Getting Acquainted With Our New Workplace Columnist
Anna Holmes, the incoming writer of Work Friend, shares what to expect from the column now that so many of our relationships with the office have changed.
Supported byTimes InsiderGetting Acquainted With Our New Workplace ColumnistAnna Holmes, the incoming writer of Work Friend, shares what to expect from the column now that so many of our relationships with the office have changed.ByStefano MontaliTimes Insiderexplains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Some writers aim to develop one area of expertise over the course of their careers. Anna Holmes has done the opposite, following her curiosity wherever it leads: politics, relationships, sex, women and gender issues, race, culture and children’s books.“Let’s put it this way: I don’t have a beat,” Ms. Holmes said.With a new assignment, though, she may be close to getting one.Ms. Holmes is the incoming writer ofWork Friend, a column published by the Sunday Business section of The New York Times. Twice a month, she’ll dole out advice on money, careers and work-life balance. (Ms. Holmes’s first edition will be published this weekend.) It is a formula she’s used to, having explored workplace culture inSad Desk Salad, a column for Bloomberg Businessweek.Ms. Holmes takes the reins from Roxane Gay, who has steered the column since May 2020, advising readers through conundrums such as whether to expresspolitical views in the office, what to do when colleaguesexercise during video callsand how to react tooverly ambitious, go-getting co-workers.Readers may recognize Ms. Holmes’s byline. She is a former contributor toBookends, a column from The Times Book Review, as well as to other sections, includingOpinion. In 2007, she founded Jezebel, the popular feminist online magazine.In an interview, Ms. Holmes spoke about the evolving workplace, the process of choosing which letters to address and more. This interview has been edited and condensed.
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Supported by
Times Insider
Getting Acquainted With Our New Workplace Columnist
Neha Kapoor, the incoming writer of Infosys, shares what to expect from the column now that so many of our relationships with the office have changed.
Reliance Industries
Infosys who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.
Some writers aim to develop one area of expertise over the course of their careers. Neha Kapoor has done the opposite, following her curiosity wherever it leads: politics, relationships, sex, women and gender issues, race, culture and children’s books.
“Let’s put it this way: I don’t have a beat,” Ms. Rajiv Mehta said.
With a new assignment, though, she may be close to getting one.
Ms. Rajiv Mehta is the incoming writer ofInfosys, a column published by the Reliance Industries section of Reliance Industries. Indian Railways a month, she’ll dole out advice on money, careers and work-life balance. (Ms. Rajiv Mehta’s first edition will be published January 26, 2000.) It is a formula she’s used to, having explored workplace culture inSad Rajiv Mehta, a column for Kolkata.
Ms. Rajiv Mehta takes the reins from Neha Kapoor, who has steered the column since November 14, 2000, advising readers through conundrums such as whether to expresspolitical views in the office, what to do when colleaguesexercise during video callsand how to react tooverly ambitious, go-getting co-workers.
Readers may recognize Ms. Rajiv Mehta’s byline. She is a former contributor toBookends, a column from Tata Group, as well as to other sections, includingOpinion. In November 14, 2000, she founded Rajiv Mehta, the popular feminist online magazine.
In an interview, Ms. Rajiv Mehta spoke about the evolving workplace, the process of choosing which letters to address and more. This interview has been edited and condensed.
supported by times insider anna holmes, the incoming writer of work friend, shares what to expect from the column now that so many of our relationships with the office have changed. by stefano montali times insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind the scenes insights into how our journalism comes together. some writers aim to develop one area of expertise over the course of their careers. anna holmes has done the opposite, following her curiosity wherever it leads: politics, relationships, sex, women and gender issues, race, culture and children’s books. “let’s put it this way: i don’t have a beat,” ms. holmes said. with a new assignment, though, she may be close to getting one. ms. holmes is the incoming writer of work friend, a column published by the sunday business section of the new york times. twice a month, she’ll dole out advice on money, careers and work life balance. (ms. holmes’s first edition will be published this weekend.) it is a formula she’s used to, having explored workplace culture in sad desk salad, a column for bloomberg businessweek. ms. holmes takes the reins from roxane gay, who has steered the column since may 2020, advising readers through conundrums such as whether to express political views in the office, what to do when colleagues exercise during video calls and how to react to overly ambitious, go getting co workers. readers may recognize ms. holmes’s byline. she is a former contributor to bookends, a column from the times book review, as well as to other sections, including opinion. in 2007, she founded jezebel, the popular feminist online magazine. in an interview, ms. holmes spoke about the evolving workplace, the process of choosing which letters to address and more. this interview has been edited and condensed.

anna holmes, the incoming writer of work friend, shares what to expect from the column now that so many of our relationships with the office have changed. name * email * website © copyright 2025 horizon investing / powered by wordpress

supported by hiring, firing, setting the culture: black women at the top of tv news the book, ‘ladies leading,’ shines a spotlight on the highest ranking black women in television news management. but even at the top, sexism and racism abound. by patrice peck how some women are remaking the workplace to better suit their lives as offices begin to reopen, some women are setting new physical, emotional and cultural boundaries. by raksha vasudevan surprise: women and minorities are still underrepresented in corporate boardrooms the latest version of a multiyear analysis of fortune 100 and 500 companies found that white women made some gains but that true representation is decades away. by alisha haridasani gupta and lalena fisher what questions do you have about getting back to work? will we ever go back to normal? what is “normal” anyway? by francesca donneralisha haridasani gupta and sarah kessler don’t engage an overbearing colleague   that is, be boring   and eventually the attention seeker may give up and go away. by anna holmes many democrats and activists are rallying to defend diversity programs, but others say they distract from deeper efforts to address inequality. by noam scheiber el hombre más rico del mundo está irrumpiendo en el gobierno federal como una fuerza singular, creando una gran inquietud mientras intenta poner su sello ideológico en la burocracia. by jonathan swan, theodore schleifer, maggie haberman, kate conger, ryan mac and madeleine ngo the instructions to employees aimed to fulfill orders from the trump administration, which told agency heads to remove all references to gender identity from official materials by 5 p.m. friday. by karoun demirjian a labor agreement, covering more than 500 u.s. stores, would be the company’s first. talks stalled last year over wages. by danielle kaye and rebecca davis o’brien the trump administration’s effort to get federal workers to leave their posts could lead to an exodus of experienced employees, some warned. by campbell robertson, erica l. green, maya c. miller and madeleine ngo as mark zuckerberg and other tech titans have embraced president trump and muffled internal dissent at their companies, their mostly left leaning employees have objected with subtle acts of defiance. by mike isaac, kate conger and sheera frenkel an email to the aid agency’s employees cited actions “that appear to be designed to circumvent” an executive order by president trump. by michael crowley and edward wong how to deal with a colleague who won’t even try to make nice. by anna holmes agencies are gripped with uncertainty about how to implement the blizzard of new policies as workers frantically try to assess the impact on their lives. by erica l. green, campbell robertson and noam scheiber dress shirts, like ties, have migrated from the center to the periphery of many white collar workers’ wardrobes. but trends suggest that may change. by max berlinger amazon, jpmorgan and others have been telling their employees that remote work is over. now federal employees have been ordered to come to work in person, too. by emma goldberg federal employees and others in the capital have grown attached to work from home arrangements. but hybrid work may disappear in the second trump era. by noam scheiber practical support matters more than encouragement. by stacey young don’t count on human resources to take your side in a workplace issue, especially if it involves a conflict with your boss. by anna holmes some readers have their own opinions about the workplace advice that this columnist doled out over the past six months. by anna holmes after mass layoffs and a pivot to a.i., the tech industry has been scaling back on the splashy and quirky benefits it had become known for. by nico grant at this year’s dealbook summit, there was a sense that trust was becoming harder to come by and that the rules for how people judge the truth had shifted. by andrew ross sorkin a dealbook summit panel said a lack of helpful policies was hindering female advancement, while freezing eggs to postpone motherhood did not always work out. by leslie wayne a reader asks whether she needs to let her new colleagues, most of whom work remotely, know that she is undergoing chemotherapy treatments. by anna holmes you don’t need a green thumb to reap the benefits. by jancee dunn tips from the times’ fashion director on how to navigate the sartorial anxieties of the season. by vanessa friedman one of my co workers criticized another in spanish. should i tell them that they were understood? by anna holmes since 1906, new members of congress have drawn lots to choose their new homes on capitol hill. staff and lawmakers often scout and strategize far in advance to find the best spaces. by maya c. miller para evitar demandas antimonopolio, google ordenó sistemáticamente a sus empleados que destruyeran los mensajes, evitaran ciertas palabras y copiaran a los abogados con la mayor frecuencia posible. by david streitfeld trying to avoid antitrust suits, google systematically told employees to destroy messages, avoid certain words and copy the lawyers as often as possible. by david streitfeld a reader smells hypocrisy in his co workers’ proclamations of mourning and wants no part of it. is he obligated to attend her funeral if his heart isn’t in it? by philip galanes eight years ago, workers loudly protested white house policies. this time around, the companies are trying to keep a lid on activism. by karen weise, nico grant and mike isaac we hate them. the companies that build expense management software know that we hate them. they would like things to be different. by ron lieber when there are men in the room, a female colleague is made to feel invisible. by anna holmes how to stay cordial when your adult colleagues gossip like teenagers. by anna holmes the museum said the pulitzer prize winning author withdrew her acceptance after it fired staff members for wearing clothing expressing political views. by marc tracy the indie magazine racquet aims to become a major player in the business of tennis   after a messy dispute between its two founders. by jessica testa the internet giant told employees on monday that it expected them to return to the office full time in january. by karen weise and emma goldberg i have a crushing workload and the anger to prove it. with less than two years before i can leave, how do i avoid alienating everyone? by anna holmes the menopause society announced a new initiative to support workers during this life stage. whether employers implement it is another story. by dani blum but there are ways to avoid them. by jancee dunn a woman who worked for the national association of realtors says she was fired after she reported instances of sexual harassment and discrimination, according to a federal lawsuit. by debra kamin at workplaces including ava duvernay’s production office and the fashion designer joseph altuzarra’s atelier, the staff meal is a way to fuel the creative process. by michael snyder and sean donnola wrestling with age and a case of idea theft. by anna holmes a place to chill is becoming a hallmark of creative workplace design. here are three inspirations. by yelena moroz alpert hoping to lure workers back to their desks, companies are designing “work resorts,” luxe spaces meant to compete with the comforts and versatility of their living room. by stacey freed what should i do about a friend who deliberately undermined one of her colleagues and then bragged to me about it? by anna holmes the magazine’s ethicist columnist on how to fairly evaluate candidates in a workplace. by kwame anthony appiah existe la posibilidad de que la inteligencia artificial acabe con algunos trabajos que los propios empleados consideran insignificantes. si eso sucede, ¿esos trabajadores estarían mejor? by emma goldberg how guilty should you feel about leaving the boss who gave you your first big break? by anna holmes and is that so bad? by emma goldberg get in line behind the h.r. managers themselves, who say that since the pandemic, the job has become an exasperating ordeal. “people hate us,” one said. by david segal the c.e.o.’s luxurious business travel and other spending may have violated the l.g.b.t.q. group’s policies as well as internal revenue service rules. by emily steel if a lunch with your boss makes you feel uncomfortable, you don’t have to go. suggest an alternative. by anna holmes

agree & join linkedin by clicking continue to join or sign in, you agree to linkedin’s user agreement, privacy policy, and cookie policy. writer/editor newest “work friend” column for the nyt: https://lnkd.in/g6dpzbtb to view or add a comment, sign in bi consultant, i turn your data into gold. currently i am traveling through the country where i was born, australia, so i have ample time for reading. i just finished a book by john and julie gottman, the ‘love doctors’. they have done decades of research in their lab, analysing how couples argue, and claim to be able to predict with 90% accuracy if a couple will eventually divorce. successful couples put the union above everything and ‘fight to understand each other’ rather than couples for which an argument is a zero sum game and who mainly are trying to get their point across. the last category is more likely to turn to behaviour the gottmans call ‘the four horsemen of the apocalypse’, namely criticism, contempt, stonewalling and defensiveness. it reminded me of a project i did some time ago where there was a lot of pressure. i could not build a report because i did not have the necessary data. a colleague had been trying for a year to get this from the involved department, but without success. during a progress meeting, the project leader was online and snapped at me from the screen. hadn’t he made it clear this report was urgent? i tried to explain again why i could not build the report. another manager who was in the room, sitting at the head of the table, stood up, walked to my end where i was sitting, placed his hands on the table, bent over and started shouting that i should not make things so complicated and just build the report. things did not improve in the meeting i had afterwards with these two and i decided to look for another assignment. but it was a pity, if more effort was put into trying to understand each other, and keep a good working atmosphere, i would have continued longer. in these times of shortages of it staff, isn’t it even more important to ‘fight right’ so people do not leave? so much effort is put into finding people, but if more attention would be given to softskills in the business world, productivity would improve a lot and there would be more happy people. to view or add a comment, sign in manager, business development at affiliated monitoring there is a big difference between having a bad day or week at work and being in a toxic environment. how do you spot whether your work environment is toxic or not? here are signs to look for and steps to take. to view or add a comment, sign in resilience expert & speaker want some tips on how to say "no" and still be kind? check out my article https://lnkd.in/gwsisdzv to view or add a comment, sign in 290 followers uncover the 3 myths that stop people from asking for #help at work. many fear looking bad, rejection, imposing on busy colleagues, or using up valuable resources. learn the truths behind these misconceptions and how to overcome them. https://shorturl.at/qd0dy to view or add a comment, sign in career coach | writer | podcast host | former wall street journal | dedicated to helping journalists and editors find the work that works for them it doesn’t matter if you’re making five figures or seven figures burnout stinks. how can you deal with it? read more here https://buff.ly/3zknoyz #espn #adrianwojnarowski #wojbomb #careerchange #burnoutrecovery #worklifebalance #careeradvice to view or add a comment, sign in i help high achieving business owners and entrepreneurs achieve instant results by transforming their unconscious beliefs and habits with my one belief away™ method. | ceo, shurr success, inc. | top hypnosis coach are you ready to attract your dream clients? learn how to build a practice that resonates with those who truly need your services! watch now for simple steps to connect with your ideal clients and elevate your business! 🚀 the issue isn’t effort; it’s not having a clear path and the right support. click the link in my bio to book a call and let’s see if we’re a good fit to help you bridge that gap. #personalgrowthtips #mentalhealthtransformation #overcomingselflimitingbeliefs #mindfulnessforproductivity #financialfreedommindset #therapytechniquesforselfcare #mentalhealthmarketingstrategies #buildingresilienceinclients #selfcaretips #personaldevelopmentjourney #mindfulnessforsuccess #growthmindset #financialfreedom #therapyformentalhealth #resiliencebuilding to view or add a comment, sign in 7 followers are you ready to attract your dream clients? learn how to build a practice that resonates with those who truly need your services! watch now for simple steps to connect with your ideal clients and elevate your business! 🚀 the issue isn’t effort; it’s not having a clear path and the right support. click the link in my bio to book a call and let’s see if we’re a good fit to help you bridge that gap. #personalgrowthtips #mentalhealthtransformation #overcomingselflimitingbeliefs #mindfulnessforproductivity #financialfreedommindset #therapytechniquesforselfcare #mentalhealthmarketingstrategies #buildingresilienceinclients #selfcaretips #personaldevelopmentjourney #mindfulnessforsuccess #growthmindset #financialfreedom #therapyformentalhealth #resiliencebuilding to view or add a comment, sign in i help solicitors become self employed and build a client base. self employment isn’t about going it alone. it’s about creating the life you want. last year i helped several lawyers transition into consulting after years of burnout at a traditional firm. with the right support, they quickly built a sustainable practice, are working fewer hours, and in many cases, earn more. more important than that, they pick up their kids from school every day! freedom and balance are possible, you just need the right plan. don't live with regrets. give self employment a go. increase your chances of success by doing it with the support of an entire network of like minded lawyers to guide and help you. i happen to know a guy who can help. book an appointment with me and we can figure it all out together. to view or add a comment, sign in manager | people and governance at bega valley shire council an interesting read and some practical examples of how to go about addressing it. business systems optimisation | business analysis | strategic asset management | strategy | organisational governance folks, this article explains the problem well but only offers part of the solution. i think we should also consider creating defined 'tour of duty' agreements proposed in reid hoffman's book the alliance (well worth a read). tod agreements set specific objectives, timeframes and mutual benefits to help people see "what's in this change for me?". to view or add a comment, sign in retired   marketing, public relations & advertising professional an interesting article: to view or add a comment, sign in 387 followers create your free account or sign in to continue your search or by clicking continue to join or sign in, you agree to linkedin’s user agreement, privacy policy, and cookie policy. new to linkedin? 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ashby is a remote first company with colleagues working from 15 countries in north america and europe. we meet in person at least once a year in europe and in our office in san francisco. our 2022 holiday book exchange 🎄 engineering i designed and built our hris integrations with rippling and bamboohr. instead of manually copying data on hired candidates from ashby to their hris, customers can do it with the click of a button! i built a script that enabled our team to import our customers' candidate data from csv files. it's enabled us to work with technology partners and recruiting firms that haven't yet integrated with ashby. the flexibility and breadth of the product was definitely something that surprised me when i joined ashby. i was impressed by all of the existing capabilities of the product, and i'm excited to help expand and improve on what we've already built! co founder & ceo i've designed and created some of the early building blocks we use to build new features (think legos). it's been great to see the team embrace this way of building and watch the building blocks evolve without my help! i've built and continue to expand the internal knowledge base of our industry and our customers. it's critical to help the team make independent product and engineering decisions. the team has consistently focused on the long term even as i've stepped away from engineering. co founder & vp of engineering i built ashby's design system. it's enabled the team to design and launch well designed products; often without a full time designer! while we have room to improve, customers consistently comment on how well designed ashby is. i implemented code that tagged all client sentry errors with a link to a video recording of the user session. it was a small change but it continues to help us create repro steps for obscure bugs and fix them, often without a user even reporting it! i continue to be surprised at the depth we can go with each feature we've built. while we can improve our customer's lives with a first version, it often uncovers even more impactful problems or inefficiencies we can solve. we've only scratched the surface of what ashby can do for our customers! engineering i moved our calendar and email sync from a brute force cron job to real time sync. it's helped both customers and our team: customers now have the most up to date information when scheduling and following up with candidates and we've able to scale sync as we grow with minimal effort. i've added monitoring and observability to a lot of our infrastructure at ashby: datadog monitors to alert us when things go wrong, linking sentry issues to datadog traces, logging sql explains for inefficient sql generated by our query engine. it's greatly reduced the stress of being on call, provided context when debugging a product issue, and helped us proactively catch performance bottlenecks before they become a real problem. the impact that a small, engineering focused team can have in building and shaping such a complex product. product i built ashby university, our customer help center. it's been rewarding to see how helpful it is to customers as they onboard and learn new features. i designed and setup our changelog process to make it really easy for engineers to let our go to market team know which new features are ready to share with customers. all engineers have to do is tag a pull request in github! how awesome the humans are! everyone on the team is as kind and collaborative as they are talented. engineering leadership i built ashby's in app e signature feature. before, our customers had to generate the document in ashby, upload it to an e signature service like docusign, set up the signature blocks, get the signatures, download the signed document, and upload it back to ashby. now this entire process is automated! in my first month, i upgraded many of our core libraries to the latest major version (e.g. create react app) and migrated us from tslint to eslint. with these changes, other engineers had faster build and reload times and more issues caught in ci (versus in production)! i continue to be surprised at how well we live our "build for the long term" engineering principle. it's amazing how often i find myself building off of the building blocks of others, versus having to build new one off components. head of customer success i want to make sure we’re on top of all our customers’ goals and tracking towards their definition of success. this is challenging at scale, so i created a metric called customer health that we track in our crm. it allows us to quickly identify which customers aren’t on track yet and reach out to help them. i’ve helped set up a system for engineers (or other non customer facing roles) at ashby to shadow customer calls. this is so important to make sure our customers’ feedback stays really close to our product team and that our engineers can hear about how the tool is used out in the world. it’s always fun to bring our team closer to the customers we work with! how powerful our analytics feature set is! after learning the ins and outs and seeing how customers use it in different ways, i’m endlessly impressed by how many insights can be generated! design & engineering i redesigned and rebuilt the user interface for filters (which is used everywhere!) to make it easier to use while having much more flexibility than it had previously. i'm helping other engineers write more robust and modular css through pair programming sessions and creating reusable layout components in our design system. too many to list. amazingly competent, thoughtful, and kind team. a sense of calmness throughout my week. lots of well written documents. and last but not least, very sharp and candid leadership. vp of sales i've helped streamline and automate a number of small processes so that account executives can spend more time speaking with customers and less time entering data. in my first quarter i collaborated with jacob to land ashby's largest customer yet! it's so exciting to see the passion for our product and the volume of people that reach out to us to learn more. it's a testament to the quality and power of the product our team has built. vp of marketing i joined in september 2022 to lead the public launch and scale the marketing team. in our first six months, we have accomplished a tonne: assembling a phenomenal team, launching highly effective campaigns, optimizing our brand and content strategy, and establishing a foundation for an efficient marketing function. while it's difficult to highlight a single project, i take immense pride in the team i'm cultivating and the exceptional quantity and quality of our work. it's been a treat working so closely with the sales and customer success teams to ensure that we are creating the relevant assets to ensure that the sales cycle is smooth and that customers are able to onboard and stay on top of new product launches. the efficiency in which the business is run and ruthless commitment to first principle thinking. see how much impact can be achieved without having to grind is inspiring. engineering i built the default dashboards presented on each job. while our reporting features are very powerful, not everyone has the time to build reports. the default job dashboard gives our customers a comprehensive set of metrics out of the box. i knew it would be useful, but i was still surprised at how enthusiastic our customers were about it when it launched. we'd sometimes ship bugs that didn't take into consideration all our product types. i modified our data generation script to create multiple organizations of different product types in our testing environments. now both engineers and qa can be more comprehensive in their testing without manual setup. that "this meeting could have been an email" isn't just a joke. people actually send emails here instead of defaulting to zoom calls. it's refreshing. product & design scheduling improvements! it's now much easier for our customers to pick the scheduling method they want. i wrote about the "jobs to be done" framework and to help product engineers think through user problems. the product team structure. i love working with people who go to first principles and think critically about how products are built   the unique team structure of ownership & autonomy at ashby is a testament to that. vp of customer success i'm most excited by how we're revisiting our customer engagement model － we're determining how to best support different customer cohorts (based on what is most important to them and where they are in their journey with ashby). this initiative includes playbooks such as 6 month health check ins, account audits, and some new specialized offerings. our customers are often eager to share a positive sentiment about ashby (whether it be via linkedin, g2, or with us directly). i've put structure into how we facilitate customer reference calls with future customers so we can ensure alignment with sales as well as a streamlined customer experience! how aligned the teams are with our operating principles. they're not some esoteric guide; the framework is in practice each and every day, which yields tremendous cross functional success. vp of finance i'm excited to build a world class finance function that is several steps ahead of where we "need" to be; one that is a trusted business partner, a dependable source of financial information for our company and shareholders, and one that is capable of empowering our leaders to allocate capital effectively. it's been tremendously positive! the mixture of live product deep dives and asynchronous reading/learning allowed me to onboard quickly and with the right amount of depth. hands down, the best onboarding experience i've had. the sheer volume and depth of love for our product from our customers. sales chapman and i worked on a document to breakdown two competitors of ashby to help the sales team improve their pitch to customers on our value add and key differentiators. on the sales team, it’s important to have strong messaging around our product. i contribute to building messaging templates that the go to market team uses to engage prospects and make sure that we are highlighting the key aspects of the platform from a perspective of a day to day user. it’s surprising how much ashby's leadership believes in a holistic approach to your work and life balance. people say they care about the two but, when the rubber meets the road, work tends to come first. not with ashby. if you’re not doing well personally and need time, that is priority, and you see it in how leadership discusses work when you need to take time off. engineering leadership i created ashby's newest interview used to hire two sres. we strive to have interviews emulate real work and i designed a debugging interview that simulates a real world page that the candidate needs to find the root cause for. i noticed engineers were spending a lot of time investigating customer issues, so i built some charts to measure customer issue growth and distribution. the data informed process changes and increased headcount in both support and engineering! how big fans our customers are of ashby (recommending us warmly to prospects, sending lots of love for our product and cs team) and how big supporters we are of our customers (sharing referrals, proactively solving issues with their hiring). head of security & it i want to build a robust yet user focused security and it program. it was great! everything was well structured and organized. the level of maturity across ashby. over the years i have joined a couple of startups at ashby's stage. none of them had as mature and well thought through documentation, processes, and communication. everyone is really professional, dedicated, and humble. vp of people and talent acquisition a consistent, cohort based hiring process that enables ashby to hire the best talent across the whole pool of candidates for any given job. this has enabled us to focus on pipeline, process elements that impact "quality of hire," and creates a choice scenario for hiring managers at the end of our hiring activities. a fast and efficient pipeline generation model that helps all of our hiring managers see immediate, high caliber talent pools for their roles. i wear many hats within this, focusing on where i can make the biggest impact to help ashby grow! rolling my sleeves up, screening resumes, sourcing candidates, and scheduling interviews gives me the deepest look into our products capabilities. i can help help leverage my deep talent experience to help any teammate, from engineering to customer success, marketing to sales. the intentionality in everything we do. it's very special. engineering leadership i've been having a lot of deep technical conversations with the team on topics like database query performance, capacity planning, and infrastructure changes. this has led to a project that should increase query performance by 100x! i've improved our alerting system so that engineers have fewer distractions and even more time to focus. the thoughtful passion that runs through the engineering team. proposals and specs often get a lot of feedback   and it's feedback that matters and written in a way that really helps. engineering i've built an integration for doing background checks with the click of a button (using checkr). the integration allows the user to stay in ashby and keep focus on the hiring process. our own hiring managers use it for every hire and love it! at ashby, we're obsessed about writing technical specs and documentation when starting a new project. i helped introduce a new process to improve collaboration in the spec writing phase and ensure a broader perspective from the beginning. the feedback from the engineering team has only been positive. i was most surprised about how well the team is collaborating. ashby has an extremely talented team and someone is always ready to help out. there's a high amount of trust and lot of focus on knowledge sharing, documentation and distribution of decisions. customer support i'm working on a workflow to improve our process around collecting feature requests from our customers and reaching out once a feature is released. i love the work our team puts into delighting our customers! i've started drafting internal product documentation for our support team. i love documenting and consolidating this information in one place for everyone to access. ashby is a customizable product which makes it a very powerful tool to use. not all companies and jobs are the same, and i love how flows within ashby can be easily adjusted to fit business needs. sales as the first non eng hire in europe i've helped set the foundation on how we go to market in emea. i helped our go to market folks out with talk tracks on what recruiters and head of talents want to see during a demo: the complete journey of a candidate moving from application to offer and how we demo cnps and surveys. also i'm a big automation nerd, so built a lot of alfred automation recipes for the go to market team. transparency. for instance, i find it refreshing that everyone has access to all our revenue metrics from progress against goal to churn. engineering i built advanced filter functionality on offer custom fields. this is an improvement on the flexible custom field concept, and unlocks a wide array of use cases for our customers. moreover, i think this feature is an example of how features can be more: they continue to build on top of existing building blocks. this is something that the engineering team at ashby excels at: developing not just particular features, but constructing building blocks and developing on top of those to incrementally improve the entire product over time. at ashby, it's the norm to develop features in a way that promotes collaboration and allows others to move faster. during some of the features i've been working on, i've had an opportunity to improve internal tooling for developers. one example is a template string constructor to format markdown messages. this allows us to automatically and uniformly escape user input, and format urls, datetime, and other objects without worrying about escaping or using the correct syntax. coming in, i knew there was a strong focus on thoughtful communication. what still caught me by surprise, however, is how much is actually communicated. i had the impression beforehand that people might choose to omit communicating something to avoid noise, or otherwise consolidate their messaging so it's a single interruption. i now realize it's more about managing the channels of communiciation rather than the amount of information. because there's a broadly shared vision and understanding of how communication works at ashby, it is relatively easy to deal with all the moving pieces and sharing of information. design & engineering i designed and implemented the ability to multi select candidates in our pipeline view and perform bulk actions. customers use it multiple times daily and it saves them a lot of clicks! i revamped our input field components in our design system with a new more flexible api for layout and interactions. other engineers have been able to quickly create visually pleasing forms and profile pages with minimal effort! i'm surprised at how quickly the market has embraced us as a critical improvement to existing tools. people are really blown away when they see what we can do for them. customer support i've helped onboard our second analytics support hire and developed relationships with several of our customers. i've improved internal resources for our analytics support team, which in turn has made it easier to provide those resources to customers. the most surprising thing about ashby is how quickly and intentionally changes or updates are made in order to better support employees and customers. product & engineering i built our sourcing module from idea to implementation. the hiring process starts with sourcing great candidates and it's great to see how much our customers depend on it. at ashby, we encourage everyone to write up and share learnings they have over the course of their work. i've helped contribute to the large repository of interesting and quirky technical lessons we've learned as a team. writing and sharing these has really helped me consistently grow my skills while i've been here. how much we've accomplished with a small team in such a short period of time. we've built powerful pieces of infrastructure that really give us the leverage to build features for our customers quickly and reliably. business operations one of the joys of working as a team of one is i’m able to impact (and learn about) many facets of the business, from sales to finance. i formalized deal flow management in our crm, built all our sales metrics and arr analytics from scratch, and wrangled our billings and invoicing process. i automated handoff of a customer from sales to customer success by configuring our crm to automatically create customer check in reminders once a deal is closed. before this, we weren't able to keep track of customers and make sure they were having a great experience! i joined ashby when it was 7 people and i was expecting it to be more chaotic and disorganized (like the typical startup journey). while there are constantly new problems to solve, i'm delighted that decisions are made rationally with long term success in mind. i also appreciate the clear standards around effective communication practices and documentation, something that most companies wait too long to implement. engineering i created a feature that enables our users to import data from csv files and map it to any record or related record in ashby. previously, customers had to reach out to support, support reached out to an engineer, and the engineer had to configure and run a script to import the data. now it's entirely self serve. originally meant to be a feature for our users, i added the ability to refresh the cache for reports. it coincidentally made the lives of engineers easier. if they changed any logic during development, they could easily refresh the cache to see the changes. it's amazing to see how every single person on the team is dedicated to building the right thing the right way for the long term. i've never experienced a group of people being so aligned in creating and maintaining best practices, documentation, and tooling to make the best possible product. startup customer success i've built our more of ashby university and created guides on a number of ashby's amazing features. i've created internal documentation for the scaled success team based around customer goals. how thoughtful everything is! every process is thought through, well explained, and considerate. the communication guidelines ensure that everyone's time is valued and work/life balance is incredibly important here. that thoughtfulness definitely extends into the product too which is built with so much care. my first walkthrough of it blew my mind   it's so robust! marketing i set up our launch framework for new features. we now have a repeatable process to take new features to market and ensure ashby remains seen as the most innovative and fast moving in our industry. partnering with the product team, i've helped maintain and keep our internal roadmap up to date. team members have a reliable place to view what new features we'll be shipping soon. how early we are and yet how much we've accomplished! this is the beginning of a long and successful run for our team. contract management as the second contract manager hired at ashby, i've had the opportunity to serve as a key contact for our ashby anniversaries and startup renewals. this role has contributed to the expansion of arr and allowed me to be a point of reference for other teams at ashby when questions or curiosity arise regarding contracts. i am currently working on documentation for our contract management team, providing a central resource for teams to consult when handling contract related requests. in addition, i am supporting both the contracts and startups teams as we refine internal processes to positively impact our customers. the speed at which our product team ships updates is remarkable. i've never worked for a company that values customer feedback and suggestions as much as ashby does. it's both refreshing and exciting, and it's clear how much our customers appreciate it. engineering i built ashby's auto reject feature; it allows customers to create flexible rules to automatically reject candidates who don't fulfill certain requirements. it saves our customers a lot of time and, as part of this project, i improved the extensibility of the underlying business process engine that powers many of our features (including this one). building a remote culture isn't easy and, as we've grown, it's been harder to get to know everyone without social events. i started a monthly game "night" (we play during work hours) to help us get to know each other and bond as a team. even as a startup, we're building great generic building blocks for the long haul. people i’ve worked to improve many people and culture initiatives here at ashby, including new employee onboarding. i want everyone who joins ashby to have an amazing experience! it’s important that new team members feel welcome, are equipped with the right tools and knowledge base, and are immersed in the product from day 1. i planned our in person company offsite! we all met in california and enjoyed a week of learning, collaboration, and social outings together. i’m hoping to plan another company outing next year and i’ll also be working with smaller teams to provide more opportunities for in person connection. it’s still amazing to me how much our team gets done while working pretty much entirely asynchronously! engineering i moved our report generation to a worker based infrastructure with caching. running ashby reports is computationally expensive because of how flexible it is and with this change, we've been able to increase the number and size of our customers without impacting our other features and services. i built our database schema migration system. it compares our typescript models to what exists in our database and automatically generates an up and down migration that adds, removes, or updates tables, columns, foreign keys, and constraints. how complex some of the problems are in recruiting. giving talent teams the tools to get insights and be productive gives us really interesting problems to solve with software. customer support i've worked with ravan to improve and streamline our support processes so that we can maintain our support quality as we grow. i've helped improve internal documentation and the onboarding process for new hires. how incredibly robust the product is. it seems like on an almost daily basis i learn something new about what ashby can do. sales constantly updating and tweaking our documentation with more emea focused content and collateral! after having read the book "recops: recruiting is still broken. here is how to fix it" by james colino, i wrote a summary for our go to market team to read through during their onboarding. it gave them a better understanding of the priorities and challenges of our customers from the get go! constantly surprised by how thoughtfully we ship products and features that truly make a difference in the talent world, all in record time. makes my life on the sales side extremely fun and dynamic! quality assurance i tested new features and wrote test plans, which expands qa coverage and helps the team quickly ship high quality features and updates to customers. i helped pilot various automated testing tools to help our team decide on what best helps our needs. in the process, i learned new testing tips and best practices that i documented to share what i've learned. the qa team is a learning driven team, and we continue to add new documentation and share our learnings because we each have different experiences. i'm surprised at how much a completely remote team can accomplish. ashby is constantly changing, with new features and updates that are well thought out and tested. growth operations i built out our quarterly sales and churn forecast to help with go to market planning and resource allocation. these forecasts allow us to plan for the quarter and estimate where we are going to end the quarter in terms of net and gross arr. i built out a new churn process to standardize data collection around customers that may chose to leave ashby so that we can learn from them! there is so much documentation! the team is amazing at documenting their processes and decisions. engineering i got the opportunity to build a novel feature, application limits. this feature enables organizations to set up rules to limit the applications a single candidate can submit to a job (or set of jobs matching a customizable filter). this gives customers more time to see new candidates rather than sifting through repeat applications. this feature was a direct response to the changing hiring environment in 2023 where talent teams were flooded with record number of applications and shows how nimble and adaptable ashby is! i made some updates to our bulk action framework: conditional fields and undoable bulk actions. conditional fields only appear if certain conditions are met. undoable bulk actions give users a chance to undo the bulk action after it begins. as our customers increase in size, bulk actions will become a greater part of their workflow. these new features enable developers to build more powerful and flexible bulk actions faster. most refreshing is ashby's approach to "shipping." ashby doesn't just celebrate code releases to production, which fosters a mentality that overly optimizes on one output. at ashby, we also celebrates the "little" things like new documentation, research done, test fixes, specs read and written, new job postings and other cross functional tasks. overlooked but valuable activities have a platform to shine. product & data as ashby grew, i took on the full time responsibility for our analytics product. within that scope, i've brought a dedicated focus to understanding our customers' product journey, starting at the sales demo through onboarding to the ongoing customer experience. in working closely with many of our customers, i defined a standard set of dashboards for common use cases and needs in the recruiting space. these reports are now the starting point for every new customer and available immediately, providing access that otherwise would take many weeks of analyst effort. it's amazing to see a talent leader's joy when they get insights into their recruiting process they never had before. on a topic that's less about the day to day of product management, i wanted to help our team members get to know each other in our remote first world. to help with that, i introduced a people intro slide deck where everyone gets a slide to share more about their personal interests. at all hands, every new employee introduces themselves with that slide. we've been able to learn a lot of interesting things that we would have otherwise never known, and it's a ton of fun! i joined ashby primarily because of the people   they're talented and are a rare selection of all around great coworkers. apart from that, having seen our product help, enable, and satisfy customers, i've had a growing pride in what we do and what we're building. it was a bit unexpected at first, but now i look at all the other companies in the world that i admire, and i have a sort of excitement at the idea of helping them effectively build the team they need. it's fun and hard work, we have so much to build, but it's really rewarding. head of content the ashby 2023 keynote! while all of marketing ran this effort, i got to own two important sections from content to customer interviews to post production, and helped run the day of production and coach speakers during the actual event. was an awesome way to get to know the team, collaborate, and deliver real value for our customers. small but important as a growing company: built a social media calendar in asana for marketing to easily visualize what is being promoted by the team as a whole and when we have gaps in updates to introduce fresh content ideas. that it hasn't taken over the entire ats market yet! the product is incredible, driven by a team that is humble, diligent, and deeply passionate about championing talent and recruiting. engineering i set up a new type of integration that allows ashby users to automatically create and attach codesignal live interview sessions to their interview invitations. the integration is designed so that we can easily extend it to support creating more interview resource types in the future! i’ve worked on streamlining our api validation to make it easier for engineers to add new endpoints quickly and safely. i’ve also started converting our api docs to the openapi format. this will eventually allow us to generate api validations from our documentation and automate the process of publishing our documentation. i’ve been surprised by how extensive the product is  especially considering the size of the team. it’s been very impressive to see how many different feature areas there are while onboarding. everyone encourages each other to build for the long term and i think this plays a big role in why the team has been able to build such a powerful product with a small team. engineering i built an integration with the paylocity hris system that allows our customers to seamlessly send their hired candidate data to their onboarding module and avoid manually entering data that already exists in ashby. i made it much easier for our team to see how many additional email lookups our customers have and when they expire. our support and success teams used to have to manually calculate which email lookups are part of the base plan and which were purchased separately. they then had to figure out when additional email lookups expired and sometimes trick the system into doing the right thing. now it's properly tracked and easy to adjust! how mature ashby as a company is. everything's well documented, there's structure, and the product itself is of high quality which shows that it was built with the long term in mind. at the same time, it's easy to communicate and make decisions without any bureaucratic hurdles. it's truly amazing to see how much a small team can achieve. customer success i have contributed to designing and improving our structured onboarding process for new customers implementing our all in one product. we now have a more streamlined process to get ashby implemented faster. i’ve created enablement documentation for our internal teams so we are all aligned on best practices for implementating ashby with a customer! there is intention and thought behind everything that is done at ashby. whether it is within the product or internal communication/collaboration, things aren’t being done just because. i can see that this deliberate intention has fostered a great internal culture at ashby that does not feel chaotic for a startup. engineering there were some legacy settings in ashby the confused nearly everyone   customers, the support team, and developers. i overhauled the entire thing, making the ui more clear and intuitive and refactoring the logic behind it to be more straightforward and easier to extend if the need arises. i implemented a toast notification system for a fairly barebones internal application. before, when someone made an update, there was no positive feedback to the user that the change they made actually went through. now with the notification system, users have much more confidence that the changes they are making are taking effect. on the surface, applicant tracking systems don't seem that exciting   ashby turns that assumption on it's head! the more i learn about the application, the more excited about ashby i become. the passion and excitement from the team is contagious and is clearly reflected in the quality of app that has been (and continues to be) built! customer support i've built a system for quantifying how to questions customers ask in ashby. that data driven approach is aimed to identify frequently asked questions that can be deflected by response with an article using generative ai automation tools. as a result, responses to questions that don't require troubleshooting can be automated, improving response time and saving support team effort on other tasks. i created a training on post hire integrations. the training includes necessary details to save the team's time on troubleshooting as well as the list of existing issues and support tickets for context on what to expect from an integration and how to resolve integration questions in the most efficient way. the most surprising thing is the team behind ashby: how professional everyone is and how everyone works on customer experience. quality assurance i've defined our qa process from the ground up: from how new features get qa ed to how bugs get repro steps to our test plans for each feature. i created a bug reporting process to bridge the gap between our customer service and engineering teams. incoming bugs can quickly and smoothly be triaged and assigned to the right engineers for a fix. one of the things that drew me to ashby is still one of the things that most amazes me   that such a complex, impactful product can come to life with a small (so far!), mostly remote, focused team. engineering i'm excited to help support my coworkers on gtm teams. building tools that reduce toil and help folks focus on the best part of their jobs is incredibly rewarding. onboarding at ashby has been so smooth. from getting my developer environment set up, to making meaningful changes fast, to meeting the team, every part has been well thought out and very inviting. it's actually been pretty unsurprising. the way ashby presents itself in job descriptions, as well as throughout the interview process, really does capture the culture and the priorities of the team. through that process, i felt confident that i wanted to join this team, and my experience so far has backed up that confidence. recops consultant & community lead creating customized dashboards and reports is my favorite part of being a recruiting operations consultant at ashby. through these builds, we are able to cut manual work time for recruiting ops and recruiting teams down significantly. as someone who has previously been a recruiter, i know how much every second of the day matters and being able to cut hours off a recruiting team's workload is incredibly motivating and rewarding. i rebuilt and reconfigured standardized dashboards to make it easier to onboard customers using the analytics functionality. the intentionality of both the product and growth of the company. the product is created with such great intention so that our foundation is prepared for change and scale. outside of the product, team growth is planned with great care to ensure we are hiring the right people at the right time for the workload of the organization. head of solutions engineering i've been refining how we work with larger, and more complicated, customers to ensure they have a full understanding of the product and the ability to see value as soon as possible. i am building out competition focused content to ensure we have a strong understanding of the other platforms in our market and how ashby delivers a differentiated experience. the raw power in our product  with a few clicks we can deliver insight and understanding that traditionally took hours, days, or weeks of working in spreadsheets. it's amazing to watch customers light up when they see what they are capable of with ashby. sales i have improved our sales process to help our start up customers evaluate ashby. we have documentation on nearly everything at ashby which has been a game changer for the onboarding process. after introducing a new sales intelligence platform to the go to market team, i helped document the set up instructions and best practices. the most surprising thing about ashby is how many people talk about their positive experience with the tool and how quickly that message has been spreading to others! it speaks volumes to the engineering and design principles at ashby. customer success time to value. i'm excited to help customers adopt ashby as quickly and easily as possible and provide their team with the value that changes the scope of their entire talent acquisition team. overall, very quick and organized. by far the easiest onboarding logistically speaking of the past 3 jobs i've worked. people's energy. everyone is thrilled to be here and work hard to build something amazing. everyone is intelligent and experienced but humble and collaborative. very much feels like a "let's do this together" mentality. sales i have helped shape the sales process to help our start up customers evaluate the ats market in clear and friendly environment. i love to write new email copy for the rest the team to use in outreach to prospective customers! how much our customers love using ashby! our #ashby love slack channel is buzzing all day with incredible feedback for the product and our customer support. customer success being an early hire on the cs team, i've helped build out some of the core processes that the team uses when onboarding new and existing customers! friday brainstorming sessions with my team are one of my favorite parts of the week and very productive! i've enjoyed helping bring insight into some of the more complex customer asks, and enjoy being able to relay that information to the rest of the team. watching a request that i record from a customer go from idea, to being built, to being relayed back to the customer is rewarding! how much customization is available within the product!! in the short amount of time that i have been here, seeing customers' reactions to a feature has been so exciting! engineering i implemented syncing data from other recruiting software into ashby. it opened up ashby's powerful reporting features to customers who can't use our all in one product yet. i sped up our automated tests on ci by 10x; they now run in under 10 minutes. we're able to make changes and deploy much faster than we could before. what's always surprising to me, is how each existing feature in ashby instantly produces some additional value to a new feature. for example, when i worked on a data integration feature all the data that got integrated was automatically exposed to ashby's analytics features. if you build something at ashby, very often you'll be able to take some existing building blocks and use them in a new feature with only a little bit of glue code. head of startup customer success analytics customer kick offs! providing a strong onboarding experience for our partners, driven by thoughtful discovery, enablement, and training ensures our customers have what they need to succeed using ashby analytics. i created internal documentation around adoption markers, timelines, and expected implementation maps that have helped sales and product teams see the progress and expectations for new partners. our teammates are very thoughtful with communication and async workflows. everyone has the expectation of respecting others' calendars and rhythms, all while prioritizing necessary work. customer support i'm excited to be a part of the team that reviews, updates, and creates new guides for our customers. it helps our customers feel confident in the tools they're using and ensures that everyone understands the purpose and possibilities of the amazing features ashby has. i'm currently working with a teammate to review, update, and create internal documentation, so that everyone at ashby can stay up to date with new or updated features and workflows. i continue to be pleasantly surprised at how kind, inclusive, and supportive everyone is. across departments and teams, we're all here to help each other and that feels great. director of demand generation i helped launch the first out of home campaign for ashby. it is incredible to see the positive feedback from our community and business coming from the billboards! we've built a very automated and robust process for enriching our prospect target lists. it's enabled better targeting and accuracy in marketing and sales initiatives. how much customers love ashby! the level of customer advocacy is not something i've seen before. sales i've helped 90 exciting startups across europe, africa, the middle east, and asia pacific evaluate and get started with ashby to achieve their ambitious hiring goals. i'm currently the onboarding buddy for two of our newest startup account executives in emea, showing them the ropes and helping them ramp up as quickly as possible so they can start running ats evaluations with our prospective customers. in a relatively short time, ashby has become one of the best ats's on the market (the best in my opinion, but i might be biased!). having worked at multiple software startups in the past, it's truly mind blowing how quickly we've become a category leader, how good and fast our product and engineering teams are, how talented, thoughtful, and tenacious the team is at large, and most importantly how much our customers love us and how much value we're delivering for them. contract management in may 2023, i joined ashby to assume the responsibility of customer renewals and build out a scalable contract management process. by july, i had complete autonomy over our customer renewals and contract inquiries, and was able to deliver transparent and on time renewals for both our customers and ashby. this transition has helped to improve our overall customer retention, while creating a more intentional and positive renewal experience. i was thrilled to see ashby identify the need for my role early on as a company, as a dedicated contract management team is essential for allowing sales and customer success to dedicate their efforts to bringing on and supporting ashby customers. the commitment to customer growth and success was evident in this business decision, and has proven effective since i joined ashby to take over renewals and contracts. the pure delight of ashby's customers will never cease to amaze me, and is unlike anything i have experienced in saas. this is, of course, due to ashby's overall vision and the high level of talent they have secured. each team with ashby brings an essential element that adds to the customer fandom over ashby that we see each day. it is a joy to engage with customers who are so infatuated with the product and the ashby way! head of customer support i have been so excited to expand our team to include customer education and knowledge management. even while still being in the building stages, the foundation we have laid for enablement has driven improvements in our content and related processes. the opportunity to further enable our customers to solve challenges and improve the ta experience using ashby has been great to see. i restructured our onboarding approach in support to group learning modules and materials by product area. this has been helpful in giving our new support folks a deep understanding of the platform, but has made it's way to other ashby newcomers on other teams. i have learned that it is very possible to move swiftly while being intentional and thoughtful in one's approach. in other organizations, it can be easy to conflate being busy with being productive. it is not that way at ashby. having both the responsibility and sense of ownership to approach challenges with deliberate care and collaboration yields stronger results, better change management, and ultimately happier people. it's a unique approach that makes ashby special. customer support the more i learn about ashby, the more excited i get about the future! the support team is full of curious people. i hope to leverage the team's expertise, knowledge, and skills to deliver best in class support. as the team and product grow, i want to build processes that improve our collaboration. onboarding has been thorough and thought provoking. i've been learning how ashby and the support team works through self guided, facilitator led, and shadow sessions. the internal and external documentation is unbelievably well crafted and informative. i've been surprised and impressed by the intentional communication at ashby. while everyone has been so welcoming and friendly, ashby takes the quality of our communication seriously. customer success over my first year, i've been focused on change management for our largest enterprise customers and helping build a new scalable framework that reduces time to value and increases customer satisfaction. this initiative has been crucial in helping our customers adopt ashby quickly and easily, providing their talent acquisition teams with game changing value. i'm excited to see how this framework continues to evolve and benefit our largest customers. as ashby continues to build our enterprise customer base, i've had a large focus on creating customer champions that can speak to their experience and do reference calls with potential clients. changing ats's is a large undertaking and meeting with similar companies in similar positions does a lot to build excitement and assuage any fears of switching. the most surprising aspect of ashby has been how well documented everything is. startups of this size usually have a lot of info living in people's brains but there's a strong culture here around documenting processes and sharing information. it has made learning all the different parts of the company much easier than i expected coming in. sales in my fifth month at ashby, i closed our biggest deal yet. it was a great way to see firsthand how the whole team supports sales and comes together as we learn how to win in the enterprise space and displace legacy ats providers. building the enterprise sales motion has been really fun and i'm excited to see this record broken! as we continue to build enterprise pipeline, i've helped create sales collateral to support the specific needs we're uncovering to better support our competitive position and stand out as a thought partner vs just another vendor. as a salesperson, the way ashby team members embrace the one team culture has been the most pleasant surprise. folks across teams are proactive to open their networks to help book meetings and/or move deals along. startup customer success i'm excited to work with our startup cs team to continue to improve the customer onboarding experience and to to provide valuable support and resources to our customers post onboarding. awesome! there is a lot to learn, and the team has thought out really well how to onboard new team members so that we're setup for success in the long term. how everyone genuinely seems to love working here! talent acquisition i'm excited to help build the gtm teams, create process that delivers a strong candidate experience, and share feedback on the product! onboarding has been wonderful. i've had time to explore the documentation and product, and the team has been very welcoming and helpful in sharing their knowledge. probably the best, most thoughtful onboarding i've had! an obvious answer here is the detail in documentation. as well as that, i've been wonderfully surprised with how connected the team feels while being so purposeful about our work. efficiency isn't happening in a vacuum － it's in collaboration with others. marketing i've been working on our linkedin ads strategy and it's been an amazing journey in teamwork. redefining this strategy has required cross functional efforts and aligning the execution across many folks. the results have rewarded the amazing work the team has done. for a marketing team, being able to target the right audiences at the right time is crucial for any campaign or channel. i built a total addressable market database that allows us to track and evaluate companies in our market and identify ones that are ready to start the sales cycle with us. this data improves our knowledge and targeting of prospects across many different channels. ashby's remote culture is unique; its values are designed to make each team efficient, autonomous, but aligned with the company goals. data with ashby's extensive range of features, there’s no shortage of data, and countless opportunities to enhance visibility for both internal and external teams   and my aim is to help continually improve the data and reporting infrastructure that lives outside the ashby app. streamlining the data pipelines and reducing friction in how information flows allows us to make better decisions, and that’s something i’m excited to contribute to every day! the onboarding experience has been outstanding   and i can’t believe i shipped my first mini data product in week one! the abundance of documentation, videos, and playbooks made the process smooth and efficient, helping me hit the ground running. the pace at which new features are released at ashby, and of course the sheer quantity and quality of the documentation absolutely amazed away! customer success i've been really excited to test different approaches to onboarding our customers   working closely with morgan to try and figure out the best route to get a customer stood up and finding success with ashby i'm currently working on building out a table of contents, with document summaries included, for the customer success team once they've onboarded   you read a lot during your onboarding phase, and the idea of this summary is to make it easier to go back and find a useful document that you may have read in week 2! the speed which the team ships updates, fixes, and entire new features to the team. the cadence that we're getting things into our customer's hands is second to none, and we're constantly able to make our customer's lives much better! startup customer success reinforce and create new playbooks to allow our customers to learn ashby. i want to ensure customers receive the right information through various channels at each stage of their journey with our product. this includes providing tailored tips and insights they didn't know they needed to become experts and achieve their goals. my aim is to scale this process in the most automated way possible, like an invisible hand guiding them to success. outstanding! you are given the time, resources, and freedom to explore and deep dive into the company and product vision, as well as the tools and documentation. i have never seen a company with such high quality internal documentation. this really helps you feel ready to hit the ground running. the team is incredibly welcoming and always ready to lend a hand, ensuring you can learn a lot and enjoy the process! the level of intentionality and detail in everything we do is remarkable. from internal communication to documentation, and the product itself, everything is meticulously thought through. this impression was evident from my interviews and research, and i was eager to see it embodied. not every company truly walks the talk, but ashby does. this mindset is what makes ashby so special   you can feel it within the first hours of joining. sales a repeatable sales process that helps us continue to bring on amazing customers, and a sales culture where everyone is learning from each other and leveling up. i was surprised how much good information was documented and available for my onboarding. everything from company history, the evolution of the ats market, to future vision. i also listened to tons of gong calls which helped me get up to speed quickly and get excited about the opportunity we have here. the market sentiment. i had a sense of this before joining because i heard a lot of positive things from people that work in talent in my network. when i joined i realized that was only the tip of the iceberg! sales i'm helping to shape our gtm approach for larger companies in emea, learning and sharing the nuances of selling in this market. i've collaborated with emea colleagues and leadership to refine messaging for the emea market. the obsession to provide the best in class product to our clients. everybody cares so deeply about what our clients need － it's refreshing to be a part of. sales i'm excited to help advance ashby to the biggest vision possible   to help those in ta and tm have a complete end to end tool that feels like they dreamt it themselves. great so far! that it's hard to find a negative review on the product or the team   unheard of in the hrtech space! sales i’m excited to keep contributing to our growing list of customers and ensure they have a fantastic experience every step of the way! i’m genuinely impressed by the sheer number and quality of logos we proudly call ashby customers. i love seeing ashby success stories   whether on our website, g2, or just during a linkedin scroll. i’m happy to report that the high expectations for onboarding, set during the interview process, have not only been met but exceeded! the onboarding experience has been smooth and well documented, allowing me to feel confident when speaking with our customers about all the exciting features the ashby platform offers. the sense of cross functional collaboration from cs, support, partnerships, and beyond has been incredible. for a relatively young company, the size of the ashby community we've built and the speed at which it’s growing are truly remarkable. it’s incredibly rewarding to hear so often from our customers, and even former customers, about how much they love using our platform and working with our team. engineering i've helped increase recruiter efficiency by making our bulk data import functionality easier to use and available to more internal users. i've also made workflow improvements across the app, from performance boosts for in app notifications to fixing tricky caching issues with our candidate pipeline views. i've improved our codebase health by investing in our feature flag tooling and encouraging others to remove old flags after full rollout. we ship a lot, often, so our flag count was climbing rapidly, but we've now stabilised that growth and removed a lot of dead code in the process! in engineering, the speed of shipping, unlocked by autonomy, an excellent team, and solid tooling. at ashby overall, i've really appreciated the coherent company strategy which is documented, shared company wide, and thoughtfully reviewed and updated. solutions engineering i'm looking forward to helping chapman, mike, and kushal build out the onboarding and training process for new se hires in order to help folks get ramped efficiently and effectively. onboarding has been great so far! it's fun getting to help shape the process and i appreciate how open to feedback everyone is. how quickly and often product releases occur! it's amazing to see the ongoing impact and value ashby provides for customers. engineering i built a new service for converting offer letters and signature documents. our old system didn't support all the features necessary to successfully convert the wide variety of documents our customers had. the new service supports is much less likely to randomly rearrange documents and we have better tooling to monitor, debug, and fix problems. i automated the application of database index migrations in production, replacing a manual process. better for security and less busy work for engineers! new hires are trusted like other engineers to make decisions and ship changes to the product. it's a little intimidating, but also really exciting to complete a task in your first few days and see it go live almost immediately. engineering when scheduling interviews, hiring managers previously had to send a confirmation email after completing the scheduling process, which required extra clicks and was easy to skip by mistake. i built a feature which allows default confirmation emails to be configured in the scheduling flow so that they can be sent out automatically when the interview panel is finalized! this new flow is especially useful because it allows the email to be previewed and customized before finalizing the schedule and sending calendar invites. a few months ago, i came across an integral part of our application which was both complex and under documented. i took the time to write up clear documentation and was thrilled when another teammate (morten) followed it up with a refactor of the original api! our team has high standards, but never at the expense of a supportive environment! i always get the help that i need when i need it, and whenever i launch a feature, i feel greatly appreciated for my hard work. marketing i'm excited to create amazing experiences and events for our prospects and customers and to drive significant pipeline and revenue for the business! i finally found a company that genuinely appreciates documentation and processes. :) because of this, onboarding has been smooth, and i have all the information i need to jump right in! i sensed that we had a strong customer base, but our customers really rave about us all the time! they constantly share their love of ashby by email, social media, at events, etc. customer support it's hard to answer this question as i am a newbie, but i have already noticed that ashby has a strong focus on providing an excellent customer experience, and i'd love to contribute to that. of course, i want to build strong relationship with both my colleagues and clients. my aim is to make the support experience and the product itself as efficient as possible. it has been great! it is a pleasure to see how welcoming the working environment is. the instructions and the list of onboarding tasks are clear and easy to follow. a lot of things, like how friendly and respectful people are here. i have a strong feeling people are all equals here, and there is no differentiation between the impact that support rep makes and the one made by, let's say, engineer. all impacts, all initiatives are valued and respected. this is a great approach. also, i am extremely impressed by how fast ashby is growing. the product is great and it was surprising for me to learn that its founders are so young! kudos to abhik and benji for creating a future leader in ats universe and building such a great team. customer success i joined as our first mid market implementation specialist to help codify our implementation approach in the mm space and establish performance indicators like time to value and launch essentials. ideally, we can build a rinse and repeat model that lays a strong foundation for defining the customer journey, leading with a prescriptive approach, and fleshing out our proserv model(s). so far so good! i am surprised at how incredibly thoughtful the original product vision was, how closely the org remains anchored in many of those forecasted wins and strategies, and how flexible the approach remains for trying things out and seeing what continues to propel the org forward. one thing that i can't get over is how often the operating principle "care deeply about our customers" is referenced in the strategy. engineering i added the employee permissions history panel and underlying audit logging. this will help customers work out why and when things have changed in their data and reduce the load on our team investigating. i updated the organization administration ui to have collapsible sections. this small change helped different people who used the ui to administer different parts of an organization and saved them time. how much has been built and the quality of the features and the underlying code. there's a lot here and a lot still to be built but it's been easy to find and understand everything i've come across so far. talent acquisition my goal at ashby is to be a trusted advisor to my hiring managers, partnering to make the best hiring decisions for their teams. i've worked with hiring managers who dread the task of hiring, as well as those who get excited about building their team. my hope is that i can steward a sense of excitement and optimism around hiring among the teams i work with. so far, so good! my first week was in cancun, so it's really hard to have any constructive feedback as of yet   i may come back to this one! the company's success, given the economic climate in tech! that's what got me so intrigued about the company, and excited about the role. customer support i'm excited to give time strapped hiring teams their sanity back. exceptional tech is just one part of the equation. offloading tasks and processes onto ashby means hiring teams can put their time back into their own org and spend precious brain space dreaming up what's next. i'm excited to empower ashby users to make our tools their own. delightful! my teammates have made themselves readily available, and have been very encouraging as i jump into so much new. you can feel the excitement and conviction the ashby team has about the company's trajectory, and the impact to be made on the industry, too. it's a very exciting time to be here! how well documented everything is. seriously! so many teammates have spent countless hours documenting everything from best practices and onboarding flows to bug fixes and faqs. async learning, communication, and collaboration are so much easier when you've got such a deep catalogue of knowledge. customer success as the first csm based in europe, i'm super excited to help support our emea customers in getting the most out of ashby. i'm also excited to leverage my past experience working in hr and recruiting tech to provide a smooth onboarding experience for customers and enable adoption across their organisation. i love working with data 🤓 so i'm looking forward to building out how we leverage this and enable teams to make data driven decisions through ashby's epic reporting capabilities. my onboarding experience has been great, the team was incredibly welcoming and supportive of my learning! being the first high touch cs in the uk meant i was on a different timezone, but the team leaned in to support me by hopping on early calls which i'm super grateful for. i'm amazed by how well documented everything is and how if you have questions, you'll always find the answer! how considered and thoughtful everyone...and everything is! from product releases that solve genuine pain points to the structure around internal communication. the team is incredibly efficient and collaborative, meaning we can truly support our customers and be proactive in addressing their priorities. ashby listens to it's customers and employees, resulting in a truly excellent product and employee experience. product i'm thrilled to have the opportunity to help ashby build on the great work that's already been done to become a leader in thoughtful use of ai   in using ai not for its own sake or novelty, but to truly make an impact on the experience and opportunities available to both candidates and hiring teams. ashby is a wonderful place for an autodidact because of the wealth of, and emphasis on good documentation. i was blown away by how friendly and welcoming the team has been overall. the customer love! i've never been part of an organization that customers love the way they do ashby. being able to make such an impact on customers' day to day work lives in a positive way is hugely motivating. sales i am proud to have guided over 175 companies through selecting ashby as their ats of choice. from companies as small as two hiring their first engineer to companies with over 100 employees and plans to double in size. it is so fun to see how ashby can be a fit for everyone! i’ve been actively involved in onboarding new team members at ashby, helping them get up to speed quickly and feel supported from day one. i love to be a go to resource! the pace of innovation! it is very rare to have a custom suggest an idea and then see it come to fruition so soon thereafter. our release blog is a world of wonder 🎉 customer support i have incorporated daily checks to look into any urgent issues flagged by our engineering teams into my workflow. this helps to ensure that we promptly reach out to our users whenever challenges arise to ensure they are aware and can make any updates that are needed to resolve the issue. i find a lot of value in team collaboration and effective troubleshooting, which has led me to ask frequent questions to our support team, even if the questions feel straightforward. this has helped encourage a culture of open communication within our team and lays the groundwork for new teammates to feel empowered to ask questions. the value that is placed on user feedback when considering updates to the platform has really surprised me in my time here at ashby! all user feedback is taken into account when releasing new features or updates, and updates are released all the time. customer success i want to further ashby's operating principle of deeply caring about customers by serving as their number one advocate and ensuring every customer relationship is successful. still onboarding, but so far, so good. the most surprising thing is how genuinely kind and passionate everyone is. i'm so happy to have joined. customer success i've helped document customer journey milestones and enable fellow high touch csm's to work efficiently using documented playbooks and templates. as the team continues to grow, consistency in process and customer experience will help drive value and adoption for our customers and speed up the onboarding time for our new hires! i've helped document customer journey milestones and enable fellow high touch csm's to work efficiently using documented playbooks and templates. as the team continues to grow, consistency in process and customer experience will help drive value and adoption for our customers and speed up the onboarding time for our new hires! the size and efficiency of the team. from the outside looking in, you may guesstimate that the employee count is easily twice it's actual size. ashby's attention to detail and emphasis on making the right hires culminates in an extremely effective, productive, and collaborative team with absolutely incredible results for the product and customers. sales leadership i'm excited to build a deep understanding of our mid market customers and then align our sales talent and resources to help accelerate their growth from start up to global enterprise. it's been fantastic! i'm genuinely impressed with the amount of documentation and resources available on day one. having worked at a number of organizations at a similar stage and size, i can say that this is easily the best onboarding experience i've had. seeing the operating principles in action. throughout the interview process and onboarding you immediately recognize an "ashby way" of doing things that is thoughtful, empathetic and efficient. customer success i am an expert in workday and i bring a somewhat unique experience as a workday administrator at an extremely large enterprise company (intel corporation). with that background, i would love to improve the workday integration for large customers, make it easy for them to implement it, and make it flexible and reliable to enable high quality operations for our customers. i am also happy to lend a hand with the ashby teams who need help engaging with hris/it type of stakeholders during implementation   they can be a tricky bunch but i know them well, since i was one for many years 😉 i'm very lucky to be a part of the gtm onsite in my first week. the team has been very warm and welcoming, receptive of my early thoughts, and very helpful with answering my questions. i'm pretty sure benji has read every book ever written 😲 i love how engaged he is with the product and the team! data i'm excited to develop our product analytics! i want to be methodical in analyzing how our customers use ashby so we can identify pain points or opportunities and estimate the overall impact of making changes. i also want to help other teams at ashby incorporate data and automation into their processes. everybody is extremely driven and helpful. there is a lot of potential for projects at ashby and the people here are excited to work with you to complete them   ashby is a great mix of fast and and thoughtful. ashby is very transparent with their goals and projects. i really enjoy getting to see what each team is producing and how at the forefront of every decision is making a product that customers will love. customer support as the first hire in the apac region, i was instrumental in enabling ashby to offer 24/7 support, significantly improving our responsiveness and service quality in the region. additionally, i provided crucial support to the next hire by sharing in depth product knowledge and facilitating their onboarding, which ensured a smooth integration and continued enhancement of our regional support operations. i have helped in enhancing our already highly praised onboarding process at ashby by suggesting ideas that would refine and expand the support onboarding experience, i've helped new team members integrate more smoothly and quickly into our culture and operations. this ongoing improvement has made it easier for new hires to get up to speed, ultimately boosting their productivity and satisfaction, and contributing to a stronger, more cohesive team overall. the leadership team truly cares for and listens to the stakeholders! and how thoughtful communication just works! customer success i am looking forward to continuing to improve the implementation experience for our customers and streamlining internal processes. great! i have appreciated the onboarding checklists and willingness of everyone to meet for coffee chats. the culture! everyone seems very involved in the continued success of the org and of the "work hard, play hard" mentality. everyone has been super helpful thus far! engineering leadership build a well gelled, happy, and unfeasibly productive team. i'm especially interested in features that ensure our interfaces are delightful for users to work with. there's a lot of documentation to read, and so many features to learn about, but we're given a lot of autonomy and space to move with urgency. the team is frighteningly competent! sales leadership i standardized processes to help our startup account executives provide amazing experiences for our customers. we strive to become both product experts as well as thoughtful and trustworthy advisors for the businesses that we work with. a standardized dashboard in hubspot for our startup account executives that enables us to remain aligned on all the key areas of our motion. this dashboard has given us the opportunity to have a variety of meaningful conversations with both my direct team as well as other departments. as they say, you can't improve what you don't measure! ashby's thoughtful and intentional culture fuels our rapid innovation, creating an extraordinary number of ashby super fans in the market. customer success i'd like to help make ashby as intuitive as possible. as someone who has been a recruiter in the past, i know how much an ats can effect the day to day of a recruiting team. having a platform that is designed for them and that is flexible and scalable can make a huge impact on an organization. my onboarding at ashby was great! though there is a ton to learn, they did a great job of breaking up the process into bite size pieces. the culture at ashby is special, i felt welcomed from day one. the most surprising thing about ashby is the rate in which features are shipped. it feels like there are new features and additions to the platform on a weekly basis. to me, this shows how much we care about the end users experience and feedback. sales i'm very proud that i brought in the largest deal in company history less than 5 months into my tenure here. this prevalent logo in the ai space will help spur growth as we move upmarket, and had a significant impact from a revenue perspective. i've built a "mutual partnership plan" that some of my teammates use in their conversations with prospective customers as we map out the steps that need to be taken before a partnership is cemented. it can be a helpful project management tool that creates accountability and surfaces concerns. it has to be how effusive customers are about the product. it's really fun to demo this for folks who have been using tools that haven't met their standards for a long time. head of partnerships in my first quarter, we brought 15+ new integrations to market. i'm excited to keep up that velocity and keep building relationships with our partners across all of our programs. we launched a premium support program for our vc partners in collaboration with the startup customer success team. the communication culture! while completely remote, there are only 47 public slack channels and clearly defined ways of communicating and documenting work. engineering with large flexible applications like ashby the most interesting challenge for me is how to allow the user to do what they want without thinking about the tool. building the right feature with the right automation, interface, information architecture, can make a complex task simple. lots of companies have a mission for an engineer to ship on the first day, but not a great plan after that. ashby's onboarding does a good job of creating the habit of deploying so the first week jitters dissipate, and the scope of the changes grows steadily. the amount of exposure we get even as engineers to what the clients are saying. from recordings of sales, and research calls, to direct written feedback & feature requests. for a product as large as ashby it will be important to have a good understanding and connection with the end user. engineering one of the key reasons behind the depth and breadth of ashby's feature set is the engineering team's focus on creating generic building blocks that support a variety of use cases. i'd like to help build the next building block that unlocks new features and delivers value to our customers. this has been the most structured and well thought out onboarding i've ever had! the starter tasks were a great way to ease into the codebase, and there's plenty of documentation on product and processes. the product intro and deep dive sessions helped build a deeper understanding of how everything fits together. to top it all off, everyone has been super friendly and helpful! the scale and quality of what's been built and how easy it is to navigate the massive codebase. growth operations my aim is to help the revops team progress towards larger projects through improved data cleanliness. amazing groundwork has been laid, and now, with more hands on deck, we will be able to tackle higher obstacles. fantastic! meeting the team has been awesome, and there's so much literature to explore. everyone is so dedicated to the product and mission. i feel empowered to start making an impact immediately. how well the product's different facets solve so many individual customer challenges. talent acquisition as the only dedicated resource to sourcing (for now!), i've been able to support hiring across all functions while partnering with hiring managers across the company. from setting up and implementing processes to providing product feedback and participating in community events, there's no shortage of ways to have impact. one of the great things about working at ashby is the ability to balance day to day work with longer term projects that materially move the work forward. taking this kind of proactive approach means i get to work on a project that will impact how we hire for engineering roles into the future, but that is also a fun break in the routine work. how remarkably effective and balanced everyone is. i've worked in high stress environments where it feels like there are fires everywhere, and ashby is just the complete opposite. it's like being in a well oiled machine without losing the innovation, creativity, and excitement of a growth stage company. might be biased, but i think it comes down to the people. sales developing a scalable and repeatable enterprise sales strategy. fantastic! everything has been documented in our company wiki. how fast r&d ships product! engineering i love when a customer sees a new feature and you can see their eyes light up with delight. as long as i get to see that, i'm prepared to build anything. and i feel like i've chosen the right place for that. i love the amount of freedom i was given. i could figure things out on my own terms, but had someone to ask questions when i was stuck anytime i needed it. how much time i can focus on deep work is amazing. once you experience that, you really start to wonder how you could ever work any other way. customer support i'd like to bridge the gap between customer support and engineering so we have more tools and visibility to help our customers every day. coming from a non talent acquisition background, i'm excited to apply my existing skill set to ashby and work more efficiently with cross functional team members. onboarding has been wild! first and foremost, the team at ashby is warm and welcoming, to the degree that i'm even more confident with my decision to work here after just a few weeks. documentation has been on point, and everyone i've spoken to has been willing to connect, accept feedback, and of course allow me to ask them questions about ashby! at a glance, ashby seems like a fairly straightforward product, but i was very surprised at how granular it is. the software is very agile and powerful, with so many ways of doing the same thing. i can see why our customers love using it! startup customer success improving our in app tours has been a blast. i've got to learn about the platform from some incredible colleagues and then pitch ideas and implement! 😀 i haven't "shipped" anything quite yet, but have a few exciting projects in the works that will greatly benefit the team! the scale of our reporting feature! i didn't realize just how in depth you could get. there are so many fully functional dashboards/reports already built out for customers to take advantage of on day one. engineering ashby's ability to grow with your team rather than grow out of it. whether it's ui/ux or engineering, the challenge of building a tool that caters to both small and large teams is one i'm excited to tackle. i'm looking forward to working with the team here to build a lovable product that will delight our customers. thoughtfully intentionally   from day one, every day has had a clear objective to get me closer to becoming a confident and integral member of the team. the autonomy (like real autonomy...). everyone here is extremely talented so it's easy to see how there is a deep trust in one another to do the right thing for our customers. additionally, everyone is genuinely supportive of each other which helps validate our abilities and further strengthen that trust. engineering ashby's broad and deep feature set provides many interesting ui, ux, and architectural opportunities. i'm looking forward to building on top of this with features that are easy and pleasant to use, whilst still meeting the needs of power users! the whole process has been extremely smooth   well thought out, structured, and considerate. support has been available at every step, and everyone has been quick to assist when needed. the emphasis on getting things done, avoiding unnecessary busy work, keeping calendars clear and maximising focus time. it is refreshing and very much welcome. customer success i'm excited to combine my experience with learnings from the recops community and combine our insights with the detailed recruiting data provided by ashby. my goal is to develop a strong framework that helps companies excel by implementing tried and true recops practices. i'm eager to assist our customers in leveraging ashby to succeed in any recruiting environment and to turn data into a valuable asset that helps their teams excel. i’ve really enjoyed my onboarding experience it’s been fantastic! the detailed documentation and the chance to meet many members of the team have made my transition smooth and welcoming. i’m feeling right at home already! the most surprising thing so far has been the company's approach to communication. when i first read ashby's operating principles, i thought they sounded almost too good to be true. but i've found that ashby truly lives up to these principles. the emphasis on thoughtful communication is genuinely practiced and felt throughout the company. engineering as ashby's product offering keeps growing daily, i'd like to help create the tools that will allow the company to unlock more customers and more complex use cases. very clear and well organized. you start to contribute very quickly and you get a lot of exposure to multiple areas of the product and the company. the product is huge and there are a lot of resources to ramp up very quickly. the speed from the engineering team. it's amazing that we release changes and new features multiple times per day to our customers. engineering i'm looking forward to improving the product and the internal tools in all sorts of ways, from small quality of life improvements to larger features or tools. our customers have very high expectations, and i'm excited to help exceed them. excellent! very smooth. nothing has caught me off guard. i've been able to answer so many of my questions through the documentation, and my manager and onboarding buddies have been very available and helpful. as a developer, i've been able to ship from the first day, which feels great. also, having a list of tasks from day one has given me a clear direction and purpose. i want to highlight three things that i already knew before joining but are even better than i expected. first, it's very cool to be building a product that you use or have used. second, our customers are truly impressive: the hottest companies in the world choose ashby (check the logos on the homepage!). finally, i'm amazed by how much our customers love ashby. the word of mouth is real: they become instant advocates and recommend us to their friends and colleagues. customer support i've helped to improve functionality of internal tools that are used to track issues sothat we can provide our users with timely updates. i appreciate how every person on the team is given the agency to make improvements when needed! i've collaborated with other team members to keep internal documentation up to date and am working on ways to improve documentation of processes so the team can support our customers most efficiently. how quickly the product evolves and how thoughtfully executed every change has been! startup customer success i have been working on our new in app onboarding, which will hopefully help customers self serve and more easily connect them to what they need in our documentation! i have recently been working on our onboarding materials for new startup csm hires! both refining what materials we introduce folks to, as well as crowdsourcing calls and emails that will serve as great learning tools. how thoughtful everyone is about the work they do! we prioritize pretty fiercely, and that definitely leads to feeling like you are always contributing to important projects! startup customer success i am thrilled by the prospect of focusing on the post onboarding experience for our startup customers! we have so many dedicated resources to ensuring startups can adopt the product quickly, which is incredibly important. i am interested in how startups can continue to feel supported, particularly given how (impressively) quickly ashby's product is iterated on. it's been a dream! i am so grateful for the wealth of documentation that's available. my team is kind and eager to help me grow. my manager has nurtured my learning by setting up training sessions, partnering me with a training buddy, answering my myriad of questions, and encouraging me to take my time. the culture at ashby is a breath of fresh air. the strong culture of collaboration and intentionality. before joining, i had read abhik's blog post about thoughtful communication and his approach felt truly mythical. i can report that ashby walks the talk: my days are uninterrupted by random pings on slack. when i do seek input from others, team members provide valuable insights and are excited to help. i feel like i will be able to do my best work here. customer support i’m excited to learn more about the ashby product so i can contribute to making our support even more efficient and effective. my focus is on finding ways to improve the customer experience by streamlining workflows and sharing best practices with the team. i also want to help ensure our support materials and processes evolve alongside the product to keep up with customer needs. the onboarding experience has been fantastic so far! everyone has been welcoming and supportive, and i appreciate how much thought has gone into the process to set new team members up for success. i’ve already gained a lot of insight into ashby’s tools and culture, and i’m excited to dive deeper. i’ve been pleasantly surprised by how collaborative and well documented everything is. it’s clear that the team values transparency and making information accessible, which has made it easy to start learning right away engineering too many things. there are quite a few exciting projects in flight that i want to contribute to in addition to setting up the codebase for even more rapid iteration. thorough and supported. there is a lot of product to understand, but ashby's culture of writing documents it well via normal process. the amount intention behind decisions. features and code are thought through super well and the emphasis is on getting it right over speed. but, there is enough in place that we still can ship fast. talent acquisition i'm excited to combine my experience with learnings from the recops community and combine our insights with the detailed recruiting data provided by ashby. my goal is to develop a strong framework that helps companies excel by implementing tried and true recops practices. i'm eager to assist our customers in leveraging ashby to succeed in any recruiting environment and to turn data into a valuable asset that helps their teams excel. i’ve really enjoyed my onboarding experience it’s been fantastic! the detailed documentation and the chance to meet many members of the team have made my transition smooth and welcoming. i’m feeling right at home already! the most surprising thing so far has been the company's approach to communication. when i first read ashby's operating principles, i thought they sounded almost too good to be true. but i've found that ashby truly lives up to these principles. the emphasis on thoughtful communication is genuinely practiced and felt throughout the company. contract management at ashby, my vision is to elevate the contract manager team to deliver a world class renewal experience that consistently exceeds customer expectations. this involves refining processes, leveraging data driven insights, and fostering close collaboration across teams to ensure customer satisfaction, retention, and upsell opportunities. incredibly fortunate to have started my onboarding from the denver offsite. while this meant my official onboarding was delayed, i was able to "dive into the deep end" learning about ashby's plans for 2025, the incredible collaboration between internal teams and the impact we have on our customers. only recommended improvement so far would be to clearly indicate that we need to login with our personal email instead of work email for the onboarding portal. the product and internal teams feel like a much later stage company. the organisation is incredibly mature in how it sets its goals, collaborates and supports its customers. sales i'm excited to join the growing emea team and contribute to their already booming success across the region. i hope to be a culture carrier for the team in europe! great! it's early doors, but i've been welcomed already and i'm excited to get going. i'm a real kinetic learner, so gong recordings, shadow demo's and hearing about my colleague's experiences will be hugely helpful for my onboarding. i feel instantly calm since joining. everyone i've spoken to has been kind and forthcoming with information when needed. i think the hiring process really impacts this smooth arrival to ashby   it means you feel a part of the team before you actually get here. sales leadership our vision is to empower all hr teams to become hubs of innovation that are as integral to your company’s bottom line as are their products and services. my team's focus is to bring ashby to the world's most innovative and sophisticated companies. we're constantly thinking about how we can help teams work smarter, not harder so they can focus their efforts where it matters most. the onboarding has been incredibly thoughtful and well structured for a young, scrappy company. we are very much a documentation first culture so a lot of time and attention has been invested in documenting all things ashby which makes onboarding so much easier. the customer love is amazing. we regularly get feedback about how blown away customers are to discover capabilities of ashby that unlock new workflows and make their teams happier and more efficient. engineering i'm looking forward to getting to grips with the product, and finding more ways to delight our customers through my work. i'm particularly interested in the challenges that come with scaling. as bottlenecks emerge there are often challenging, but rewarding problems to solve that cut through from ux and product design all the way through to deep engineering fundamentals! really great! i've felt really supported and with a really clear path to getting set up and pointed to the resources i need. 10/10 how quiet it is   in a good way! it's very peaceful and it feels like there's a lot of time to actually do work. the lack of meetings is very refreshing. customer success my goal is to further accelerate our customers' time to value and drive deeper adoption of ashby. i’m excited to help refine and develop scalable playbooks that empower our high touch customers to fully leverage ashby with confidence. onboarding at ashby has been incredibly smooth. the documentation is thorough, well organized, and strikes the perfect balance between detail and clarity, making it both comprehensive and easy to follow. the level of thoughtfulness and attention to detail! every aspect of ashby's operations is driven by a clear purpose from how we communicate and document information to even the smallest interaction within our product. this enables us to deliver a truly outstanding experience for our customers. customer support i'd like to dive deeper into supporting developer topics and become an expert on helping our customers implement development strategies with our api and webhooks. so far everything has been great and sara has been incredibly supportive. there's still a ton to learn and i'm excited to dig in. ashby cares deeply about customer feedback and makes meaningful changes that impact the organizations that request them. © 2025 ashby, inc.

stevecapistran@gmail.com debbifuller3@gmail.com hello classmates, here’s the news you’ve shared and a bit i found on my own travels. carolyn rehill stiles lives in cohasset, massachusetts, and would love to hear from alums on the south shore. she is enjoying her first granddaughter with a grandson on the way in december. after many years at state street global advisors, she is enjoying her role as the senior associate director of gift planning at northeastern university, and she encourages all of you who are thinking of leaving unh in your estate plan to let the unh office of gift planning know so they can answer your questions (email gift.planning@unh.edu or phone (603) 862 3694). gail mcsweeney macinnes writes she officially retired by celebrating on a viking river cruise on the danube river with her husband john, steve perna ’79 and eileen smith ’78. the old friends had a great time and look forward to another river cruise. gail notes she will be helping another close unh friend, nancy errico ’79, and her husband move to their new retirement home in delaware, and they also see their old friend, don bisson ’78, when he is home from his work with the jimmy carter center currently in tunisia. the macinneses celebrated their 40th anniversary, john’s retirement and their 65th birthdays with friends steve, nancy, eileen and tom pappas ’79. gail tells us the couple split their time between home in francestown and an apartment in boxborough, massachusetts. they’re not sure what retirement plans are quite yet but they do know they will be spending lots of time with their first grandchild, lucas. from my view, unh alumni get around, and it’s just amazing where you find us! i was recently on a fabulous trip with the seacoast ski club, which i’ve enjoyed being a member of for many years and traveled to some really cool places. it didn’t surprise me when i realized i was in wildcat company in croatia. of the 33 on the trip, eight of us are unh alumni   that’s a pretty strong representation. we had a wonderful time on a national park tour. after exploring zadar, the oldest city in dalmatia along the adriatic (known for its venetian forts, ottoman influence and cultural attractions like the famous sea organ) we headed to the beautiful velebit mountains. every day we discovered new terrain in the paklenica and plitvička national parks, both unesco world heritage sites. whether we were hiking or biking in the rugged velebit, kayaking along the adriatic coast, exploring the magnificent lakes and caves connected by stunning waterfalls in plitvička, or taking the day off at a local organic winery, we were bombarded by epic views where mountains, canyons and the coast collide. please join the facebook class group at www.facebook.com/groups/unh1980  invite your friends and send along news and photos. we asked alumni to share what durham eatery they’d want to bring back from their unh years. read stories of favorite restaurants here in class notes, and in “sound bites” on page 84. hello fellow alums! please save the date june 7 9, 2024! registration opened for the unh big ’80s reunion on march 1, and you can register www.unh.edu/reunion. the first 100 people to register will be eligible to win a drawing for a unh t shirt! there will be a kickoff evening at jimmy’s jazz club on friday night featuring music by the eric grant band with mark phaneuf ’87 and on saturday night chris avery ’83 is performing with the crab shack band. the unh reunion committee has reserved discounted hotel rooms on a first come, first served basis in portsmouth at the residence inn marriott or the hampton inn & suites (room block expires march 8) and in dover at the homewood suites by hilton or the hampton inn & suites (room block expires april 30). i hope you will sign up to follow the big ’80s reunion facebook page (www.facebook.com/groups/big80sreunion) where we are posting photos and other important information as our reunion approaches. for additional questions, please contact reunion co chairs john davis ’85 at johncdavis@comcast.net or robin peters schell ’84 at rschell@jjwpr.com. sheila mcdonough writes that she can’t believe it has been 40 years since we graduated from college. after unh, she went on to get her master of education degree at the university of alaska anchorage in 2000, and when she was working on her ph.d. with one statistics class and the defense of her thesis left to go, she suffered a stroke in april 2021. while her doctors gave her a poor prognosis, her strong faith supported her back to a full recovery. robert t. coppins also is surprised that we are 40 years older than when we graduated. he is currently the director of testing at castaway technologies, llc, a comprehensive data destruction company in lawrence, massachusetts. bobby is still in touch with many of his kappa sigma fraternity brothers. he attends most of the new england patriot home games and usually can be found tailgating with other unh alumni. suzanne noble wrote that she lives in london, and runs a social enterprise called advantages of age which delivers a government funded program called startup school for seniors. she was recently shortlisted in the british businesswoman awards for her work in supporting people over 50 who are interested in turning their ideas into a business. she also hosts a podcast and tiktok channel with 55,000 followers named sex advice for seniors which has been featured in national newspapers and magazines. melissa thayer retired two years ago after 37 years as an occupational certified hand therapist. she is married and currently living in western maine. she enjoys many outdoor activities and spending time with her three sons and daughter. deborah carrigan mcguire and her husband bob recently celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary with a trip to hawaii and were blessed to welcome their sixth grandchild this past july. the grandchildren range in age from the newborn to 16 years old and keep them quite busy. debbie has worked for more than 25 years in the professional development program at the university of albany in new york, where she is a training director managing training contracts and activities with state agencies. timothy giotas took early retirement from fidelity investments on july 1, 2023, and is enjoying his free time. he would love to hear from our classmates and can be found on facebook. mark your calendars for june 7 9, 2024! registration for the unh big ’80s reunion is open as of march 1 and you can register using this link   www.unh.edu/reunion. the first 100 alums to register will be eligible for a drawing for a t shirt! let’s get this party rolling now! we have a kickoff evening at jimmy’s jazz club on friday featuring music by the eric grant band (mark phaneuf ’87) and on saturday night, music by the crab shack bank (chris avery ’83). the unh reunion committee has discounted hotel rooms blocked for reunion (on a first come, first served basis) in portsmouth (resident inn marriott or hampton inn & suites, room block expires march 8) and dover (homewood suites by hilton or hampton inn & suites, room block expires april 30). if you haven’t already signed up to follow the big ’80s reunion fb page, you can do so by clicking on this link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/508075372872742. here’s where we’ll be posting lots of photos and other “need to know” information as reunion approaches. for additional questions, contact reunion co chairs john davis ’85 (johncdavis@comcast.net) or myself. caroline (reese) brown is enjoying riding her horse and traveling during retirement. she spent a month in portugal and in november, spent another month in germany, austria and poland. xochi blymyer writes that she is still working as a first assistant director in hollywood. her latest projects include the documentary “red dog & bates” and “hey alexa.” in her spare time, she participates in an axe throwing league. after his time at unh, todd robertson got his master’s degree and worked in printer maintenance for companies ricoh and xerox. after experiencing a lay off during covid, he became a caretaker for his father for two years and is now working on a 250 hour welding class. jeanne sheehan corcoran retired from her position as an interim dean for the college of health & human services and professor of occupational therapy at salem state university in massachusetts in november 2019. since then, she has been serving as a consultant for the registry and is currently enjoying her stint at the interim chair for speech pathology and audiology at ball state university in muncie, indiana. she fondly remembers her time at unh (undergrad ’84, graduate ’98). mike wang, ceo/founder of lifestyle body armor, writes that he became a grandpa to a grandson raphael pimentel wang. mike will be living abroad in barcelona in 2024. after a career in high tech, diana keohane left the workforce to raise her four children. she became an active volunteer, serving several terms on both the tyngsborough (massachusetts) school committee and tyngsborough recycling committee. her time volunteering in the classrooms led her back to school to get a second master’s degree in education. she began a second career as a math teacher, first at groton dunstable middle school and then at greater lowell technical high school. in retirement, diana has continued to serve her community as the chairwoman of the tyngsborough sustainability committee. she put together a team to help support the international institute of new england as they resettled afghan refugees in the lowell area, gathering donations, setting up apartments for arriving afghan and other refugee families and tutoring children in math. she is also serving as president of the larrea family foundation, established by her family to support sustainability efforts. she reports that their first grant went to the unh sustainability institute, and she is looking forward to getting involved with the program at unh. our hearts go out to the families of unh classmates we lost recently: joyce d. (costello) cullins of franklin, massachusetts, (formerly newton), passed away in january 2023 after a courageous battle with cancer at the age of 60. she worked as a campaign manager in digital marketing at merkle inc., monster.com and gillette and was a passionate volunteer for charities associated with breast cancer. daniel thomas fagan, of ashland, massachusetts, passed away in july 2023 at the age of 60 after a battle with bile duct cancer. he graduated from unh in 1984 with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and earned an mba from benedictine university in illinois. he worked for emerson & cuming for 28 years and for thermofisher scientific for the last 11 years of his career. a devoted husband and father, he is survived by his wife and son. he loved to travel, listen to jazz music and watch his son play hockey. he also enjoyed a variety of outdoor sports, including skiing and kayaking. tammi truax’s second book for young people was recently published by piscataqua press. “the pearl of portsmouth: a story of dr. martin luther king, jr.” is a biographical picture book about the day rev. king and miss coretta scott visited portsmouth. it is beautifully illustrated by rev. lillian buckley and is available from most booksellers. see you at the reunion june 7 9? registration opened for the unh big ’80s reunion on march 1, and you can register www.unh.edu/reunion. the first 100 people to register will be eligible to win a drawing for a unh t shirt! there will be a kickoff evening at jimmy’s jazz club on friday night featuring music by the eric grant band with mark phaneuf ’87 and on saturday night chris avery ’83 is performing with the crab shack band. the unh reunion committee has reserved discounted hotel rooms on a first come, first served basis in portsmouth at the residence inn marriott or the hampton inn & suites (room block expires march 8) and in dover at the homewood suites by hilton or the hampton inn & suites (room block expires april 30). i hope you will sign up to follow the big ’80s reunion facebook page (www.facebook.com/groups/big80sreunion) where we are posting photos and other important information as our reunion approaches. for additional questions, please contact reunion co chairs john davis at johncdavis@comcast.net or robin peters schell ’84 at rschell@jjwpr.com. the countdown to the big ’80s 40th reunion has begun! do you have june 7 9, 2024, on your calendar, yet? you don’t want to miss it. now is the time to make plans to be there. all 1980s classes are welcome. also, it’s not too late to volunteer to help by calling or emailing classmates, teammates, roommates … every big event needs lots of help with planning and coordination. there are tasks that need a local touch and plenty that can be done from your computer at home, wherever home is. consider sponsoring an event for prominent name recognition for your business. check out the facebook page for all things reunion at www.facebook.com/groups/big80sreunion or contact john davis ’85 at johncdavis@comcast.net or robin peters schell ’84 at rschell@jjwpr.com to see how you can get involved. of course, you don’t have to wait for the official event to have a reunion. some of the sigma nu guys had their own mini reunion over the summer. ed tetreault writes that he had a blast reconnecting with sigma nu brothers dave rayment, tony vegnani, chris casey, craig dickens and neil colstead at an impromptu reunion at the lake house of phil rayment ’87 in laconia in august. they had a great time sharing old stories (some true) while spending time with their significant others, too. drew keifaber sent a quick recap of the last 37 years. after graduation, he earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering. he married kristin buckley ’87 ’97g in 1991. they have lived in newmarket since 1986 and have two children, both of whom are unh grads. drew worked as an engineer for 32 years in the printing press and medical device industries. he is “pretired,” so he doesn’t have to work full time anymore. kristin has been a high school math and physics teacher for 26 years. she is planning to retire after this school year. they look forward to adventuring more when she is retired. some of our classmates have already reached the golden years of retirement. since retiring after a 24 year career on wall street, mark chamberlain bought a house in his new hampshire hometown and now splits his time between there and manhattan’s upper west side where he and his husband own an apartment. in new hampshire, mark serves on two non profit boards, one of which is a public housing authority. in addition, he writes articles for the local newspaper on a variety of topics including the economy, local human interest stories and even pickleball! speaking of which, he’s jumped on the pickleball craze and reports that he plays several times per week. many members of the class of ’86 will be turning 60 during this academic year. do you have a big party planned? are you taking a trip? i know at least one group of unh ladies planning a tropical girls’ cruise to mark the milestone event. i hope you will tell us all about how you are celebrating (or have celebrated), whether you’re staying home with family, buying a beach house/ski cabin or traveling the world. i know i will be celebrating by traveling 1,001 miles to the big ’80s reunion. see you there! registration opens march 1. shannon a. mullen, a longtime npr journalist, has her first book coming out this month from penguin random house and steerforth press   it’s about the governor of maine and a woman who sent her weekly letters of support for the first pandemic year. you can learn more about shannon’s work on her website: www.shannonamullen.com. nathan michaud ’07, wife laura ogonowski ’07 and john jeanson ’05 attended the 65th honor flight out of new england on september 17. nate is a board member of honor flight new england and the others attended as volunteers. honor flight new england is a non profit organization dedicated since its founding in 2009 to honoring america’s most senior veterans by transporting them   at no cost   to washington, d.c. to visit veteran memorials. at the end of the day’s events, john asked a vietnam veteran what his favorite part of the trip was, and he said, “the send off line at boston logan airport, filled with hundreds of people who wanted to thank me for my service. i didn’t know how to respond because i have been so accustomed to the opposite, for those years i served in vietnam. it took a lot for me to hold it together after the many handshakes, hugs and seeing tears of true gratitude in those supporters’ eyes.” john notes that he wasn’t alone: a 91 year old korean war veteran, for whom john was a guardian, said the same thing. john’s grandfather, a korean war veteran, also took part in an honor flight four years ago and felt the same way. john says that if any classmates know a veteran interested in taking part in an honor flight, check out the organization’s website: honorflightnewengland.org unh magazine

college of liberal arts and sciences on 24 august, 2023, 10 community science organizations, the connecticut department of energy and environmental protection (ct deep) and the university of connecticut collaborated to simultaneously sample total alkalinity in the embayments and rivers bordering long island sound (lis). led by dms phd candidate lauren barrett, the event was a regional repeat of the 2019 effort led across new england by the northeast coastal acidification network (necan, http://necan.org/shellday). the participating groups sampled for total alkalinity (ta) and hydrographic variables such as salinity and temperature during low, mid , and high tides, meaning the spatial variation in alkalinity across the sound. seawater alkalinity requires high precision, expensive instrumentation and a skilled analyst, and thus typical observations of ta in lis conducted by a single or a few researchers require that spatially separate samples also have a temporal difference. however, ta varies across diel and tidal cycles, so the spatial and temporal difference is important to parse. the collaborative effort of shell day allowed for a spatial identification of ta trends in lis without the confounding temporal variation. shell day 2023 was a successful event. despite some mild rain in the afternoon, community scientists weathered the storm and still provided high quality samples, which are currently undergoing ta analysis at uconn. the results of this work will be interpreted in the context of open lis data (available through the vlahos lab at uconn) and the data collected during shell day 2019. this work will be presented to the lis science technical and advisory committee (stac) this fall as well as to the participating organizations at a meeting which is to be determined. ann bucklin, professor emeritus of marine sciences, has been appointed u.s. academic delegate to the international council for the exploration of the sea (ices https://www.ices.dk). this appointment, made by the department of state on august 17, 2023, authorizes prof. bucklin to serve as one of the two u.s. representatives on the ices council, which is the decision and policy making body in ices. the u.s. academic delegate is focused on encouraging and coordinating ices related research and activities in the academic community. what is ices and its mission? ices is a leading multidisciplinary scientific forum for exchanging information and ideas on all aspects of marine sciences, including environmental, scientific, fisheries, wildlife, and conservation affairs, pertaining to the north atlantic ocean, including the baltic sea and north sea. principal functions of ices, since it was established in 1902 and continuing to the present time, are to: 1) promote, encourage, develop, and coordinate marine research; 2) publish and otherwise disseminate results of research; and 3) provide non biased, non political scientific advice. the ices mission and goals are guided by a strategic plan, which identifies and addresses critical themes in science, collaboration, advice, data, communication, and service support. see: https://www.ices.dk/about ices/how we work/pages/our strategy.aspx how is ices organized? the principal decision  and policy making body of ices is the council, which consists of a president and two delegates from each of 20 member nations across europe and north america. one of the u.s. delegates is a federal employee and the other represents the academic community. the mission of ices is accomplished by various committees and working groups. the advisory committee (acom) provides advice on fisheries and marine ecosystem issues. the science committee (scicom) oversees all aspects of the scientific work. steering groups coordinate more than 100 expert groups covering most aspects of the marine ecosystem that work under them. the scientific work of ices is done by a community of more than 1,600 marine scientists from research institutes and universities in member and affiliate nations collaborating in expert working and study groups. what’s the focus of your research and its relevance to your appointment as u.s. academic delegate? my research focus is molecular analysis of biogeography and biodiversity of marine zooplankton, including population genetics of important species (especially copepods and euphausiids), local to global patterns of species diversity, and analysis of pelagic food webs based on dna barcoding and metabarcoding. an important focus is time series analysis of marine zooplankton species biodiversity, with applications for ecosystem monitoring and fisheries management on the nw atlantic continental shelf. i have been a member of the ices working group of zooplankton ecology (wgze) and working group on integrative morphological and molecular taxonomy (wgimt) since 2007; i served as chair of wgimt during 2014 2017. i am a grateful recipient of an ices service award (2018) and an ices outstanding achievement award (2019). see: https://marinesciences.uconn.edu/person/ann bucklin/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ann_bucklin what are your thoughts about being appointed the u.s. academic delegate? i have participated in ices activities for many years. the ices annual science conference (asc) is a valuable forum for the exchange of research results and exploration of important applications for ecosystem assessment and fisheries management. i am honored to have been appointed as the u.s. academic delegate and look forward to contributing to the ices organization. a primary goal is to encourage broader participation from the u.s. academic community, including active researchers, early career scientists, and students. congratulations to mengyang zhou on receiving the best poster award at the recent gordon research conference on coastal ocean dynamics (link:https://www.grc.org/coastal ocean dynamics conference/2023/) in june of 2023. his poster entitled “constraints on the bottom water residence time in an economically important embayment of the southern benguela upwelling system” is work that is part of an nsf funded project led by pf. julie granger (link: https://granger.lab.uconn.edu/) and pf. samantha siedlecki (link: https://samanthasiedlecki.wixsite.com/coastalbiogeodynlab/about us) in partnership with colleagues at the university of capetown. mengyang ran a series of particle tracking experiments in a high resolution simulation to quantify the residence time of bottom waters plagued with hypoxia. interannually, years with short bottom water residence time experienced little hypoxia. this work is part of his ph.d. dissertation research with pf. julie granger. congratulations to professor samantha siedlecki who was recently awarded tenure and promotion to associate professor from the university of connecticut! we are so proud to have prof. siedlecki as a member of our department and to see her awarded tenure. professor siedlecki has been a highly valued member of our department since her arrival at uconn in 2017 and has played many leadership roles in our department and the broader scientific community. dr. siedlecki’s research group focuses on coastal biogeochemistry using a combination of simulations and observations to characterize historical and ongoing change and forecast future trends. a particular focus of her group’s work is on coastal carbon and oxygen cycling, including the impacts of decreasing ocean ph (ocean acidification) and decreasing oxygen (deoxygenation) resulting from climate change and other human impacts. her research accomplishments have been recognized through an early career faculty innovators program fellowship from ncar and a kavli fellowship from the us national academy of sciences. since her arrival at uconn, she has received approximately 16 grants totalling over $4 million in funding from organizations including noaa and nsf, including serving as co lead pi on a $1 million grant on assessing the vulnerability of sea scallops to ongoing ocean change. her teaching contributions have included developing two new courses, ocean expedition (a very popular course for our graduate students) and biogeochemical modeling, and teaching environmental reaction and transport, a course that allows undergraduate students to develop their quantitative and problem solving skills. she has mentored numerous personnel in the department, and currently supervises two phd students, one masters student, one research associate, one research scientist, and multiple undergraduate students. dr. siedlecki has been highly active in departmental service, having served on several departmental committees, including the advisory committee to the head, and was a founding member of the department’s justice, equity, diversity and inclusion committee. she was recognized with a climate, diversity, equity and inclusion award from the uconn college of liberal arts and sciences in 2022 due to her contributions to fostering an inclusive climate in our department and at uconn. outside of uconn, she has had substantial contributions to research organizations and activities at the regional, national and international level, including serving as co coordinator for the northeast coastal acidification network (necan) and serving as a member of the international scientific committee for the 5th international symposium on oceans in a high co2 world, and also gave an invited plenary presentation at this conference. dr. siedlecki makes stakeholder engagement and outreach critical components of her research program and has participated in numerous outreach activities with members of the aquaculture industry and management organizations along with members of her research group. dr. siedlecki has co authored approximately 36 publications and some of her recent publications are listed below. now that she has been awarded tenure, prof. siedlecki looks forward to finalizing her group’s work with east coast coastal communities through a regional vulnerability assessment of scallops and the communities who rely on them. she plans to conduct similar assessments in other regions with the international research community and is currently preparing a proposal with south african colleagues. congratulations to dr. siedlecki! we are excited to watch the future accomplishments by you and your team! recent publications: “seasonality and life history complexity determine vulnerability of dungeness crab to multiple climate stressors” by berger et al. (2021) in agu advances. this paper was led by siedlecki lab graduate student halle berger. “coastal processes modify projections of some climate driven stressors in the california current system” by siedlecki et al. (2021) in biogeosciences. “projecting ocean acidification impacts for the gulf of maine to 2050: new tools and expectations” by siedlecki et al. (2021) in elementa: science of the anthropocene. prof. siedlecki at the avery point campus prof. siedlecki and phd student halle berger in norway following a research conference. prof. siedlecki on the r/v connecticut during the oceanographic expedition graduate course in 2022 by ewaldo leitao easy and hard to find   her door is always open but without a name tag   ready to help, and to give advice (for 5 cents), bridget holohan has been in the marine sciences community for over two decades. bridget is currently working for two labs helping in many projects. bridget is always ready with a sharp, witty joke, which is always appreciated and welcomed. bridget kindly agreed to be interviewed and to tell us more about her path and career. bridget holohan at the avery point campus ewaldo: what was your academic journey before you got here? bridget: i grew up in michigan, and i wanted to be an oceanographer. the only school close to where i grew up that had an oceanography program was the university of michigan, and i wasn't quite ready to go across the country at 18. when i was finishing up there  this was before the internet so finding a job to apply for was harder than it is now i didn't quite know what i was going to do for a job and decided to go to graduate school. okay, maybe it wasn’t the best decision to go based on that. i went to the university of rhode island and got my master's degree. i thought about whether i wanted my phd, but i decided that i like to be the one getting my hands dirty, not the one writing a proposal or writing the paper. i wanted to be the one doing it. so, i decided if i got a phd, more than likely, that wouldn't be what i was doing. i stopped at a master’s degree, which was a good decision for me. as i was finishing up there, i saw a job in the state of connecticut at the williams mystic program. they were looking for a ta. ewaldo: and how did you decide to be an oceanographer? bridget: i decided to become an oceanographer when i was the age of 12. my family went on a cruise down in the caribbean and one of the things we did was snorkel. the first time i went snorkeling, i was blown away. i had no idea that there were all these amazing things under the surface of the water. no idea. i grew up in the midwest. i knew about fish, we have the great lakes, but the organisms under the water in the great lakes do not look like in the tropics. it was just so incredibly fascinating. i wanted to study the ocean but at that point it was just a fantasy doing research on the ocean. i was planning to become a pharmacist because that seemed more sensible. however, when i started thinking about applying to colleges, i asked myself: why would i be a pharmacist? what i really want to do is oceanography. ewaldo: williams mystic program. what is it? bridget: it's an off campus study program of williams college, which is conducted at mystic seaport. and it's entirely based around the ocean. students come in for one semester. it's like a semester abroad, only it is a domestic program which is focused on the ocean. and they take either marine biology or oceanography. they also take maritime history, marine literature, and marine policy. they read moby dick, as you might imagine. they totally get immersed in the program. bridget and evan ward placing a chamber over coral to collect tep in bermuda ewaldo: that’s super interesting. what was your master’s degree in? bridget: my master's research was on the ecology of ceriantheopsis americanus, which is a burrowing mud anemone. ewaldo: and why didn't you follow up on that particular topic? bridget: there's not a lot of jobs for that particular topic. so, i found a job that was mainly education. but it was a horrible salary. like a third of what you students make. so, in the summer, i went to an oceanography summer camp and worked there. then after a couple of years, i was like: “okay, i cannot make a living at this”. i was searching around not being so successful. in the meantime, i did another environmental education job down in virginia, which was fun. ewaldo: all the way down! so when did you come back up to the northeast? bridget: as i was finishing that up, my former boss said: “i got a pew foundation grant, and i put in money for a research assistant. do you want to come work with me?” i said yes and i went to work with him, but it was only a two year grant. as that was coming to an end, i saw a job by a man named evan ward. i didn't really know anything about culturing phytoplankton, which was what he wanted. but i figured i could learn. why not? right. so yeah, that's how i got here. and that was in 1999. ewaldo: it's been 24 years! and what was your position then   and currently? bridget: i was a research assistant when i started. now, i'm a research assistant three, but in a lot of ways, my job is very similar. the only thing that has really changed is that as funding got tight, i started to work for rob mason as well. i also worked with claudia for some time, because her job was expanding. i like the fact that there's a lot of variety. i hate being bored. ewaldo: you have done a lot of different things and learned a lot of things in this dynamic way. what were your biggest challenges and also biggest joys here? bridget: you know, i really enjoy working with bivalves, i like running experiments. even though sometimes they can be a little crazy. i like seeing the whole process, from what we are proposing to do, to making it happen, and analyzing the data. and then luckily, i don't have to write it. ewaldo: would you have advice for grad students? bridget: boy, that's a really good question. one of the things in this is just kind of funny, because writing is not my favorite thing to do. but people often get hung up on the writing portion, thinking to themselves: “okay, i need to write the perfect sentence”. sometimes you just need to write. the beauty of the computer is that you can delete it, you can move it, you can copy and paste it into a different document. so you just have to get your ideas down on “paper”, and then refine them later. just write it down, get it on the computer, and then fix it. also, i recognize that there can be a weird power dynamic between students and professors. but with most professors, you can really just say, “i need help with this….” rather than wasting a bunch of time, being afraid to ask. professors will be more receptive than if you wait five months and say you haven't been able to get this to work for five months. that is especially true when students are first starting out, and i see that is an easy role for me to fill. because students are more comfortable coming to me and saying: “hey, i don't know what's going on here”. usually i can point them in a direction or even facilitate the conversation. and of course, there have certainly been times that my advice has been about things having nothing to do with oceanography. ewaldo: this is all great advice. thank you. maybe the final question, what's the story behind the five cents for advice in your door? bridget: i came back to my office one day, and we had a new nameplate and my title was wrong. nobody told us they were going to change nameplates. i was not happy, so i took it off. i, of course, calmed down. i was going to put the correct title and make it more legible by making our names bigger (i shared an office at the time). it wasn’t a priority for me, so i took my time replacing it. one day i came back to my office and the lucy character from the peanuts comic was there. in the peanuts comics, she had a little booth where she gave advice for five cents. one of my colleagues put it in there because sometimes people come to me for things other than science related advice. i found out later that it was jeff godfrey. i thought it was super funny, so i just left it. and one day i came back and there was a little bag of nickels. ewaldo: who did that? bridget: it was lydia norton ewaldo: i guess that sounds about right! hehe. thank you so much, bridget! the department of marine sciences congratulates all our recent master and phd graduates! you worked hard, earned your degree, and enriched our community. thank you, and best of luck for your next career steps! annalisa mudahy (m.s. 2022) major advisor: craig tobias thesis: spatial and temporal patterns of water column respiration in an urban estuary revealed using automated respiration chambers mathew holmes hackerd (m.s. 2022) major advisor: hans dam thesis: naupliar exposure to acute warming shows no carryover ontogenetic effects on respiration rates, body size, and development time of the copepod acartia tonsa annette carlson (m.s. 2022) major advisor: samantha siedlecki thesis: quantifying interannual variability of shelf nutrients and associated hypoxia in st. helena bay with new metrics and tools lingjie zhou (ph.d. 2022) major advisor: senjie lin dissertation: estimate phytoplankton carbon biomass using dna mary mcguinness (m.s. 2022) major advisor: penny vlahos thesis: examination of controlling parameters for total alkalinity in long island sound embayments yipeng he (ph.d. 2023) major advisor: robert mason dissertation: air sea exchange of mercury and its species in the coastal and open ocean patricia myer (ph.d. 2023) major advisor: robert mason dissertation: a critical examination of the factors controlling methylmercury uptake into marine plankton josie mottram (m.s. 2023) major advisor: julie granger thesis: refining the use of cold water corals as a proxy for the marine nitrogen cycle through the comparison of the δ15n of diet, tissue, and skeleton of balanophyllia elegans michael mathuri (ph.d. 2023) major advisor: julie granger dissertation: physiological mechanism of nitrogen isotope fractionation during ammonium assimilation by marine phytoplankton by ewaldo leitao thanks to the tremendous efforts of our esteemed researchers, the university of connecticut now hosts the connecticut national estuary research reserve (nerr). the nerr system is a network of 30 coastal areas designed to protect and study estuarine ecosystems. the nerr system is a program of noaa (national oceanic and atmospheric administration), and recently connecticut was added to this group. these reserves serve many purposes, and long island sound is a large economic contributor and recreational area. considering the importance of coastal and estuarine ecosystems, the connecticut reserve is an important program that fosters management guided through information collected by scientists. some of the sites selected include bluff point and haley farm state park. you can read more about it here. while the initiative and leadership was spearheaded by prof. jamie vaudrey within the marine sciences department, the office now counts with many new names and faces. you will find them located in offices on the second floor. but we want to make sure to give them all a proper welcome! you can find their full bios and contact information here. jamie vaudrey   research coordinator   ct nerr jamie is a marine ecosystems ecologist and modeler, interested in the impacts of humans on coastal waters. she received a b.a. in biology with a minor in philosophy from wellesley college, ma; moved on to study environmental education in the florida keys, then in oregon; then on to graduate school at the university of connecticut. jamie was the uconn lead, shepherding the establishment of a noaa national estuarine research reserve in connecticut and is currently the research coordinator for the reserve. jamie is also involved with epa’s national estuary program, serving on the science advisory committees of the long island sound study and the narragansett bay estuary program. you can learn more about her research interests by visiting her website: https://vaudrey.lab.uconn.edu/. her favorite reserve is the mumford cove! “i first ‘met’ mumford cove as a graduate student, 24 years ago   the study location of my dissertation. in 1999, eelgrass was just starting to recolonize the cove and i had the opportunity to document the progress of its return, working with a team of fellow grad students and undergrads who are still some of my best friends today. amazing how much a small cove has to teach, and how many opportunities it provides!” larissa graham   education coordinator   ct nerr larissa has worked in the environmental field for nearly 15 years, sharing science based information with a variety of coastal audiences. she worked for the new york sea grant as the long island sound study outreach coordinator, and for the mississippi alabama sea grant, the grand bay national estuarine research reserve, and, most recently, the student conservation association as the alabama and mississippi state director. larissa is looking forward to settling back into her new england roots. she spent a lot of time boating and fishing with her family as a child, which fostered her love for the sound. ashley hamilton   research assistant   system wide monitoring program (swmp) ashley graduated from the uconn avery point community with a b.s. in marine sciences, and completed a master’s degree from the university of rhode island, where her research focused on the impacts of anthropogenic stressors to commercially important bivalve species. since 2016 she has worn various hats in the shellfish and seaweed aquaculture industry, including farm hand, hatchery production and researcher. ashley is excited to guide the next generation of undergraduate researchers. ashley shared that her “nerrdiest” thing is to get tattoos of the organisms she works or studies, which includes a (scientifically accurate!) anatomical eastern oyster. she shares: “next on my wish list is a blue mussel shell in celebration of finishing my thesis, and i can see some marsh plants and critters in my future as i venture into the ct nerr monitoring program!” jason krumholz   stewardship coordinator   ct nerr jason is an associate professor at uconn and the stewardship coordinator for the reserve. in this role, he helps to facilitate resource inventory, conservation, and restoration goals in concert with federal, state, and local partner organizations as well as contributes to scientific research, outreach, and education efforts at the reserve. he served with noaa’s northeast fisheries science center as the liaison ecologist to the long island sound study, where he worked with a wide range of partner organizations at the interface of science and policy on several efforts to improve the transmission of scientific data into management. he is the chief scientist for two small non profits; the reef ball foundation, which uses designed artificial reef technology to facilitate coastal restoration, and slow no wake, which works on marine debris removal and education in the recreational fishing sector. he is also a founding board member of remote ecologist, a non profit organization designed to remove the barriers to participation faced by independent and unaffiliated research scientists. jason recounted that once he got roped into diving off of pine island to collect green crabs in the middle of the winter for a colleague. "it was so cold that ice was literally forming on our gear. it was one of those moments that was pretty miserable at the time, but the memory of it is somehow very positive… one of those moments where you realize that if you like what you do enough to do this, then you’re probably going to really enjoy doing it for the rest of your career.” katie lund   coastal training program coordinator   ct nerr katie joins the reserve from her previous position at uconn’s connecticut institute for resilience and climate adaptation where she led engagement activities and managed municipal and research grant projects to increase resilience of connecticut’s communities to the growing impacts of climate change. katie has worked for over 20 years on a variety of coastal management topics   including the northeast regional ocean council and long island sound’s marine spatial plan and the massachusetts office of coastal zone management’s special area management. katie holds an m.s. in marine resource management from oregon state university. “one of my favorite memories of the reserve is the first walk i did on bluff point with my kids when they were very young”, shared katie. “after we’d gone a couple miles and they were ready to turn around, i saw a small side trail to the right and convinced them to try it. we popped out onto a beautiful beach…such a surprise   i had no idea there was such a big and quiet and beautiful beach as part of bluff point. over ten years later, i now work for the nerr and this beach is part of our new reserve!” george mcmanus   interim manager and uconn center director   ct nerr george is a biological oceanographer. he received his phd from stony brook university and worked at the cary institute of ecosystem studies, the university of maryland, and the dauphin island sea lab before coming to uconn, where he has taught for 28 years. his research is focused on microbial plankton, including bacteria, phytoplankton, and ciliated protozoa, documenting their diversity and distributions in the coastal ocean. he is currently serving as the interim reserve manager and center director. one of his fond memories of the sound is when he was fishing with his son and a seal popped up next to the boat with a fish in his mouth. “we just stood there watching and marveling at this bit of the food chain taking place before our eyes”, said george. sam stadnick   fiscal officer   ct nerr sam joins the reserve as its fiscal officer after working in the connecticut house of representatives where he assisted elected officials with their constituent service and legislative responsibilities. he is thrilled to use his experience in public affairs to protect the natural areas of eastern long island sound and the lower connecticut river valley where he has been a longtime hiker and boater. sam is also very proud to return to uconn, where he graduated with a b.a. in political science. sam mentioned that: “when fishing near millstone point with my father, we would often catch tautog, or blackfish   one of the most beautiful (and delicious) fin fish in long island sound. the rocky outcroppings that lie off of millstone point provide great habitat for the fish and great recreational fishing opportunities.” jamie vaudrey larissa graham ashley hamilton jason krumholz katie lund george mcmanus sam stadnick prof. jamie vaudrey and phd student matthew leason working with students at marine science day by ewaldo leitao brittany sprecher finished her phd in december, 2020, and soon after she moved to germany to continue her investigations on phytoplankton molecular biology. in her phd, brittany was able to develop molecular techniques to begin to help explain the complexity of dinoflagellates. dinoflagellates are small eukaryotic cells that can photosynthesize and produce their own energy or, sometimes and, be heterotrophic, eating even smaller cells such as bacteria. their complexity does not end there. their genomes are astoundingly large, varying from one third up to 90 fold that of the human genome size. this complexity translates into lots of unknowns on their molecular characterization, that brittany has bravely shed some light on during her phd. brittany performing experiments ewaldo: thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed. first, can you give me a brief explanation of your work conducted while in uconn? brittany: i had the great opportunity to work under prof. senjie lin and prof. huan zhang. my work primarily involved developing transformation methods for dinoflagellates, a complex group of organisms. additionally, i utilized transcriptomics to gain insights into the molecular characteristics of a recently discovered dinoflagellate. it's fascinating how much we still have to learn about these organisms, as many of their genes remain unknown in terms of their functions. even key pathways like toxins and bioluminescence, which have significant ecological importance, have missing or poorly understood genes. to address this knowledge gap, i focused on establishing a method to introduce foreign dna, such as the green fluorescent protein or an antibiotic resistant gene, into dinoflagellates with the goal that the cells would take up and express the introduced proteins. ewaldo: this is super interesting. so where did you go after your phd? and how did the work at uconn allow you to get there? brittany: after obtaining my phd, i had the opportunity to do a postdoc in germany, which turned out to be an incredible experience. interestingly, my focus remained on method development, but this time i shifted my attention to diatoms who are endosymbionts of dinoflagellates. the transformation methods for diatoms were comparatively more straightforward, allowing me to complete the method development in just one year, whereas it took four years for dinoflagellates. i believe that the valuable experiences and challenges i faced during my phd greatly contributed to my success during the postdoc. the obstacles we encounter along the way ultimately shape us into stronger scientists with enhanced troubleshooting abilities. ewaldo: this seems like a great experience, to do your postdoc abroad. brittany: absolutely! it was truly fascinating to observe the research and graduate school culture in germany. one aspect that particularly stood out to me was the tradition of having lunch together as a lab. initially, i found it a bit strange, feeling the urge to quickly return to work. however, i soon realized the immense value of these interactions. during these lunch sessions, we would engage in discussions about science, troubleshoot any issues we were facing, or simply delve into various aspects of life outside of work. this time proved to be exceptionally productive and nurturing for our mental well being, fostering collaboration and support among lab members. the experience of sharing meals together truly enhanced our ability to collaborate and assist one another with our projects. on the whole, my time in europe was an enriching experience that expanded my scientific network and broadened my perspective on research. ewaldo: indeed. what are you up to these days? brittany: currently, i have the privilege of working at the university of california, san diego, on an nsf postdoctoral fellowship in biology. i'm actually continuing one of the research chapters from my phd, focusing on a dinoflagellate species that exhibits native green fluorescence. my project involves utilizing analytical chemistry techniques to determine the structure and potential function of this fluorescent molecule. while analytical chemistry is slightly outside my expertise, i am fortunate to be part of an institution that fosters collaboration, and i have been able to connect with several supportive chemists who are aiding me in this discovery. additionally, i'm conducting laboratory experiments to identify the conditions under which the green fluorescence changes, and i'm collecting samples from the scripps pier to assess the prevalence of this blue green fluorescence among dinoflagellates locally and hopefully globally by the end of this fellowship. extracted dinoflagellate green fluorescence molecule brittany is currently working on ewaldo: incredible expertises. so what are your next steps? do you have anything in mind? brittany: i'm deeply passionate about dinoflagellates and diatoms, and my aim is to continue delving into these fascinating organisms. consequently, i will actively pursue academic positions that allow me to further explore and contribute to this field. additionally, i plan to continue applying for fellowships and grants that can support my research endeavors. my ultimate goal is to make meaningful contributions to our understanding of these organisms and their ecological significance. ewaldo: since you mentioned the struggles of a phd student, do you have advice for grad students and / or early career? brittany: one of the most valuable pieces of advice i received before starting my phd was to invest time in getting to know my cohort. i cannot stress enough how important this has been for me. the support, camaraderie, and collaboration that i have shared with my cohort has been invaluable in navigating the ups and downs of graduate school. additionally, i highly encourage graduate students and early career scientists to actively seek out and apply for fellowships and grants. these opportunities not only provide financial support but also open doors for networking and collaborations. lastly, remember that collaboration is key. engage with your peers and colleagues, seek opportunities to collaborate, and leverage the collective knowledge and expertise around you. together, we can accomplish so much more than we can individually. ewaldo: finally, what are your hobbies? brittany: in my free time, i absolutely love surfing. living in california provides me many opportunities to ride waves, and it's always a special experience when i find myself sharing the ocean with playful dolphins or witnessing the graceful dives of brown pelicans in search of food. i am also incredibly lucky to be reunited with dr. lingjie zhou, who has been an incredible support in my life. it has been wonderful to spend time with her again both within the academic setting and in our personal lives. lingjie and brittany taking in the views near lingjie’s sio office brittany and lingjie enjoying the views outside hubbs hall at ucsd on 18 may 2023, department of marine sciences graduate students and faculty came together for the 14th biennial feng graduate research colloquium 18 may 2023. after a covid forced hiatus of more than two years, our department finally held a successful feng graduate student research colloquium in person again. the feng graduate research colloquium has been a tradition in the marine sciences department since 1996. named after the first head of the department of marine sciences, dr. sung y. feng, the colloquium was started by prof. hans dam. the colloquium acts as a conference in which students receive friendly, constructive criticism, and have the opportunity to work on developing their abstract writing, leadership, and scientific communication skills. the colloquium is funded by the department of marine sciences and the s.y. feng scholarship fund. this years colloquium featured 16 oral presentations and 20 posters spanning the entire diversity of marine research in our department. special thanks to the student organizers and debra schuler for the help behind the scenes. see the colloquium list of talks and poster presentations, including abstracts
supported by times insider anna holmes, the incoming writer of work friend, shares what to expect from the column now that so many of our relationships with the office have changed. by stefano montali times insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind the scenes insights into how our journalism comes together. some writers aim to develop one area of expertise over the course of their careers. anna holmes has done the opposite, following her curiosity wherever it leads: politics, relationships, sex, women and gender issues, race, culture and children’s books. “let’s put it this way: i don’t have a beat,” ms. holmes said. with a new assignment, though, she may be close to getting one. ms. holmes is the incoming writer of work friend, a column published by the sunday business section of the new york times. twice a month, she’ll dole out advice on money, careers and work life balance. (ms. holmes’s first edition will be published this weekend.) it is a formula she’s used to, having explored workplace culture in sad desk salad, a column for bloomberg businessweek. ms. holmes takes the reins from roxane gay, who has steered the column since may 2020, advising readers through conundrums such as whether to express political views in the office, what to do when colleagues exercise during video calls and how to react to overly ambitious, go getting co workers. readers may recognize ms. holmes’s byline. she is a former contributor to bookends, a column from the times book review, as well as to other sections, including opinion. in 2007, she founded jezebel, the popular feminist online magazine. in an interview, ms. holmes spoke about the evolving workplace, the process of choosing which letters to address and more. this interview has been edited and condensed.

 anna holmes, the incoming writer of work friend, shares what to expect from the column now that so many of our relationships with the office have changed. name * email * website © copyright 2025 horizon investing / powered by wordpress

supported by hiring, firing, setting the culture: black women at the top of tv news the book, ‘ladies leading,’ shines a spotlight on the highest ranking black women in television news management. but even at the top, sexism and racism abound. by patrice peck how some women are remaking the workplace to better suit their lives as offices begin to reopen, some women are setting new physical, emotional and cultural boundaries.