In this episode we welcome Nicole Saunders, the Manager of Community Engagement at Zendesk. She oversees all of its community programs to help set strategy, define policy and promote their support communities to their users. She collaborates with several internal teams on customer support, product development, training, customer education, content marketing, knowledge sharing, social media, and data, with the goal of increasing customer connections, professional development, and relationship with Zendesk.

Previously, Nicole helped grow Jaunt, a VR startup in Silicon Valley, and was also the lead on the launch of Built In Colorado, an aggregator for the tech startup community there, having founded the 'Built-In Brews' networking series.

Together we cover:

- The differences between marketing & community

- How Zendesk approaches community management and Nicole’s day to day work

- Exciting things about going all-in on virtual events

- Thinking strategically about what kind of events are gonna stay relevant for which audiences

- The importance of grouping members based on industry and sector instead of location

- Why giving community members the ability to take leadership and form connections with one another has been a huge success

- Hybrid events and future formats

- What are the most important KPIs and how to understand what really matters when building communities

- How user badges helped grow a team of community moderators with subject matter expertise that other members can trust

- The secret to working cross-function with other teams

- Key pillars of successful communities: helpful content, helpful people, and helpful leadership

- The knowledge capture model

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In this episode we welcome Sarah Shewey, the CEO of Happily - a network of over 50,000 event producers, technologists and creatives who produce world-class virtual and live events. Shewey began her event career in 2002 at Harvard’s American Repertory Theater, earning the title of “Best Party of the Year” by the Boston Globe. Her work in creating sustainable weddings and innovative events has been covered by the Associated Press, the BBC, NPR, and Forbes. Sarah is a founding producer of TEDActive and board president of LA’s original Internet radio station dublab.com

Together we cover:

- Sarah’s journey to building Happily

- Bringing diversity in the event space by creating teams of independent individuals and small businesses

- Remote and distributed work

- Carbon neutral and waste free events

- Why it’s important to design friendly and inclusive events

- The power of identity, trust and being visibly there in virtual events

- Treating online events as a new genre of media

- Combining a mixture of movies, memes and movement making

- The difference between marketing and community building

- Innovative ways to engage an audience and cut through the noise

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In this episode we welcome Sara El-Amine - Head of Public Engagement at Lyft, where she oversees driver, passenger, and local non-profit engagement for the company, as well as all Public Affairs and Social Impact programming. She is proudly Lebanese-American and Muslim American, and was raised in the US, Spain, and Lebanon.

Prior to joining Lyft, Sara El-Amine had an extraordinary career in community organizing; ranging from an entry-level role, to an executive director role for the Obama campaign. After reading Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope, Sara quit her job, drove to the Iowa headquarters in 2008, and offered to help. It was a bold decision that paid off. With time, Sara rose to the National Director role of Obama’s reelection campaign and served as executive director of Organizing for Action (OFA), leading Obama’s citizen-led movement for change across the U.S.

Today, as Head of Community Engagement at Lyft, Sara has jumped into the business world with the same enthusiasm she had for her organizing work. 

Together we cover: 

- Sara’s day to day life in her community engagement function at Lyft

- Her definition of success and how to quantify that

- Where do you need maximum favorability and how to spot trends looking at all the layers of data

- How their community initiatives evolved pre and post-pandemic

- Why it’s become so important to stay on the front lines of racial justice locally, while building a dynamic response at a national level

- How Sara’s work in the public sector has translated to what she’s doing now to galvanize communities

- What it’s like to organize and deploy the team at Lyft to serve communities

- How local staff can drive local strategies under an umbrella of company-wide principles

- What other companies she thinks do a great job at community management

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