Nikki Bogopolskaya, Leading Brand Partnerships at TikTok

August 17th, 2020

Chances are, you've participated in one or two (or a hundred??) TikTok challenges these past few months. Not surprising though, as there are over 500 million users worldwide.

Nikki Bogopolskaya currently leads partnerships with Fortune 500 technology, telco and finance brands at TikTok. Her role entails figuring out how TikTok fits into their organic content strategy and developing their media mix on TikTok. With a career heavily indexed in brand partnerships, Nikki demonstrates how her passion for working with people, building relationships, and asking "why" has prepared her well for this role.

In this feature, Nikki shares with us how her degree in Human and Organizational Development & Communications influenced her early career, how her first role taught her scrappiness, her role leading brand partnerships for TikTok, and what excites her most about the future of social media. Read along to soak up her incredible career advice for ambitious women, such as yourself.

Early Career

You graduated Vanderbilt University with a degree in Human and Organizational Development & Communications. How did your studies help shape your career in brand partnerships and marketing / sales?

My major was incredibly helpful because it not only taught me how to do a job, it taught me how to find a job. Human & Organizational Development allowed us to dissect organizations and successful leaders to learn from the types of case studies you typically only get in business school, but also provided semester-long courses on career development, encouraging us to dig deep into our skill sets and interests with tools like Myers Briggs tests and informational interviews to determine what we really wanted to do. Our professors and guest speakers were fantastic and I always felt like I was learning something relevant. Communications, on the flip side, offered a more traditional view of media studies, and built on my existing love of content - I have always been a big reader and writer. I actually graduated thinking I wanted to go into the editorial side of working for a publisher, but I ended up on the ad sales side as that was the role that was open at the time. I took it, thinking I’d eventually transfer to editorial, but loved being on the business side of a content platform so much that I’ve stayed on that trajectory for a decade!

You spent the first couple years of your career as a Community Manager. What key learnings did you take from your first role? And what skills did you gain that helped you later in your career?

I was the DC Community Manager for HowAboutWe, a very early dating app - I actually think it may have been web-only, but now I’m aging myself - that was eventually acquired by Match Group. The company was NYC based and I was actually the only employee in DC, my role was to build the DC community from scratch. The biggest thing that role taught me was how to be a self-starter. I didn’t go to an office or regularly see my boss, there was no one to check in on me, and I had to rely on my scrappiness and my relationships to build DC’s user base from the ground-up. I learned how to really tap my network, how to build something from nothing, and how to juggle many initiatives without a ton of direction while focused on a very clear goal (every Community Manager had a goal of a number of active users). It prepared me really well for partnerships roles, which are super relationship-based. And it also prepared me to launch my own company, which I did before joining TikTok!

Your career is heavily indexed in brand partnerships - noting your positions at Evite, Match, & FourSquare. Why this field and what do you enjoy most about your role?

I was actually born in Moscow and am a first-generation immigrant to the US (my family came here when I was four), and there’s a Russian word - “pochemuchka” - which basically means, “little girl who asks a ton of questions”. Thinking about it now, I don’t know that there’s a masculine version of the word...but I digress. My mom called me a “pochemuchka” since I learned to talk, and I’ve remained one ever since. I love working with people, I love building relationships, and I love asking questions. This positioned me really well for a role in partnerships, which in addition to being people-centric and relationship-based, really requires asking “why?” all the time. There are many different iterations of partnerships roles but I have always loved working with brands. I read somewhere that brands are the millennial equivalent of religions and I think that’s so true - I identify with the brands I love (and the brands I have worked for) on a values and mission level, and I love figuring out how brands with shared values can work together.

TikTok

You’re currently working in Brand Partnerships at TikTok. What does your role entail? What is your day-to-day?

In my role, I build partnerships with Fortune 500 technology, telco and finance brands. I work with them on everything from figuring out how TikTok fits into their organic content strategy, to developing their media mix on TikTok. SInce TikTok is such a new platform and it’s so unique, so much of my role is education - educating our partners on what’s trending on the platform, how consumers are using it, what creators are doing, etc. It’s a nice mix of creativity and strategic planning, since I get to work with our partners to come up with big ideas on the platform, but then I’m also responsible for figuring out how to measure the success of those ideas and how they drove results for the brand, which is pretty quantitative. Internally, the brand partnerships role is a bit of a quarterback, shepherding information back and forth between Product, Marketing, and our clients. It’s really fun and no 2 days are the same, I also feel lucky that I get to work with other leading brands in the tech space - my clients are so smart and always challenge me to learn more about the industry.

You’ve been at TikTok for a few months now. In your short time there, what has been your biggest achievement / most exciting work you’ve done?

Honestly, I think my biggest achievement is that I found, started, and have fully onboarded in this role in the middle of the COVID 19 pandemic! I was leading the partnerships team at an influencer marketing agency before this, and that’s where I started working with TikTok on partnerships for our clients. I fell in love with the power and creativity of the platform and knew I wanted to work there - and I went through the process of applying, interviewing, and starting the job entirely on Zoom from my temporary remote office in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I’ve actually never met most of my co-workers or clients outside of video chat, which is crazy, because we’ve built such strong relationships and rapport. Especially in such a relationship-centric role, I pride myself on being able to build and nurture those relationships from behind my screen. I thought working remotely would be a huge challenge but my colleagues and clients are amazing and their energy and enthusiasm translates, even when they’re all in 2D.

TikTok is the talk of the town and has gained major attention from both users and press. What excites you most about the future of TikTok / social media?

I’m excited for a future that emphasizes entertainment and community over “social media”, actually. I think so much social media, especially during this pandemic, has become really draining. It’s either depressing, or political, or performative, or an awful mix of the 3. On the one hand, I haven’t gotten to see friends as much and keeping up virtually helps. On the other hand, I can’t help but feel worse, rather than better, when I scroll on most platforms. TikTok is different because our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy and I think we really do that. The platform is so funny, so unique, and it really does re-charge me rather than drag me down. There are so many incredibly talented people producing art, music, comedy, culinary experiences, etc - or just sharing a relatable moment in their lives. It feels more like watching a bunch of tiny TV shows made just for me than digitally snooping on friends or celebrities...I’m excited for that to continue.

Advice

What do you wish you knew when you were first starting your career?

It’s okay not to know what you’ll be doing 10 years from now or even in your next job. You’ll live your way into the answer.

What advice do you have for young women in their early career who are interested in pursuing a career in brand partnerships?

It’s all about your network so NETWORK! Join communities like this one, talk to people you think are interesting, slide into folks’ LinkedIn messages and DMs - you’d be surprised how many people are willing to talk if you’re genuine and enthusiastic.

Who is one woman you aspire to be like?

There are so many women! My mom, who moved from Moscow to Brooklyn when she was 28 with 2 little kids, put herself through college while working and raising us, and now has worked for major financial institutions like Lehman Brothers (RIP) and The Federal Reserve. I love female comedians - my favorite is Iliza Schlesinger, who is so smart and well-spoken and makes you really think twice about traditional gender and relationship tropes. I really admire females who have broken barriers in tech - Whitney Wolfe Herde (founder of Bumble) is a well-known badass but other personal favorites include Morgan DeBaum (who founded the media group Blavity, which caters to Black millennials), Eva Goicochea (who founded sexual wellness company Maude, and was super helpful to me when I was starting my own company), and Kendall Bird (fellow Vandy grad and one of my best friends who just founded Frame, a digital platform to improve access to mental health resources). I could talk about this subject forever but I will end by saying, I am also a recent but huge fan of Kamala Harris. I love that she’s not afraid to be authentic and opinionated, and admire the smarts and spice she brings to the 2020 ticket. All these women also have incredible personal style. I truly don’t know how they find the time to look so good while doing so much.