by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
By day, Maureen Sharon, a strategic marketing analyst for Centex Homes, is pecking away at her computer, gathering statistics for the company.
But, when she leaves the office, the heels come off and the ice skates go on.
As the captain of the Jacksonville Breakers, a women’s ice hockey team, she is out on the ice expertly handling her hockey stick as she goes head to head with other women (and men) in ice hockey games.
In her job as a strategic marketing analyst for Centex Homes, Sharon gathers information to help the company know where it wants to move in the future.
“I do customer, product and demographic research,” said Sharon. “We run focus group surveys and what we are trying to figure out is what part of town we should build in, what we should build there, who would be interested in buying it and how much they are willing to pay for it. We then go even deeper by finding out where the people are coming from so we can target our advertising to that part of town.
“We find people who are known to move to that area or recent home buyers. We target our surveys to a certain demographic area.”
Many of the surveys are offered online and Centex offers an incentive to make sure people respond.
Sharon said they purchase lists from companies with a certain criteria.
“We’ll say we want a list of 5,000 people who purchased a home in the last 18 months, fit a certain income qualifications and are from this part of town,” she said.
Sharon has been with Centex for almost two years.
What does she do with all the information she gathers?
“Another part of my job is to do land proposals,” said Sharon. “I take all that information in addition to financial information from accounting to make sure it works from a financial side and compile it into an electronic document that is sent for corporate approval.”
Corporate will either agree to buy the land or say that it isn’t going to work.
Sharon said that her job is important because it keeps the business going.
“I definitely take input from other people,” she said. “I’m certainly not the one making the land decisions, but I am the one building the proposal and helping us to get those deals.”
Sharon does a lot of online research to determine demographic information through the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“I try to keep up with what is going on in the market by reading a lot so I know what the economy is looking like and what else is going on out there,” she said. “I do a lot of competition shopping where we check out what the other builders in town are doing.”
Before Centex, she worked for Interline Brands in their advertising department for nine years.
She earned her bachelors degree in humanities and political science from Jacksonville University.
Sharon also has a programming background, so she uses that expertise to do things related to programming in her current position.
Her job is pretty solitary. She sits in an office at the end of a long hallway where no one travels, unless they are coming to see her.
“I call it internal customer service,” she said. “I have a lot of people in the company who come to me for answers. My customers are the people who work here.”
Her other side
As the captain of the Jacksonville Breakers traveling hockey team, Sharon is proud to say they won the Florida Women’s Hockey League championship in the 2004-2005 season. She has been with the Breakers for six years, and captain for the past two.
“We travel all over Florida and the Southeast going to tournaments and participate in the Florida Women’s Hockey League,” she said. “We practice once a week.”
Sharon said she has always been an athlete, but ice hockey was not one of her sport. She ran track and cross country in high school and was on crew in college.
“I was a varsity athlete in college and have always been attracted to sports,” she said. “I was always running and swimming a lot.”
Sharon grew up in the midwest where she was an ice hockey fan, but had never played ice hockey until Florida’s 90-degree weather prompted her to check it out.
“I had seen a women’s hockey team play at the Jacksonville arena, so I knew there were women in Jacksonville who played hockey and I had always been a fan,” she said. “I was out on a run in August and was so hot. I thought ‘This is crazy.’ I live in Florida and I’m running out in the heat. I need to do something inside and I thought about the women’s hockey team.”
She called the ice rink, Skateworld, and said they had her out on the ice three days later.
“I’ve just been in love with it ever since,” she said. “And that was six years ago.”
Sharon had a little experience with figure skating when she lived in Chicago, but playing ice hockey was a little different.
“I had been on skates before, but there was definitely a learning curve,” she said. “I had to learn how to hockey skate and play the game. I grew up watching the sport, so I’ve always enjoyed the sport. My parents took me to my first game when I was four years old. It’s an exciting sport to watch and it takes a while to learn the rules. A lot of people are intimidated by the rules and think it is a confusing sport. Once you learn it, you see it is aggressive, but also very graceful. It takes a lot of skill and talent to skate, move the puck and figure out how to make a play happen.”
Sharon is able to make it happen on the ice, and uses her experience to keep the team connected.
“I was elected by my teammates,” she said. “I am the main communicator with the referees and there is team leadership involved. I just support the team and get them pumped up and excited to play the game.”
She also plays on a men’s team, the X Blades, a house team at Skateworld.
Though Sharon is 5 feet 9 inches tall, she said size doesn’t have much to do with playing hockey.
“It’s more about the drive to play and maybe a little aggressiveness,” she said. “It is certainly not a passive sport. We have an excellent player on the Breakers team who is 5 feet 2 inches tall, and when you look as the U.S. Women’s’ Olympic team, they have four players at 5 feet 4 inches tall or under. Skill is also a factor of course, but I want to make it clear that I play with the men not because I am better than any of the other women, I just happen to enjoy the team dynamic there. It is different than playing with women. Men and women just interact differently in a sports environment. I grew up playing little league baseball on an all boys team, so maybe that’s where the drive to play with the guys comes from.”
Balancing her job and her sport can sometimes be challenging, but Sharon is on top of it.
“I think you have to have something outside of work that keeps you excited and enthusiastic about everything,” said Sharon. “You can’t be so focused on work that you become overwhelmed by it and the same thing for hobbies. I think it is a matter of striking a balance. It’s a very fun sport. It is pretty aggressive, good exercise and you can really kind of get your tension and stress out.”
When most people think of ice hockey, they picture players fighting with each other against the plastic barriers surrounding the rink, but Sharon said that is not allowed on her team. Though that doesn’t mean she doesn’t get roughed up a bit.
“I wear a cage (mask), so if any pucks that come flying my way, I am protected,” she said. “I mean you do get bumps and bruises, but there is no fighting in women’s hockey at all at any level all the way up to the Olympics. It’s just not allowed. They will kick you out of the game.”
Sharon said it can get a little rough on the men’s team she plays on, but fighting is not allowed.
“If you fight you get kicked out of the game, so it is not a good idea,” she said. “I mean there will be a little bit of pushing as it is an aggressive sport. If I get pushed, I push them back. I’m not really afraid of them. I made the choice to play in that league.”
Sharon said that having been involved in sports all of her life has really helped her in her professional life.
“You learn leadership skills and how to work with other people on a team” she said. “You learn how to prioritize and put forth a good effort in multiple places at same time instead of only being able to handle one thing at a time. You learn to try and maximize yourself knowing that you have to be able to contribute to all these different areas at the same time. I’m a big believer in sports and people being involved in sports.”