I joined Climb Hire in the middle of a major expansion to lead the Marketing and Admissions teams. Early on, we identified that an IT and data system built for a different era was inhibiting the organization’s growth, and I expanded my scope to include leadership of our IT and info systems teams

After 8 years at the Workforce Partnership, I needed to try solving a new set of problems. I also really, really love the work of “building,” so this role felt like the perfect fit. I’m loving it so far.

After a few years running programs, it became clear there were some systemic problems making it hard for us to serve our customers well. I worked with our executive team to create capacity for me to spend a year doing discovery work—interviewing staff and clients, talking to consultants, all that stuff—to identify opportunities for us to make things better.

Then, I kickstarted a brand new team responsible for doing the “make-better” stuff. I lead organization-wide outreach, intake, service navigation, and continuous improvement projects.

My favorite part so far has probably been facilitating the process that led to our new service vision—I love seeing our whole organization get excited about earning our customers’ trust and inspiring them to grow with us.

It took a lot to get here… IT projects, staff retreats, hiring a ton of roles in a tough labor market, training those new hires… not an easy time. But it was worth it. In less than a month, my new team was beating the all time customer experience records for our former arrangement of the same services.

I was the “CEO of the program” for a portfolio of 13 workforce development programs—managing personnel, budget, deliverables, all that.

My budget was ~$3.5MM/year, $2MM of which I fundraised directly. It included a mix of philanthropic and government funds—and those government funds were a real mix of everything from City hotel tax revenue to County-managed CSBG funds and federal CFPB funds. That mix of government funding meant I spent a lot of time chatting with elected officials and bureaucrats to make sure they were happy with our work.

Along the way, I led the user-level rollout for a Salesforce implementation, and led procurement/implementation for new payroll systems, new IT systems, and new subcontractors.

One of my favorite accomplishments in this role: working with Gap Inc’s regional leadership to set up an interview clothes shopping day for a bunch of youth starting an internship. They got to show up at Banana Republic before it opened to shop with no interruptions, and we got to pick up the tab—with the help of a discount from Gap Inc and funding from the City of San Diego.

I did this all with the help of 5 direct reports and 10 indirect reports.

Oh, and I also had a lot of fun planning Flip the Script, our largest-ever conference specifically for youth service providers.

All that good work led to our team quadrupling outcomes—we went from under 500 youth placed in employment in 2015, to over 2,000 placed in 2017, and then nearly 3,000 placed in 2018.

As our team grew, I got the chance to take on independent management of a team of training specialists and of two programs, at approximately $100,000 each.

This turned out to be a super formative experience—it’s what got me excited about program and people management!

What started as a way to earn a little extra cash in college became one of the most important learning experiences I could have ever had.

I was the organization’s second-ever employee, and got the chance to help their Executive Director with everything from contract negotiations to board meetings and financial management. While she was on vacation one summer, I was our primary contact with C-level execs at two different Fortune 500 companies.

I earned my keep by helping lower costs on the stuff that didn’t directly contribute to the mission: I restructured office supply and printing purchases, travel procurement, and IT expenses, which saved them a little over $100k/year.