Dynamic Duos: Outbrain’s Yury Glikin and Elise Bennett
In this week's Dynamic Duos, Outbrain's APAC head of account management, Elise Bennett, and ANZ head of sales, Yury Glikin, tell Mumbrella how their professional partnership and friendship has flourished in the last 18 months, from nailing client briefs to sharing a 'wicked' sense of humour.
In Dynamic Duos, Mumbrella each week asks two members of the same organisation with a professional and personal affiliation to share with readers the importance of workplace relationships in an increasingly hybridised world of work.
Yury Glikin:
I first met Elise on the day I started at Outbrain, in mid-November 2021. COVID was in a brief hiatus, and I was lucky enough to be able to come to the office on my first day and meet the team.
I was introduced to Elise and was struck by how incredibly generous she was with her time. She helped me immensely in the first few months, as I was learning the new world of media, agencies, and Outbrain.
I sit opposite Elise, so we developed a rapport early on and chat regularly. As Head of Sales and Head of Regional Account Management, we speak all the time about clients, new business opportunities, issues that need to be resolved, things going on at the office etc.
I find her insights and practical approach to things invaluable, especially when I am trying to resolve a complicated or challenging issue. In 16 months of knowing Elise, I’ve never seen her annoyed, angry, upset or in any way succumb to the emotions that we all go through at work, from time to time. She’s a wonderfully stable presence in the office and is always available for her team, as well as supporting my sales team with advice and new pitches.
Elise’s serious side is offset with an absolutely wicked sense of humour. We joke constantly about pop culture, current events and news and sometimes stuff that’s completely random. Amongst other things, her obsession with her dog Charli, McDonalds and, more recently, the new season of Married at First Sight, is rich fodder for banter and good natured teasing during most weeks. She’s never met a margarita that she didn’t like and is great fun when we go out for birthdays or staff drinks.
I think Elise and I make a great team (I hope she agrees) and work really well together. Outbrain would, quite simply, not be anywhere nearly as successful in ANZ region without her, and I’m grateful to have her as a colleague and a friend.
Elise Bennett:
Yury was hired as our new Sales leader for the ANZ market in late 2021. He was referred to the role by another Outbrainer in the Sydney office, who I deeply respect and trust, so Yury immediately received brownie points thanks to our mutual connection.
Being Head of Sales for the ANZ market is a huge responsibility and requires great leadership and a strategic lens to execute it correctly. Selfishly, the success of me and my team is very dependent on Yury and his team to bring in new business, plus the right type of customers that will be successful on Outbrain, so he had very big shoes to fill.
Thankfully, Yury was up for the challenge and proved himself from day one. I was also quick to realise Yury is one of those people that always knows ‘someone’ – his network is super impressive.
We had an incredibly successful 2022, and it couldn’t have been achieved without the amazing work, leadership and efforts from Yury and his team. We’ve built a great working partnership, friendship and collaboration cadence which I’m proud of and grateful for.
Perhaps one of the things that is unique to our duo is the genuine approach we take in supporting each other and our teams to achieve greater success. There are no egos or personal agendas (we wouldn’t have time for this, anyway), so we’re able to be laser focused in order to get shit done, and we have a great mutual respect because of it.
Yury treats my team as if they were his own and will always take the time to pitch in if someone needs a hand. He never shies away from going the extra mile and getting his hands dirty, even if it falls out of his immediate remit or responsibilities. Yury is definitely one that can ‘walk the walk’ – a quality that is hard to come by, which makes him a true leader.
Outside of work-related topics, we’re able to poke fun and call each other out to ensure we stay humble. Our difference in generation, music, food and lifestyle choices makes for a lot of great banter and fun. The Sydney office wouldn’t be the same without him.
Yury on Elise:
Most memorable moment with Elise: Last year, we did an escape room as a team-building exercise, which was a lot of fun. At the end, we had to pretend we were all on stage, acting out some bizarre version of Romeo and Juliet. Elise had to act as Juliet and, as per the play, cry in anguish when she wakes up and finds Romeo dead. Watching her slumped on the floor, wailing something like “Noooo, whyyyyyy!” is a memory I think I’ll carry for a while.
Best word to describe Elise: Unflappable
Elise’s most annoying habit or endearing behaviour: Elise is notorious for fixing the smallest grammatical mistakes, and she really hates when presentation elements are not perfect, like an image without a transparent background or mismatched brackets.
I’ve lost count how many times we’ve worked on a client deck and she sends it back to me with a comment like … “looks great, I’ve just centre aligned the values in the media schedule and fixed the logo on page 5, it was a bit too dark” … or something similar.
Annoying or endearing … who’s to say!
Elise on Yury:
Most memorable moment with Yury: A more recent one that comes to mind – Yury knows how particular I am about spelling, especially when it comes to people’s names (the amount of creative spelling variations I’ve had of my name is to blame for this).
A team member and I purposely spelt Yury’s name incorrectly on a few of our Slack channels, with precise timing and subtly to see if he would pick it up. Both of us were able to keep our poker face game strong, with Yury utterly confused but persuaded that the incorrect spelling of his name was a complete coincidence. To this day, he still doesn’t know it was a prank. Seeing as Yury has definitely read this – the cat’s out of the bag!
Best word to describe Yury: Tenacious
Yury’s most annoying habit or endearing behaviour: For some reason, Yury still hasn’t quite nailed the search functions on Slack or Gmail (it must be a Gen X thing). I am the gatekeeper of finding historic information and notes for him.
If you and a colleague would like to submit your story to Dynamic duos, please email kwelch@mumbrella.com.au.
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