Izzi Demara (She/Her)

Marketing Manager, RoomReady

About Izzi Demara

I am a former NCAA DI student-athlete (Go Bonnies!) and enjoy running, cycling, and playing any sport I can! Before transitioning into the AV industry, I worked in collegiate athletics/higher ed as a coach, administrator, and a lecturer in. I have done extensive research on Title IX, women in sport and am even a published author in that field (Chapter 6: The Emergence, Experiences, and Empowerment of Women Administrators, Coaches, and Athletes - Critical Reflections and Politics on Advancing Women in the Academy- IGI Global - May 8, 2020)

At this point in my bio you're probably asking yourself, "Huh? How did she go from working in sports full time to working in AV?" You're not alone- I often ask myself that too. Long story short is that during the pandemic/shutdown that I realized three things:

  • I wanted to have a work-life balance.
  • I truly enjoyed the creative side of my job in athletics (photography, videography, media days, creating posters and graphics, running our social media and promoting my team to potential recruits.)- essentially marketing.
  • I wanted to be in/around Bloomington, Illinois where my then girlfriend (and now wife!) lived.

With those things in mind I began my job search and I found RoomReady. When I read the job description for the Marketing Coordinator and the qualifications- I was interested and I felt like I met their job requirements. After several rounds of interviews, I got the job… And then I really needed to learn what the heck an AV integration company does.  

If you’re hanging around for the long version, I'll tell you all about who I am beyond the sports, and how/why I made the leap from sports to working in marketing for an AV integrator and my lifelong love of STEM. First, let's rewind a bit... back to the early 1990's, in my beautiful hometown of Boulder, Colorado!

My parents moved from Florida's Space Coast to Boulder in 1989 with my then 2 year old brother, and they were expecting twin girls later that year. The move for them was career based as my dad accepted a position at Ball Aerospace. He and my mom met while they were both working as civilians on the USNS Vandenberg- a Naval missile and spacecraft tracking ship. (Do you see where this is going?)… I was raised by actual rocket scientists!

After my sister and I were born, my mom also began working at Ball Aerospace as an engineer, working primarily on camera systems for satellites including Hubble, SBSS, Deep Impact, Calipso and New Horizons, to name a few. 

Our family spent vacations driving to remote areas of the Western United States to get away from big cities- and most important, to get away from light pollution. We spent many nights laying beneath the stars, getting lost in the milky way and watching meteor showers in all their glory.

My love for science, computers and technology was formed sometime between those late nights under the stars, a week at Space Camp, visiting my parents’ labs at work, and the occasional dinner with an astronaut. Beyond all that my dad instilled in us, a love of learning and a thirst for knowledge. In our house, curiosity was encouraged and the unknowns never went unanswered thanks to a complete Encyclopedia Britannica Set on the bookshelves and of course, the World Wide Web.

As I got older, I developed a new love- sports. I loved the intensity, the teamwork, the grit, the challenge, and I loved competing. I began to excel in sports- specifically in lacrosse, I quickly outgrew the local competition and began playing on an elite travel team. I traded my summers of coding camp and astronomy camp for summers packed with lacrosse tournaments on the east coast and lacrosse camps in the scorching summer heat. Even with my year-round lacrosse schedule, I still loved learning and my curiosity never faded. I was the only varsity (sports) athlete on my High Schools’ Academic-Decathlon team and it was the first time that I could combine my two of my favorite things: learning and competing.

I was eventually recruited to play lacrosse in college, and I scored a job coaching collegiately right after graduation. I continued to work my way up the coaching ranks and landed my first head coaching position as the Inaugural Women’s Lacrosse Head Coach at Monmouth College- a small, private, liberal arts college in western Illinois. I spent six total years at Monmouth, pouring my heart and soul into starting and building the program from the ground up. And by the 2020 season, our first ever recruiting class were seniors and in our third game of the season we beat the #2 ranked team in our conference (who had beaten us 18-4 the previous year)!

We were firing on all cylinders, and ready to make a run in the conference and were hoping for a birth in the big dance- but before the next game on our schedule, COVID-19 brought our season to an end. For the first time in my life, I was forced to slow down- there were no students on campus, no players to coach, no training sessions, no summer tournaments, no recruiting travel, no summer camps, and no sports- literally none. 

At first, I was lost and didn’t know how to relax… but as the summer of 2020 rolled on, I welcomed the down time. I realized that I was tired and burnt out from the grind of collegiate athletics. I was forced to think about what I really enjoy about my job, and I began to consider the idea of a career move outside of athletics. I learned that weekends were a time to relax and recharge- up until the pandemic, a “weekend” was a foreign concept to me. However with all the uncertainty surrounding the world, hearing about layoffs and furloughs, I decided to put my idea of leaving athletics on the backburner.

The 2020-2021 academic year was a blur, a mix of isolations, quarantines, NCAA COVID testing, cancellations, masking, somehow scraping together short conference only season. By the end of the year, I knew it was my time to make the leap, to “get out” as we say in coaching.

I began searching for positions in marketing/social media/communications in the Bloomington-Normal Area.  With those things in mind, I began my job search and I found RoomReady. When I read the job description for the Marketing Coordinator and the qualifications- I was interested and I felt like I met their job requirements… even without any official “marketing” experience, I applied and hoped that my administrative experience, my curiosity, work ethic and desire to learn would set me apart from other candidates. After several rounds of interviews, I got the job…

And here I am today, with a full year of AV industry experience under my belt! I am working for a company (RoomReady) that I truly love and I’m in a role that encourages me to be creative, challenges me, and most important, it has renewed my love of learning and STEM. I am currently studying for my CTS and spend an hour every morning trying to absorb as much AV knowledge that I can.

And as for lacrosse? I knew that I wouldn’t be able to stay away from the game for long. I kicked off my lacrosse officiating journey this past spring covering girls youth, Varsity and JV games… and towards the end of the season, I got called up to officiate at the NCAA level. Officiating will certainly take up a few of my weekends in the fall and spring, but the game of lacrosse has given me so much in life and now it’s my turn to give back.

 

Company Type

AV/IT Integration

Department

Marketing/Communications

Language

English

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