Dream Jobs: Charlotte McCoy

Everyone needs a job that brings home the bacon. The lucky ones find a job that fits their personality like a glove.

Consider Charlotte McCoy one of the lucky ones.

As the marketing and special events director for the Discovery Center of Springfield, McCoy has been playing on the job for the past 13 years. She has to.

In order to promote the center to school groups, to test new exhibits or describe them to donors, McCoy said she needs to be familiar with the facility’s offerings.

McCoy, a child of the 1960s, turns into a kid as she turns the crank on the giant bubble machine inside the nonprofit’s brick building at 438 E. St. Louis St., which is filled with everything from a rainbow-shadow wall to a fossil-digging exhibit. The Discovery Center, which opened in 1998, is modeled after facilities such as the Science Center in St. Louis that provide the public – children, in particular – unique and fun ways to learn about their world.

“I like to have fun. I enjoy meeting tons of new people. If I ever get bored in an office here, I can always run into a class or run outside and play with the kids,” McCoy said, adding she sometimes has to rein herself in. “I always have to be doing something. I’m probably too much of a multitasker.”  

A Prime Discovery
A Springfield native and Greenwood Laboratory School graduate, McCoy went away to college in Columbia in the early ‘80s where she met her husband, Scott McCoy who works as a category sales manager at Kraft Foods in Springfield. The couple married, had children and moved around for several years following sales and marketing jobs before she came back to her hometown in 1998 to raise her family. Having been exposed to science-based facilities in Chicago and Atlanta, McCoy was excited to learn of the then brand new Discovery Center and became one of its first members.

For two years, McCoy took her two young children to the center where she got to know the staff. Then, through a Discovery Center newsletter in 2000, she learned of an opening for a part-time marketing position.

Today the job is full-time, keeping her busy producing marketing materials, running the Discovery Center’s email blasts and social media efforts, helping organize fundraisers that generate more than $150,000 annually for the center, hosting and scheduling parties and wedding receptions, and working with school groups that account for roughly half of the center’s revenue. The organization’s fiscal 2014 budget is $1.3 million, McCoy said.

At the University of Missouri, McCoy received her bachelor’s degree in instructional media with an emphasis in business communication, as well as a master’s in communications.

Before joining the Discovery Center, her resume included stints in Jefferson, La., for the parent company of Church’s Fried Chicken, developing marketing plans for products; as an advertising planner for Federated Department Stores in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she managed a $1.3 million advertising budget; and working as an account executive for the Gillette Southern Region sales team in Atlanta, where she said she was part of a team employed by a company that generates more than $1 billion in annual revenue.

Now, McCoy said she works with no marketing budget, but it’s not a concern.

“Everybody around here loves their job. It’s fun to come to work. The people are fun, and we have something going on here all the time,” McCoy said. She said she gets help on the marketing side wherever she can, coordinating with large employers such as Missouri State University to have the center’s events included in newsletters or internal emails.

“Even if we haven’t done it before, we’re going to try it,” she said.

Emily Fox, executive director of the Discovery Center, said McCoy is a vital part of her 12-person full-time staff. Fox, who herself had worked on and off for seven years on the center’s behalf before it opened, said McCoy is tailor-made for her position.

“I think she is very well suited. Her outgoing personality is exactly what a marketing and special events director should have,” Fox said. “Energy and enthusiasm – that’s her in a nutshell.”

Fox said McCoy believes in the work the organization is doing, and her perspective is indispensable to Fox’s management of the center.

“I’m always happy to hear her opinion because Charlotte has strength in areas that I don’t have, so I depend on her,” Fox said.

Offering advice to students and others seeking a meaningful career path, McCoy said even those with traditional skills can link their abilities to a company or organization that represents an interest they truly enjoy.

An accountant who loves baseball, for example, could do payroll for the Springfield Cardinals.  

She added she is not the only Discovery Center staffer who has realized her dream job.

“We are not working here for the money. This is our passion. We want to educate kids,” McCoy said.[[In-content Ad]]