‘We’ and ‘community’: Words to live by during and after my Express-Times tenure | Birdsong

When describing my career, I always say I grew up in the newspaper business. Unless you count my Express-Times neighborhood route as a pre-teen, my first “real job” was selling advertising to small businesses in a territory located nearly 50 miles from the newspaper’s core delivery market in and around Easton. I learned so much from our advertisers – small business owners, professional marketing people and everything in between.

Learning about what made a business tick and aligning plans to support their desired growth felt like a really important job and we took it seriously. We. The team of people that I had the privilege to work, play and grow with are absolutely unforgettable.



No matter what our ages were, we definitely grew up together. It’s been nearly 25 years since I began my career at the Express-Times. I’ve seen people go from entry-level sales and assistants to senior leaders in the C-Suite and successful business owners.

Some of us are even retired now! The type of work we did and the leadership that we were exposed to has generated a core team of people that adds so much value to our community. Community. I have not since my experience at The Express-Times and lehighvalleylive.

com had the opportunity to work with an organization so invested in the community. The desire to participate in that fashion has stayed with me. Whether it was volunteering for or sponsorship of a nonprofit or support of local sports coverage – people counted on us in a way that is difficult to describe.

It was a very personal thing. It was never “the paper.” It was always “my paper.

” I have no doubt our community will continue to rely on and embrace lehighvalleylive.com in the same fashion that they did the print version of the Express-Times. On to the next chapter.

Hasanna Birdsong started her career in 1999 at The Express-Times as a sales consultant and was the online sales director followed by the VP of advertising of The Express-Times and lehighvalleylive.com from 2009 - 2013. She is currently the managing director of Adept Group, a professional services company focused on package engineering.

Email her at [email protected] .

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