For Ebun Onagoruwa, technology is about solving problems.
It’s a lesson Onagoruwa learned during her eight-plus years at Microsoft. Now Zillow’s head of business-to-business marketing, Onagoruwa is using her experience to obsess over the company’s partners, like agents and landlords.
“My job is to think about how do I attract and how do I make sure that the value that Zillow provides to them, to either grow their businesses and help them get customers into a home, is really clear,” Onagoruwa said. “How do I retain and engage them?”
Onagoruwa actually started her career as a lawyer in London before moving to Chicago for school. After falling in love and moving to Seattle, she was introduced to the world of technology through Microsoft before joining Zillow three years ago.
As Zillow shutters its direct homebuying service, Zillow Offers, Onagoruwa’s B2B marketing role, which she began earlier this year, is likely to become more crucial for the company. She is also the co-executive sponsor for Billow, Zillow’s affinity network for Black and African ancestry employees.
The Business Journal spoke with Onagoruwa about her new role, her background and her family dance parties.
On a more granular level, what does your role entail?
[W]e want to help [our customers] shop and dream. Help them find a home. Help them transact. Help them get a loan. [T]hen you think about what are the solutions we have to do those. Let’s use the agents for example. One of those is working with our agents to make sure they understand and they are happy to work with us and they can help the customer get to the transaction. So my team would work on, “Ok, what is our marketing strategy to find and attract the right agents that would want to do this with us?”
What are some of the biggest challenges in your role?
Making sure that partners know that we care about them and we value them. [W]e want to make it clear that the success of Zillow and solving our customer problems involves them too, so they’re part of the shared success.
What is the focus of your new role moving forward?
To be able to give partners solutions, you have to obsess about the customer, too. So for me, when I think about the future, I have to start with the customer strategy. Our goal is to really help them unlock life’s next chapter, and we’re thinking of doing this with a super app. We're calling it housing super app.
How did you end up at Microsoft earlier in your career?
I started off my career as a lawyer in London. That was my first gig, being a corporate attorney in the U.K. I loved solving problems. That’s the thing that gets me excited. Legal problems are fun. But I always wondered why are the companies buying each other? Why are they doing M&A? Why are you bringing in a lawyer? I wanted to get to the business side of things pretty quickly. So I hopped across the pond, moved to the U.S. and went to school in Chicago. I ended up being a strategy consultant for about three years, which was solving problems, but now business problems.
And then from consulting to Microsoft?
I fell in love, and I moved to Seattle. I needed a different kind of gig. Consulting is quite a lot of travel. That was my first foray into technology. I started working at Microsoft. Microsoft was where I fell in love with tech, and I fell in love with marketing.
What lessons did you take away from Microsoft?
I did a variety of functions within marketing, like strategy, product marketing. So for me, what I really got out of Microsoft was ... how to really use technology to solve problems for businesses, whether that’s enterprises or SMBs or individuals. I also worked in education, so I got to learn different verticals within technology.
Did the relationship you moved to Seattle for work out?
Yes, we’re happily married, and we’ve got three little ones. This is one of the reasons I love Zillow. I have an 11-year-old, a nine-year-old and four-year-old, and they keep me busy. I think the thing that over the last two years has really solidified my passion for Zillow is just this flexibility of being able to work.
What’s one thing your employees don’t know about you?
Every Friday night, I have a dance party with my kids. We turn on disco lights. After a long week of work, I have a glass of wine, they don’t, and we all dance.
Vice president and head of business-to-business marketing at Zillow
Age: 43
Hometown: Ibadan, Nigeria
Current residence: Newcastle, WA
Education: Undergrad at Cardiff University in Wales, law school at Nottingham Law School, and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Favorite activities outside of work: Reading, traveling and dancing. “My daughter is trying to teach me the violin, but I don’t know if I’ll pick it up.”
Vice president at Google and former Microsoft general manager who hired Ebun at Microsoft
“Early in her career, when (Onagoruwa) came into Microsoft (2010) we were really trying to break into the cloud, we needed somebody to help analyze and then create market entry strategies as we expanded. I was super-impressed with Ebun’s structured thinking and problem solving. She had her MBA from Chicago and had worked at McKinsey, so she was able to come in very quickly ... and pick up the technology piece. Something that I think has really carried throughout Ebun’s career is the way that she connects with other people and inspires and lifts them. [S]he makes the people around her better.”
