-emotional, and much more.
Throughout my entire adult life, I have also dedicated much of my time, heart, money, and passion to dog rescue. For the last 17 years, I have worked with Castoff Pet Rescue based in Blairsville, GA. Since COVID, many states have been in crisis mode with a horrible overpopulation of dogs and cats.
Many rescues and shelters are over capacity and euthanization numbers have increased, animals are living in less-than-ideal situations and people are abandoning animals at a higher rate than ever. GA continues to be one of the worst states for animals.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Life is never a smooth road, and there are always challenges along the way. From a professional perspective, being a working mom who travels a lot for work has always been tough. Additionally, during the 2008/2009 recession, my husband and I lost a business he ran. This was extremely difficult for our family since we almost lost everything. Luckily, we were able to hold onto our house, but there were times we lived day to day to get by.
I was fortunate that I was able to go back to work and support our family. From the animal rescue part, this is the bumpiest road I have ever seen. It is a full-blown crisis no one seems to care about from a federal, state, county, or town perspective.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
In my current role as Vice President of Growth at LENA, I am so fortunate because I get to see and hear firsthand hand our product changes the lives of children. As a nonprofit, we are always tight on money and resources, but our technology is truly impactful.
We have a small device we call a fit bit for conversations that tracks the conversational turns (the back and forth) between adult and child. While we work with families directly, most of our work is in the childcare space.
With our device capturing all the interactions in one day between child and adult, we are able to produce reports that are used for coaching teachers or parents to change behaviors. We have over 200 studies that show the tremendous impact increasing interactions and conversations have on children and the long-term positive effects.
What’s next?
Having only been in my role for a year, I don’t foresee any major changes coming soon.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.lena.org
