Johna Burke, Global Managing Director at AMEC, is our Measurement Maven for January 2019. She is a superstar female executive in a male-dominated industry.
Johna has been doing this measurement stuff almost as long as I have. We first met when I was giving a training session to BurrellesLuce umpteen years ago, probably around 2003. I was—of course, given those times—asked what the dozens of salespeople in the audience should do when their clients requested that they report AVEs. In what I hope was a seminal moment in measurement history, I replied: “If they asked you for heroin and hookers, would you supply that as well?”
For years thereafter, Johna Burke referred to me as “the woman who called BurrellsLuce ‘a heroin dealer.’ ”
Needless to say, the early days of our relationship were somewhat contentious. Not long after that encounter we were thrown together on a bunch of panels. I quickly learned to respect her intelligence, her expertise, her perspective on both business and our industry, and, most of all, her benevolent nature that accepts pretty much whatever is thrown at her with a smile. We didn’t always agree, but it’s hard to argue for long when confronted with her passion for good measurement, her ability to bring people together, and her irresistible good humor.
In terms of achievement, there is of course her work at VMS, and then BurrellesLuce, and now at AMEC. Just as important, in my view, is her invaluable participation in The Conclave on Social Media Measurement Standards. Without her ability to get people to come to conclusions and agreement, those standards would never have seen the light of day.
For all those reasons, she is our first Measurement Maven of 2019. Congratulations Johna Burke! (Read our MeasHERment Interview with Johna, also in this issue.) ∞
