My wavy path to Groove 🏄♀️
I'm a community-loving human inside and outside of work. Ten-year-old Taylor would think it's SO cool I bring people together for work.
📍 Now — I work on a tiny remote team, as the "community architect" of Groove, the global coworking community for WFH humans. To see how our coworking app works, click here. 📱 I joined the team as the first full-time hire in June 2021 and am proud to work alongside Groove's three incredible co-founders, creating a community-led product.
I'm deeply passionate about making the world a less lonely place, specifically for those who have made the hard, courageous decisions to pave their own non-traditional career paths.
Listen to this conversation between Josh, Groove's CEO, and I for more on how I got here and how this community is changing people's lives, including mine!
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📸 from our most recent team meet-up
To hear more about what I've been up to over the last few years beyond my work with Groove, pop on over to the writing + speaking page on this site. 🎤
📍Before — During my senior year of college, I applied to work with best-selling author, Seth Godin. The role had no description or title. After a few months of freelancing and upon graduation, I joined Seth (and the rest of his 5-person team!) full-time to build powerful online workshop experiences under the umbrella of the Akimbo workshops, best known for the altMBA, which pioneered cohort-based courses as we know them today.
I wore a bunch of hats and built a ton of projects, most of which were related to storytelling and community. I had the pleasure of working with leaders like Simon Sinek, Steven Pressfield, and Bernadette Jiwa.
Hands down, my favorite project I ever built in this role was The Emerging Leaders Program. It was a 5-day online leadership workshop for curious thinkers, ages 16-25. It was the community experience I wish I had in college to connect me with other young entrepreneurial-minded leaders. Across three different sessions, 350 young leaders from around the globe graduated, feeling empowered and prepared to lean into possibility and make change happen. Alumni went on to write books together, start businesses, create podcasts, begin their writing practices, and more. Listen to how powerful it was from the people who were there.
Another project I loved building was The Real Skills Conference, the first decentralized virtual conference of its kind (all about the audience instead of speakers)...and yes, I designed it in 2019 before virtual conferences were the cool...and only thing to do. 😆
Back then, Zoom didn't have the capacity for more than 100 people to be in a room with breakouts...imagine that! So, we hacked the system and I was in seven Zoom rooms at once to make it happen. It was truly a miracle. The Head of Product at Zoom couldn't believe how I did it 👀 I hosted this conference 4x, helping over 3,500+ attendees see things differently.
📸 from the virtual launch of Seth's book, The Practice, in 2019
📍 Before that — I mean how much time do you have? 😜 I'm driven to do things differently and live a full life that feels so me. 🌈 I believe in connecting the dots of my wavy path...and that the collection of my experiences has led me to where I am today.
I've worked on dozens of projects along the way and did college differently than most people. I filled my days with connection and learning outside of the classroom. Heck, I chose to go to Penn State, the school with the most undergraduate students in the country, because of my desire to better understand humans and meet as many as possible! 😂 And, yes I will respond to the "WE ARE" chant anytime, anywhere.
If you want to hear more...ask me about the start-up I worked on that helped people speak for the first time, the community craft studio where I sold my 'Sonder Connections' jewelry, the ladybug rocks I spread across the East Coast, or the rituals I created as a camp counselor.