Print is the connection: Jennifer Kolloczek on clarity, collaboration and creativity

It’s telling that at a young age, Jennifer Kolloczek was impatient to get out into the world and work. So much so that her mother had to convince her to finish her final year of school! But when the time came, she immediately looked for ways to learn and work simultaneously. She wanted what she describes as “a practical application of knowledge”.

In a world that can sometimes be frustratingly vague, Jennifer is all clarity – exactly the kind of person you’d want on your team. Fortunately, she is our European Planning, Marketing & Innovation Senior Director for Production Print, with over two decades of highly specialist knowledge and practical application, gained by studying International Marketing while working at Océ, now called Canon Production Printing (CPP), and then in the wider Canon world.

And while it may feel unusual for someone who describes themselves as a lifelong learner to have been with the same employer for such a long time, the scale of our business means that she has been able to explore new opportunity after new opportunity. “Every few years, another door opened,” she explains. “I learnt that in global companies, like Océ and in an even larger way at Canon, there are huge opportunities to develop yourself.” For Jennifer, it meant that she was able to challenge herself across a number of roles with Océ in Europe before continuing to work with Canon in the USA for several years, then returning to CPP in the Netherlands in 2021.

Jennifer is an extremely recognisable figure in the print industry, but today this is more for her distinguished career than her gender. Indeed, the numbers of women in print is something she sees as secondary to a bigger issue for the industry: recruitment. “We all recognise, I think, that the big issue is a real shortage in young talent,” she says. For her, its future depends on the broadest diversity possible, not only in gender, ethnicity and identity, but across skillsets and approaches, in order to have a robust, versatile and capable workforce long into the future.

When asked how she would convince the next generation to get into print, Jennifer lights up. It’s a subject she has clearly given a lot of thought to, and her love of this quietly powerful industry pours into her answer. “Close your eyes and think about what the world would look like without print,” she says. “You’re at an airport. How do you know where you’re going? Is that toothpaste you’re buying? Or something else? Remember the last time you received a parcel and, after opening the boring brown box, there was the product in its packaging – and it made you so happy. Print is the connection between people and businesses. We might live in a more and more digital world but in the offline world everything starts or ends with a printed product.”

She also stresses that what people believe the industry to be and what it actually is are very different. “It’s a high-tech industry – everything is software driven, uses data analytics. But it’s also a communications industry, a marketing space and filled with great design and creativity.” In her day-to-day, however, Jennifer is focused on connection. That is, between Canon and our customers. Because, as she says, “it's not that we're ‘just’ selling something, and someone is buying something. It's more of a partnership approach that we have with our clients in production print.” This means that when she and her team bring a product to market, it’s about understanding precisely what our customers value, the problems they are seeking to solve and making sure there is – and there’s that word again – clarity in what they hear from us.

This collaborative approach extends very much into the way she works with her team, as well as with the wider industry. “I'm the sandwich child – so, the in between of three kids,” she smiles. “And I think that's still something I crave. Because it makes all of us better if we do things together, as a team. There's the saying that if you want to go fast, you go alone, and if you want to get far, you take others with you.”

Indeed, it’s this ethos that has naturally led Jennifer to Girls Who Print (GWP) – the world’s largest network of women in the printing and graphic communication industry. Founded fifteen years ago by industry stalwart, Deborah Corn, it currently boasts over 11,000 members. On our stand at the recent drupa event, Girls Who Print hosted a get together of more than 75 women. “For me, it was great to see that there are so many women, including young women, in the industry who are passionate about print,” says Jennifer. “And having been an active part of the network for some years, I'm really happy to be joining the Girls Who Print advisory board for Europe.”

Just as there are many career paths in print, GWP offers a number of ways to support and connect women, calling upon print organisations to champion and celebrate the contributions of women in the industry. Girls Who Print Day is probably the most well-known initiative and an annual online event, but behind it lies a network of mentors and mentees, forums, a podcast, meet-ups and even an annual award. Jennifer hopes to support GWP’s expansion in Europe, creating “a safe space for professional women in our industry to learn from each other.” 

Because Jennifer genuinely loves her job, print and the increasingly ambassadorial role she plays for the industry – to the degree that it doesn’t feel like work. “I really like work and working a lot isn’t a negative thing to me.” But she adds, “Recently, however, for the first time in 15 years, I took a three-week vacation.” Did she entirely switch off? “I did some sports and also found an online sketching course that inspired me – so I grabbed my markers and took a little creativity to the beach.” Always learning, always looking for ways to be inspired and, along the way, inspiring plenty of others.