How Rita Cidre Went from Newsroom to Marketing Leader – Tips for Your Career Breakthrough
Your guide to moving up fast in marketing – straight from an industry leader with 15 years of success.
Welcome to the first series of Dear Digital Marketing Newbie! Let’s start with a big round of applause for our 23 new subscribers since the last edition—welcome to the community!
This is the first of the series and we are starting with a bang!
is the Head of Academy at Semrush, where she leads the development of educational programs that help marketers build their skills and expertise in digital marketing. With a deep background in content marketing, Rita has been instrumental in designing courses and partnerships that support marketers globally. Who better to learn from?Let’s get right in.
Q1. Can you please introduce yourself and share a bit about your journey in the digital marketing world? What inspired you to focus on education?
Rita Cidre: My name is Rita C. Dre—like the sea and Dr. Dre. (It’s actually a Cuban last name, though people often assume it’s French—c’est la vie!). Becoming a marketer was never something I anticipated. In fact, I didn’t even know what marketing was until I went to business school in my late 20s.. Growing up in San Juan, Puerto Rico, my dream was to be a journalist—specifically to be like Christiane Amanpour, traveling the world, meeting people, and sharing their stories.
In college at Brown University, I got involved in the campus FM radio station, which was a big deal because it broadcasted statewide. I joined the news department and, by my first year, became news director. By my third year, I was managing the whole station as general manager. That experience revealed something fundamental to me: my true passion was storytelling. Whether in news or a brand narrative, what I loved was telling stories that would make people feel something about a topic, a product, or an idea.
These storytelling skills turned out to be highly relevant as a marketing and business leader, where I could craft a vision for my team and create engaging narratives for our audience or potential advertisers. That’s how I got my start in marketing—through my journalism roots. After college, thanks to the connections I’d built through the radio station, I landed a role as a membership director for a startup NPR station in Rhode Island. Back then, NPR didn’t have an independent station, and being part of the founding team was probably the most fun I’ve ever had at work.
Q2: What inspired me to focus on education within this field?
Rita Cidre: I’ve always been interested in teaching but I didn’t pursue it until I became a mom. When I was on parental leave, I started teaching to keep myself and my brain engaged in those late nights. It was like a lightbulb went on inside my head—I loved it! Despite being awfully sleep-deprived.
And I think I loved it for two reasons. Firstly, I have a very clear and crisp memory of what it feels like to be early in your career. Specifically, the feeling of having a path when you're in school and suddenly feeling very lost upon graduation.
I love being in education because I love introducing people to a path that has been a fruitful one for me. Because even if you decide not to be a marketer, I think marketing skills can really help you in so many areas of life, even in your personal relationships.
The other thing about education that is just a great fit for me is that it brought back three things that I really love: reading, writing and performing. . At my very core I'm a nerd. I love reading and I love writing.
And so reading and writing is core to being an educator. And the third thing that it does is it brings back performance for me. I started my career trying to be a broadcast journalist.
There is a reason for that. I really enjoy being in front of people and talking to others and leading conversations. And so being a professor and an educator has allowed me to come back full circle to that initial interest that led me to journalism in the first place.
Q3: What are some of the biggest mistakes you see young digital marketers making early in their careers and how can they avoid those pitfalls?
Rita Cidre: Not focusing enough on understanding how to manage yourself and your time. Yes, there's SEO and email and social media and all these different individual topics that you need to learn as a marketer. But none of them really matter if you don't understand how to work with other people and get s*** investing time in understanding how to define goals, priorities and report on progress is so important.
Q4: How do you think beginners can balance learning multiple areas of digital marketing without feeling overwhelmed?
Rita Cidre: The best way to learn SEO is to suddenly be handed a blog that needs to be optimized for SEO. And the best way to learn social media is to suddenly be given a Twitter handle that is struggling and you have to turn it around. IMO, the best way to learn is to give yourself a project, whether it's at your current job or helping a family friend with their business, and then learn by doing it. Also know that you don't have to be an expert in all of these things at once. I’m 15+ years into my career in marketing and still learning!
The best way to learn SEO is to suddenly be handed a blog that needs to be optimized... The best way to learn is to give yourself a project and then learn by doing it.
Q6: What advice would you give for building genuine connections in the industry?
Rita Cidre: Having a clear value proposition is essential—it needs to be obvious what the conversation will offer and why it’s worth their time. For example, Success, when you reached out to me about your newsletter, it was perfectly clear what you needed, and I felt genuinely honored to be included. It made it easy for me to respond because the value and purpose of your message were clear from the start.
In contrast, I often receive vague outreach, like “I like what you’re doing and would love to chat.” With such messages, it’s hard to know what’s expected of me or what the other person truly wants to gain. It can feel like they haven’t thought deeply about the conversation’s purpose, making it difficult for me to commit to a one-on-one.
Thoughtfulness in outreach is invaluable. Think not just about what you want, but about what the other person might gain. It doesn’t have to be transactional or ego-boosting; many marketers, including myself, are genuinely open to connecting with new people, especially when it’s clear how we can help them in a meaningful way.
Having a clear value proposition is essential—it needs to be obvious what the conversation will offer and why it’s worth their time.
Q7: with so much content available, how can marketers distinguish between quality learning resources and those that might not be as valuable?
Rita Cidre: Oh my gosh, great question. This is a very hard one because there is a lot of not great content out there.
I would say before you invest in a given resource, spend some time getting to know the credentials of the person that is writing it or creating that educational resource. Most people who are writing courses or creating course content, they also have LinkedIn profiles where they post, not all of them, but many do. So read what they're about, understand what people are saying about their courses.
So do your homework before you sign up for a given course.
Q8: What role do you think mentorship plays in a digital marketer's career development and how can someone effectively seek out a mentor in this field?
Rita Cidre: Ah, mentorship is so important. I would say, and this is just my own experience, I don't think I’ve ever proactively reached out for mentorship.
Mentorship has kind of come to me by putting myself out there. For example, I met one of my dearest mentors the day I presented my final project as part of my MBA internship. I was working for a popular magazine in NYC and the publisher, who attended my presentation, loved my ideas. And I loved her comments! It was like love at first sight.
So I guess my advice in terms of seeking out mentorship is not to necessarily seek out mentorship like that little bird that's going around and asking, are you my mother? I wouldn't go around and ask people, will you be my mentor? But I would seek out interesting conversations with people.
Be curious and reach out to people. Once you do that, I promise the moment will come when you’ll feel that mutual sense of connection with someone.
Q9: Okay, going back on your own career, is there a piece of advice or lesson you wish you had received earlier? That would have made a big difference.
Rita Cidre: Rid yourself of the idea that there is a perfect job or a perfect career path out there.
Try not to think so much about what your “plan” is. Instead, listen to what feels interesting and what sparks your curiosity right now in the job that you're doing. And then whatever triggers that curiosity and sense of wonder and playfulness in you, follow that feeling. Like follow it like there's no tomorrow.
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Best,
Success Lawal
Your Marketing Buddy.
This was an amazing read, Success
This was very insightful. Great Job.