Alumni Magazine - Spring 2008 - (Page 56) > > > PA C E S E T T E R S Shaping Sales Jennifer Matullo strategizes Victoria’s Secret business spikes By Kimberly Link-Wills Keeping Victoria’s Secret ahead of industry curves is the job of former Georgia Tech volleyball star Jennifer Matullo. As manager of business commercialization for Victoria’s Secret Direct, Matullo, ME 97, outlines strategy for all company products — bras, panties, sleepwear, swimsuits, clothes and the teen-focused Pink line — sold on the Web and through catalogs. Working at Victoria’s Secret headquarters outside Columbus, Ohio, took some getting used to for Matullo, who joined the company in 2005 after a stint at Nike and receipt of a Harvard MBA. “Every other word you hear around here is bra or panties,” she says. “I have a lot of male coworkers and we talk about bras and panties all the time. It’s just how daily conversation is. It’s business.” Matullo says Victoria’s Secret employees become desensitized to the sexy wall-size images from the catalogs and photographs of winged “angels” from the televised “Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.” “Working here you get to see the untouched photos. You get the behind-the-scenes look that the models are not as perfect as they appear,” Matullo says. “When I first started here, I thought my self-image was going to be terrible. Really, it hasn’t been that way at all. There are definitely real people working here. We don’t have models walking around.” Self-assurance shouldn’t be an issue for Matullo. On the volleyball court in 1995, she helped the Tech volleyball team win its first ACC tournament title. In Tech’s record books, she ranks 10th in assists with 716. Matullo scored a job with Nike upon graduation. “I basically was the person in charge of taking a shoe from a picture on a piece of paper and making it into a shoe,” she says. “I worked with the designers, I worked with marketing on some of the colors they wanted to do, I worked with factories directly. I was the one who communicated how we wanted the shoe put together and I worked with them on the mold drawings for the different parts of the shoe.” Matullo always has thrived with many things on her to-do list. “During the volleyball season especially, I had a lot on my plate. It was like going to school full time and having a part-time job with the amount of hours we were required to put in with volleyball. It really allows you to juggle priorities. I tend to do better when I’m busier — the more overwhelmed I feel, the better I tend to do. My best grades were always during 56 Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2008
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.