Team Spotlight: Alexa Roy, Director of Sales and Product Marketing

Alexa Roy was born a librarian. But aside from her inherent love of research, since joining StackMap in 2016 she has developed a strong appreciation for user experience and personable sales strategy. From having worked as a librarian in Connecticut and Rhode Island libraries, she has the experiential wisdom of the pain points and challenges librarians face when creating a successful patron experience. She has also studied sales and marketing philosophy extensively, and through years of doing demos and conferences with StackMap, knows that every library utilizes StackMap slightly differently. 

As a toddler, I used to play librarian at home. I would set up a circulation desk in our living room where I would be checking in and out books all afternoon. When I finally became old enough to join the workforce at 16, I started working at my local public library. My whole life I knew I wanted to be a librarian. In a hurry to join the world of librarianship, I finished my undergrad a year early at the University of Rhode Island and then hopped right into their Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, where I was the youngest person in my class. In grad school, I was able to teach library sessions to introductory writing students, who were typically freshmen. I would have a whole group of thirty 18-19 year-olds, and I would teach them how to use the library, search in a database, and then have them get started on a research writing project. It was really rewarding to be able to introduce something that’s so important to me and expose students near my age to this whole resource that was right there but they didn’t necessarily know about. 

When I graduated from my master’s program I was 24. My boyfriend — who I met at URI and am still with now — was living in Stamford, CT. So, that’s where I started my search for a job. I got hired part-time at three different libraries. After a month I was approached to work full time at the New Canaan library. I had an absolutely amazing mentor and director, and she was working on building a new library. I was full-time there for two years.

My boyfriend was working at Gartner in research where he was offered a switch to sales, which he was very interested in. But they said the hitch is you have to move to California. So, we decided to jump right in. I interviewed for a couple of librarian positions in California, but it was complicated because many of these jobs had a lot of restrictions for your first year, like no vacation time. Part of moving to California was to do and see things, and I needed to be able to visit my family that I’m very close to. So I thought maybe I’ll do something different. I was interested in potentially working for a vendor, and then I happened upon the job with StackMap.

When I came across StackMap, I thought this would make patrons’ lives so much easier. I was one of those librarians who would get up from the desk and walk someone to the shelf to help them find something. I wasn’t going to just point and say,’go look’ because I believe in customer service. But when I did that it left the desk unmanned, which is never a good thing. So I immediately saw the pain point StackMap solves. This would have been very helpful for me because I could have provided a map to somebody and continued to help other people rather than leave an empty information desk, which is very unwelcoming.

Every time I do a demo I find out what the client’s pain point is and that’s what we talk about. I’m not going to try to sell you a million things you don’t need because as a librarian I wouldn’t have appreciated that. So, I think it’s nice that I’m able to bring that spin in selling our software — as a peer of our clients. Librarians are wearing a million hats all the time so they don’t need to be sitting in on a demo that doesn’t apply to their library’s needs.

My favorite thing about libraries is finding what you’re looking for. With StackMap, that kind of goes with what we do. From a librarian sense, I love the search, I love the investigation, I love being able to find a resource for someone that is exactly what they’re looking for but they never knew existed.