Part of what the responsibilities are as Lead Community Manager, is the building and maintaining of digital spaces fans congregate in. This entails the running of multiple chat rooms with varying degrees of membership, from full access to restricted use (members only), as well as regular interaction with and moderation of a variety of social media accounts.Engaging with fans is something that should be done in an empathetic fashion - building relationships with them that are meaningful to all parties involved. Without fans, we do not exist and the respect given to them for this is real and genuine. Encouraging community members to build and strengthen relationships with one another by way of story telling and shared decision making is actively shaping our product. Having a worldwide audience means there is activity at all hours, and being mindful of those outside of our office hours must always come into play when making decisions about how to engage with the community.My 16 years in the retail industry with Whole Foods Market has allowed me to understand the natural foods industry and execute food retail at the high level of operation Whole Foods is known for. The acquisition by Amazon introduced entirely new systems and technology that enabled me to see the retail food industry from the perspective of e-commerce and data driven forecasting.