Courtney Rambo has always been a leader.
“Thinking back to elementary school, middle school and high school, always being involved in (Associated Student Body),” she said. “I just think I have a lot of energy.”
Rambo grew up in North Bend, where, coincidentally, she attended high school with other Top 7 Under 40 winner, Allyson Farrar. They served on the Associated Student Body together.
“I came up here to go to Western in 2007,” Rambo said. “And I never left.”
While working on her bachelor’s degree, she started working at a small sales company, which was then bought out by SPIE, an organization that serves scientists and engineers who work with light.
Rambo started working in the marketing department, and discovered a passion for digital marketing, in particular.
“It comes pretty naturally to me,” she said. “I really like the analytics of it.”
While working full time, she also decided to go back to school. She earned her master’s of business administration from Western Washington University, going to school in the evenings after working all day.
“I really like to be busy,” she said. “I like to try a lot of different things.”
In 2016, she attended the Whatcom Community Foundation’s Board Match Program, and now serves on the board of Allied Arts and Cloud Mountain Farm Center.
“Being on nonprofit boards seems like a good place to help drive direction and network,” she said. “I’ve just really enjoyed it. It’s been so nice to meet completely different people.”
When she went back to school, she wasn’t planning on starting a business. But her degree would come in handy when she and friends Jared Keller and Alex Bruner started talking about starting their own digital marketing company.
“We were all kind of at a point in our lives where we wanted more hands-on stuff,” Rambo said.
She didn’t see any path for upward mobility at her job at SPIE, and she wanted to have a leading role and be able to adapt quicker to knew trends.
They opened Intellitonic in 2016. They made money their first year, and have hired two full-time employees.
“All of us just want to do a good job, as cheesy as that sounds,” Rambo said.
Courtney Rambo is one of this year’s winners of the Top 7 Under 40 Award. Click here to read about the rest of the winners.
