Employee Spotlight: Meet Andrea Hoffman

Andrea Hoffman | Sr. Marketing Literature Coordinator | Alameda, CA

Q. What is your current role at Penumbra?

Currently I’m a part of the Marketing Operations, Engineering Change Order (ECO) team, whose main responsibility is to facilitate the review process for a variety of marketing materials. This can include a lot of different pieces like event booth graphics, product brochures, training presentations, and even social media posts. All these items get reviewed by different departments to ensure that our branding is aligned, as well as to make sure that we include all the necessary trademarks, disclaimers, and risk information. If there’s ever questions or concerns about something during a review, our team facilitates the communication between the different departments to help resolve issues before finalizing the material.

Q. If you did not pursue your current career, what do you see yourself doing professionally?

In college, I was a part of a music business organization where I got to learn about all the different kinds of careers that you could pursue within the music industry. Because of that, I discovered concert photography and spent a lot of my time photographing live music for some local online publications. I think if I hadn’t pursued my current career, I would have eventually tried doing photography more seriously as a job and maybe even gone on a concert tour or two.

Q. Describe yourself at age 10. What career aspirations did you have at that age?

When I was younger, I was very ambitious and always wanted to learn new things. I had so many different interests and wanted to try out a bunch of different jobs as I grew up. I remember wanting to be an author, a zoologist, a movie producer, and even a magazine editor.

Q. Describe a travel adventure that you’ll never forget.

One summer, I went on a huge RV road trip through Mexico with my mom, grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins. We spent almost a month going through a bunch of different areas and stopping to visit all our family that lived there. I got to see where my mom grew up and hear all her stories about the different places we visited. Then, at the end of our road trip, we stayed with another aunt and uncle who lived right outside Mexico City. We got to explore their beautiful town and had so much fun just hanging out together. I doubt we’ll ever get to go on a huge family trip like that again, so it’ll always be a very special memory for me.

Q. Before working at Penumbra, describe the most unusual or interesting job you’ve ever had.

I used to work in the box office, selling and taking tickets, at a few different music venues in Southern California. It was a lot of fun because I’d get to go to a bunch of shows for free and handle guest lists, which meant sometimes getting to see celebrities, too. As someone who loves going to concerts for fun, it was always so cool to get to see behind the scenes of what it took to put on such big events.

Q. What would people be surprised to learn about you?

Since my mom’s side of the family is from Mexico, I grew up speaking Spanish at home. Once I got to high school, I had to choose a language to learn. I didn’t want to take Spanish because I wanted to learn something new, so I took Korean for three years. I’m still not very good conversationally, but I did learn how to read the language and hope to get better at speaking it in the future!