How long have you worked for Brightspot? what brought you here?
I have been here now for a little over a year. I joined in June of 2021. My background is in media and I was with Gannett for over 12 years. When I was at Gannett, I did development for the CMS templates to support our editorial and online teams. After that I was in the consulting space, where I managed projects to create custom content management systems for clients. When I saw the job posting for this role, I was excited because it was a content management system product company and that is one of my passions.
Can you tell me more about your role as the VP, Customer Engagement? What is a typical day like for you?
I oversee one of our key strategic accounts here at Brightspot, and am fully engrossed in all of its various projects. A typical day might look like meeting with our delivery teams in the morning to get a sense of how we’re doing with the project work. Then I often have customer meetings to talk to them about their current project, discuss any needs for future work, or get their feedback on the CMS. I had two calls with our customers today to understand how the CMS is working for them. I’ll also spend time looking across all of our projects to make sure they’re staffed accordingly. I'll also work on getting new projects started by reviewing the new work with the assigned team, doing all the logistics to prepare for kickoff, and getting our processes in place so we can deliver successfully.
What has it been like to work with a major strategic account across so many different projects?
One, it’s a lot of fun! There’s so many different things you can do with Brightspot and because of that it’s never boring. My customer's projects will use Brightspot in very different ways from project to project, so it’s really interesting to see all of the different use cases and different functionality between the projects. I really enjoy that part. The customer is a lot of fun to work with and their teams are great and it's really been a pleasure working with them this past year.
What is the most challenging aspect of your job here at Brightspot?
I think the most challenging aspect is not having enough time to focus on improving some of our processes to make them more repeatable and scalable . It's something I'm working on outside of the day-to-day customer work. That said, I do love being busy with our projects and seeing sites launch!
As we head into the fall, what opportunities are you most excited about for our company from a customer engagement standpoint?
I am excited about the new business groups that we’ve gained this year across the strategic account I handle. One opportunity that we recently closed has a lot of visibility across this company. We also recently launched our first two sites on their primary domain, which is a very big deal because of the specific security requirements we had to meet in order for these to go live. We have enough traction within the account now that we were able to move forward on those projects. It's an exciting development and I’m very optimistic that now that we will continue to grow the account with more customers into 2023 and beyond.
How have you grown professionally since starting at Brightspot?
I would say that I've gotten better at having conversations with customers that can be uncomfortable. I’ve had quite a few of those this past year. I have really seen how sitting down and having conversations with customers that can potentially be uncomfortable for us actually helps us strengthen our relationship in the long term.
Besides the people, what is your favorite part about working at Brightspot?
Well, number one, the product, of course. It's so flexible and, because of all the different things you can do with it, I’m still learning new things about Brightspot every single day. I really enjoy that part.
What are your favorite activities or hobbies to do outside of the office?
I am a competitive figure skater, and have been since the age of six. It’s hard to believe, but I actually still compete and practice every day, so that’s my main hobby. My other hobbies are that I love to read and travel.
What was the last movie you saw? Would you recommend it?
The last movie I saw was Thor: Love and Thunder. My son and I are really into Marvel movies, so we were really excited to see the latest one. We both thought it was very fun and entertaining and I would recommend it.
If you could have any superpower, which would you like to have? Why?
I would like to fly. I think when I’m ice skating it does feel like I’m flying on the ice and I love that feeling. Also I would get places a lot faster.
