Throughout my roles with PriceSpider, I have been relied up on to train both internal personnel and clients on our products, systems, and tools. I have a knack for explaining complex concepts in an engaging and clear manner, and so the Solutions Engineer role has felt like a natural fit. I work with both existing and prospective clients, listening to their problems and finding ways to fit PriceSpider solutions to their needs. I love a good challenge, and I've gained a bit of a reputation as a wizard when it comes to system knowledge, putting out fires, and finding creative ways to help our clients. As I've gained experience, I've learned to reign in my creativity a bit and focus on simple, stable solutions that are easy to understand and maintain over the long term.I earned a promotion to Senior two years after taking on the role, and subsequent promotions to Manager and then Director followed one year after another. I am currently focused on laying the foundation for this team to support PriceSpider's rapid growth and high sales targets as we transform into a truly global company.

I moved into my first official client-facing role, managing client implementations. Procter & Gamble was my very first assignment - a company-changing contract, and still our largest client. The implementation was a great success (for Pampers Brazil no less!) and paved the way to a new wave of rapid growth for PriceSpider. Over the course of my single year in the PM role, I managed over 100 brand implementations to completion.Managing complex timelines across a dozen active projects, setting expectations, dealing with issues and angry customers with poise, and communicating across all levels of an organization are invaluable skills and experience I treasure to this day.

This role served as PriceSpider's primary technical support, maintaining the back-end crawling systems. I gained knowledge of the foundations of website structure and web technologies, along with advanced regular expression and pattern recognition skills. I worked closely with our development team solving crawling challenges, and quickly learned that clear and concise communication was an essential and valued talent.As the company grew, so did our team. After a year I earned my first promotion to Senior, and became the primary trainer of new Specialists. I also took over running daily team standups and helped improve our processes, tools, and maintenance/delivery systems. At this point we were still a very small startup, so I took on other roles as needed - Support tickets and bug fixes, project planning, delivery QA and smoke testing, graphic design... you name it, I did it.After a year I earned another promotion to Supervisor, and became the full-time manager of the Product Support Specialist team. I was instrumental in interviewing and hiring new Specialists, tripling the size of the team (from 6 up to 20 Specialists at any one time), and I established a structured training regimen that is still in use today. Managing that many direct reports was a challenge and delegation was a hard lesson, but I learned to focus my time on project planning, client-facing issues, and system improvements - things that would benefit the team and the company as a whole.I will always be extremely proud of this team - we mastered a complex crawling system covering hundreds of websites, delivered and maintained quality data for dozens of well-known brands (Samsung, LG, Milwaukee Tool, Acer, Microsoft, P&G, Mars Chocolate, Sony Electronics AND PlayStation... the list goes on), and built a comradery on grit, determination, and laughter that I'll never forget.

I unloaded boxed product from cargo trucks, then unpacked and stocked it on store shelves. Availability, punctuality, and hard work proved their worth.

I prepared and served breakfast, lunch, and dinner in one of our on-campus dining halls. I can make a mean omelette as a result. The flip... that's the secret.

I interacted with artists and stage hands, operated lights and curtains during performances, and changed sets in front of a live audience with speed and (usually) grace. I learned how to carry myself with aplomb and function as the face of an organization.