Work & Co Leadership & Management

Tell us a little bit about yourself. What’s your professional background, and why were you brought on to lead this team? 

I’ve worked in developer roles at digital agencies for the past 11 years, and nearly half of that time has been as a leader on our engineering team at Work & Co. While my focus has always been front-end web development, as my role has evolved, I’ve been exposed to API design, systems architecture, DevOps and a variety of non-programming topics such as e-commerce fulfillment, SEO, and A/B testing that have given me a fuller understanding of the business needs that drive development work. I started at Work & Co as a lead developer and have been fortunate to grow into my current position as group director over the last five years by demonstrating an ability to build trust with clients, helping all disciplines understand the implications of design and development choices and supporting our internal technology team.
 

How would you describe your approach to leadership, and how do you plan on building team culture?

My leadership style, and the type of leader I strive to be, are heavily influenced by Work & Co’s core focus on doing quality work alongside compassionate, talented individuals. I’ve observed in practice how trust is fundamental to achieving the ambitious goals we set for ourselves and for the products that we create.

Building trust requires accountability, hands-on leadership and consistent support. Product leaders at Work & Co focus on a single project at a time — from initial design to launch — and leads are not just managers but are hands-on in the project work. Our mentorship program supports team members through regular check-ins, where mentors and mentees give feedback early and often about projects, progress and long-term goals.

Within a development team, an effective way to build a culture of trust is through responsive and respectful code review. Setting aside time to review work, ensuring pull request comments are clear and actionable and being kind when providing feedback demonstrates to coworkers that their contributions are valued. Fostering this culture benefits not only the team but also the quality of the product itself.
 

What project/initiative are you most excited to tackle, and why? What impact does this project/initiative have on Work & Co or its customers?

Work & Co is known for partnering with clients across sectors, but our retail expertise is especially deep. I always find e-commerce projects exciting as they bring together technical and design challenges in a very tangible way for the business.

As a front-end developer, I love immersive experiences that utilize creative technologies such as WebGL. I had the opportunity to work on a shopping experience for custom holiday cards for VistaPrint that included an interactive, 3D model of each card template, with the option to upload and preview templates with your family photo applied to it. After A/B testing, we were able to prove the positive impact the new experience had on card sales. Recently, my teammates launched another application of 3D product previews on the new Gatorade.com, which features a custom bottle configurator built using Three.js. Recent developments in AI and Machine Learning present opportunities to further enhance web-based shopping experiences with rich semantic search, AI-generated personalized page layouts, and by creating new shopping modalities, such as conversational commerce.