By
@Nancy Stein
Siu Ngo is one of two members of LMA New York who was awarded a 2021 LMA Northeast membership scholarship. She was honored for her passion for the legal marketing profession and her commitment to advancing her organizations’ interests and the Legal Marketing Association’s work. Siu is a marketing manager at global professional services firm Alvarez & Marsal - and a talented singer. In this Spotlight, Siu discusses the high notes she has hit in her career, with help from LMA. Siu also shares her experience as a singer and performer and daughter to parents who fled Vietnam in the 1970s. LMA: You are among the nine winners this year of LMA Northeast’s membership scholarship. What does the LMA membership scholarship mean to you?SN: I rarely win anything, so I'm incredibly honored that I was selected for LMA's membership scholarship! I've been a member of LMA since the beginning of my marketing career, so to be able to continue my membership through the pandemic is really special.
LMA: Where have you found the greatest value in LMA membership?SN: The greatest value, besides all of the educational content, has been the connections I've made over the past few years. In fact, I have LMA to thank for my current position as a Marketing Manager at Alvarez & Marsal! The first CMO I supported at Orrick is an LMA member. She mentioned at an LMA CMO luncheon that I was in the job market. The CMO at A&M at the time was at that luncheon and looking for someone with operations experience for her team. It was amazing to see the power of networking fully at work here!
LMA: In what ways would you like to get more involved in LMA?SN: When in-person events return, I would love to be involved in more event planning and whatever else I could lend my time and skills to. I think it's only fitting I give back to an organization that has given me so much!
LMA: You rose in the ranks at Orrick quite quickly, going from executive assistant to Strategic Marketing Operations Specialist. Big jump, big role – how did you do it?!SN: Being an executive assistant allowed me to see and work on all the ins and outs of marketing and BD, from submissions and experience tracking to budgets. As I learned and took on more responsibilities, I started noticing inefficiencies and would bring up suggestions to the global head of marketing on how to improve certain processes to help the department run more smoothly. Eventually, I realized I had a skill set that could take my career forward into the world of marketing operations. Luckily, the global head of marketing agreed there was a need, created a new operations division within our team, and the rest is history!
LMA: You are now at Alvarez & Marsal, which is a consulting firm, not a law firm. What is your role there and how does your work tie in with the legal industry?SN: In my new role as a marketing manager at A&M, I am continuing to do a lot of process improvement while expanding my project management scope. There are actually a lot of similarities between consulting firms and law firms. As a marketing team, we still provide support for our "clients" (a.k.a. our consultants) across multiple business units through social media management, pitch/RFP work, and event planning.
LMA: Tell us about growing up in a family of immigrants and the impact your parents had on you.SN: I was born and raised in New York City. My family came here in the late '70s after fleeing the Vietnam War, knowing that the U.S. was the land of opportunity. My father worked in construction to provide for us, and my mother was a stay at home mom who took care of my brother and me.
Being the child of first-generation immigrants, I had to learn to navigate growing up with American values while honoring the traditions of my ethnicity. It wasn't easy, and I had to overcome a lot of obstacles along the way, but seeing my parents’ journey, struggles, and successes to provide for their children in a new country inspires me every day to persevere, and it got me to where I am today. I am incredibly thankful for my parents teaching me not only to work hard, but also to be kind and make sure that I am propping others up on the road to success.
LMA: You have been singing and performing since you were 5 years old and even auditioned for “American Idol” and “The Voice.” Tell us about your singing.SN: My family loved music, so my parents enrolled me in chorus and piano lessons when I was only five years old. At a very young age, I actually wanted to make singing my career, but my parents, in typical Asian parenting fashion, wanted me to choose either the medical or business route. I chose marketing because I thought it would be the best route to follow into the music industry. After graduating, I continued to work in various jobs in the business field while going on singing auditions, both local and national, in the hopes that I could get my big break somehow.
Although I never made it onto the big stage for “American Idol” or “The Voice,” I did win a couple of local competitions and placed in the top three in a few others. After a few years, I decided to put all my focus on my marketing career, but I still love to sing. These days, I just practice at home and occasionally go out for a karaoke night with friends.
LMA: Can we see you perform?SN: Yes, but this is a really old video so the quality is not great!
The video was from one of the local Asian singing competitions I did. Sadly, I haven't put up any new content since then, but it's been on my mind since the pandemic started so maybe one of these days I'll bite the bullet. Who knows?