Meet Victoria Cumberbatch | Community Management Consultant

We had the good fortune of connecting with Victoria Cumberbatch and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Victoria, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
Risk, is a natural part of the cycle. It’s the more stressful part if you’re Type A, but risk can provide great reward. Throughout high school, I was captain or president of all the clubs and sports. I spoke at graduation and I really felt myself! I finished college in three years to a recession and no one giving a whole crap about some BA degree, especially one in international development. All those internships I was assured would mean something, meant nothing at the end of the day. So I went back home to NJ, got certified to substitute teach, and I essentially did that for months followed by months of backpacking and odd jobs. This was, for over half my twenties. I felt like I was in the ultimate catch 22, I was learning more than I ever had by traveling the world yet I felt farther and farther behind my peers whom were getting promoted or moving into junior roles in their careers. At 32, in the rearview, I’m filled with gratitude for the eclectic experiences I’ve had because every single interview I get into, it circles around those ‘otherized’ experiences and often people are blown away by the amount of life I’ve been able to squeeze out and hone into something tangible. In the process, I was riddled with uncertainty and nowadays, I’m proud of the whole package!

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Community management as an industry is fairly new, but only in perception. It’s been around as long as there have been groups of people gathering because let’s face it, every group needs leadership even if that person arises organically. It started out with titles like program leader or coordinator and only recent it’s accomplished the level of community manager → which makes much more sense! It’s exciting because the industry has this new frontier vibe going on and there’s mountains of opportunity and simultaneously the challenge is to balance this trend of ‘everyone knows it all.’ There’s always something to learn or hone and yet it’s become increasingly more easy to portray oneself as an expert when in fact, there’s still some way to go! This sort of confusion in a burgeoning industry is less than ideal, but not impossible to defeat. Community management will come to be seen as vital as marketing or sales teams in my estimation because more and more people are longing for that connection and belonging; it can be seen particularly with the after effects of the pandemic. Community management spans the passionate Meetup host to the more introverted Discord NFT community admin to the mom in your PTA that decided to start a book club. These are all communities and they’re vital to the social fabric. I mean, the Japanese have Moai’s [look it. up] and live long as hell! It’s not a coincidence I’ll tell ya that.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Since I’m pretty new myself, I can share some of the dopest things I’ve been getting into! On the way from the airport, I’d definitely regale them with some of those conspiratorial theories about the airport! Then probably have Mexican for dinner, at my little neighborhood haunt called Kahlo’s. I’d love to take them on a bike ride along the Platte River and maybe have a lil picnic. I’d love to bring them along to Washington Park and play some midweek volleyball. One of the days it would be great to either go south to do a day at Garden of the Gods or north to do some Estes Park hiking. I’d love to walk around town with them, maybe starting at Union Station and seeing where our feet take us. Then ending, if possible, with a dope show at Red Rocks because, obviously.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I have to shout out my small but mighty group of friends, whom are located all over the globe, but always in my whatsapp 🙂 Each of them fuels me and I rely on them for being the authentic, transparent, real women they are. Additionally, as an only child that’s hella close to my parents, I think they are exemplars of great parenting [if I may say so myself] and allowed me to figure out my mistakes on my own and talk through the many lessons with them. They always gave me their time and I’ve come to find that that is the biggest gift anyone can give you.

Website: adventuresofv.com

Instagram: instagram.com/adventuresofv

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/victoriamc

Twitter: twitter.com/adventures_ofv

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_VSZdIIVcZjLe17qRMO3UA