After nearly five years at WooCommerce, I’m moving on from Automattic to join Names & Faces as Head of Marketing.
Names & Faces solves a problem experienced by everyone from the CEO to the intern. How do I get to know the people around me, get context for where they fit in & get in touch when I need to?
I’ve followed their journey from first iterations – when Paul and I worked together at Yuppiechef – to setting up their first office in Cape Town to graduating from Y Combinator last year, and am excited to dive in and be part of the story.
I love Woo – if you cut me I think I’d bleed a little bit of purple! – so I write this with a mercurial mixture of sadness, excitement, and nostalgia.
Since 2014, Woo and Automattic have given me a platform to do so much:
- Get to know and work with inspiring, brilliant, field-leading people
- Grow as a marketer and learn a lot about eCommerce and WordPress
- Work 100% remotely and live between London and Cape Town
- Travel to interesting places – I particularly loved Detroit, Oslo, Philadelphia, and Florence
- Create Automattic’s year in review (2016)
- Zip line upside down and hike up a glacier
- Organize two do_action charity hackathons in Beirut
- Speak onstage in Paris (WCEU, 2017) and at CMS Africa (2019)
- Read two of my poems publicly for the first time!
Automattic is a brilliant company to work for and they’re always hiring.
Although my new role isn’t WordPess-related, I hope to stay involved in the community and see friends at WordCamps in future. My blog has been powered by WordPress since 2013 and I’ll continue to run Fajr Beirut on WooCommerce.
Rebecca Solnit says ‘the stars we are given. The constellations we make.’
I’m so grateful for the constellations I’ve had the chance to make over the past five years with Woo and Automattic and looking forward to blazing new ones with Names & Faces.
I’m reachable on Twitter – so stay in touch 🙂