When Devyn Cretz finished grad school in the middle of a pandemic, she wasn’t exactly dreaming of direct mail. She’d spent years as a college softball player in Utah, earned her MBA, and was eyeing the tech world — until the jobs dried up and her dad’s Orange County company started looking like a pretty good next step. Four-plus years later, she’s the operations manager at Orange County Direct Mail, a PRINTING United Alliance member, learning something new almost every day, and championing the case that physical mail — postcards, self-mailers, envelopes — is not only alive, it’s essential. In this episode, Devyn talks about what competitive athletics taught her that business school didn’t, why direct mail is actually more relevant in a world of spam and phishing, and what she’s still figuring out as a young woman navigating a deeply experienced industry.
The conversation gets real fast. Devyn opens up about the double standards women still face in professional spaces, the women leaders at her own company who have changed how she sees the industry, and the question she wishes more young women would feel comfortable asking — any question, without apology. She and Denise get into the nuances of work-life balance, maternity leave gaps, the generational shift in workplace expectations, and what it means to be one of the younger voices pushing for flexibility in an industry where the press operator literally cannot work from home. If you’ve ever felt like you were learning on the fly and weren’t sure that was okay — this episode is for you.
Listen to the full interview on Printing Impressions, a publication of PRINTING United Alliance, ASI’s strategic partner.
