The Importance of Balancing Work and Family with Rebekah Pappas, Senior Client Services Manager

Feb 22, 2022

Guerrero Senior Client Services Manager Rebekah Pappas appreciates the importance of balancing work and family. When she’s not providing critical advertising sales support, she’s a mom to energetic twin boys.

Learn about Rebekah’s role, her family life, and the many reasons why the Guerrero team plans to celebrate Christmas this year at the Pappas’ house.

Rebekah PappasWhere are you originally from and what is your background? 

I was born in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, but grew up in Naperville, Illinois.

Shortly after I graduated high school, I moved to Chicago. I attended college at Columbia College Chicago and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in photography. After graduating, I worked as a printer at a photography studio (printing and developing black-and-white photos in a darkroom on an enlarger) as well as a bartender and server. Before landing at Guerrero, I was a sales manager at a wedding photography studio.

How did you first come to work for Guerrero? 

My hours at the photography studio were not conducive to the type of lifestyle that I wanted, so I decided needed a traditional Monday-Friday gig. I interviewed with Titus Dawson for a sales position at Guerrero, and it only lasted about ten minutes. I called my husband and said, “The interview was super short, but I feel really good about it!” Later that day, I got an email asking me to start the first week of February 2010.

What do you do at Guerrero today? 

Today, I work as a senior client services manager. Whenever someone outside of Guerrero asks what I do, I tell them I work with advertisers after the point of sale to gather ad materials, collect payment, and answer any questions they might have. I am the liaison between the advertisers and Guerrero’s sales and creative departments.

How have you maintained a connection with your team during the pandemic? 

My team was remote before the pandemic, so we are used to not being in an office together. Since our team is so small, we all talk multiple times a week, but we also have a weekly meeting to catch up.

How has Guerrero evolved over the years? What’s the most marked difference from when you started? 

Goodness, has it changed! When I started, we were in an office off Jackson Avenue, and we didn’t have our own computers. There were four computers in the middle of the sales floor that we were allowed to use at the end of the day for fifteen minutes to send emails. I’ve seen four office locations, three company name changes, multiple magazines evolve, employees who have left and come back, and employees advance internally. It’s been amazing to watch, and I’m proud to have been a part of it.

Rebekah Pappas and family

What makes Guerrero such a great place to work? 

I really appreciate the freedom to work from home. I know that with COVID-19, work/life has changed, but Guerrero has made it really nice for working parents. Guerrero has allowed me to financially support my family as well as make dinner, help with schoolwork, take my kids to and from after-school activities, and so forth. Guerrero has also implemented amazing tools to enable the company to keep in touch working remotely.

What do you like to do when you are not working?

I love spending time with my family. I have twin seven-year-old boys, Rylin and Jonah, who make my life a chaotic mess in the best way.

What else would you like to share about yourself?

My family loves Christmas (really all holidays, but especially Christmas)! Since we started dating in 2004, my husband and I collect ornaments from every vacation.

My family does a Christmas cookie exchange each year with family and friends, and we usually have about twenty-five to thirty cookies to swap but only about ten people we exchange with (everyone has a love of baking). We give boxes of cookies to lucky neighbors, coworkers, and friends.

Also, my husband does light pixels on our house for Christmas and has the lights linked with songs on a dedicated radio station. We have lots of cars that stop outside of our house to watch the light show and, shockingly, our neighbors don’t mind.

The inside is just as fun! In 2021, we had two full-sized Christmas trees, six smaller Christmas trees, a holiday village, and a fully decorated mantel. We also swapped our usual wall and room décor with holiday décor. The list goes on and it’s quite a production. Every room on the main floor of our house and our basement gets decorated and this year we plan on working our way up to the second floor.