Throughout my 10+ year career, I have built a reputation for being the one that people turn to when they have a complex initiative that needs to be handled. I am a master of taking ideas and turning them into reality.

Having been the first employee at two startups, including a multi-national software company, I am accustomed to fast-paced environments that require you to function under high levels of ambiguity and lots of change.

Here are some of the opportunities I’ve had the pleasure of working on.

Starting a multinational tech company

As Head of Business Operations, I joined to help establish Endless Mobile, Inc. Besides setting up all of the initial processes to run the business — including setting up payroll, banking, and legal matters — I was in charge of hiring the first employees and setting up our first offices.

I project managed two iterations of a corporate website in order to attract top talent and investors, and defined and implemented a hiring strategy. I leveraged my network to hire our first team members, which ended up being primarily Stanford University graduates.

I chose and set up company tools and workflows, and I identified opportunities to outsource work while keeping costs down.

Working alongside the COO, I helped scale the team up to 60 people and open 4 of the eventually 7 international offices that Endless had, in Brazil, Guatemala, Mexico, and the UK.

Creating a computer for the digitally excluded

Endless OS is a Linux-based operating system that is designed for users with little or no internet connection. It is meant to be simple enough for someone with little or no experience using computers. Endless OS runs on inexpensive hardware so that more people in the world can afford it.

I helped with all stages of Endless’ development, from choosing the initial 3rd party Linux applications we would include on the system, to managing the creation of over 60 in-house apps in 13+ languages, and helping to create various versions of the OS for different market segments.

I owned the system language of the operating system, and worked with the User Testing team to identify wording within the OS that confused users. I then changed the language to be more intuitive, and helped find localized solutions for the changes when rolling out the OS in other languages.

I also assisted with the product launch of Endless’ hardware in Guatemala, and spent two months on-the ground managing a national marketing campaign alongside the Guatemalan team’s General Manager.

Writing content for packaging and user manuals

I worked closely with the Endless Design and Marketing teams to create packaging and user manuals for our hardware products.

I then owned the localization of all materials into Spanish and Portuguese.

Building an ecosystem of stunning apps

In order to reach users who have little or no access to an internet connection, Endless created applications that could come pre-loaded on Endless OS, and which could be updated via mobile phones or USBs.

I led the Content Team that was in charge of finding the content for these apps. I engaged in user research and worked with the VP of Design, VP of Engineering, and Chief of Product to decide which apps to create. I then led the sourcing of the content and negotiated any partnerships needed. As part of this, I defined and set up workflows and processes to enable cross-functional collaboration.

I managed a team to create over 60 apps in 13+ languages.

Defining and implementing a product globalization strategy

Our first target market was in Latin America, and the first countries we began to work in were Brazil and Guatemala.

To manage the localization of Endless, I selected and implemented tooling to allow product globalization, became the owner of Endless’ voice and tone, and worked with Marketing to ensure a shared vocabulary.

Since we wanted to test products in other markets as well, I created a product globalization strategy to allow the Sales team to explore new opportunities while protecting our product development team’s time.

I managed the translation team which consisted of contractors, crowdsourced translators, and internal employees. As a bilingual Spanish speaker, I led the Spanish translation of Endless OS and its apps.

In the end, I helped localize Endless into over 13 languages and expand into new geographic markets all over the world.

Fostering a global community

We wanted to foster a community around Endless in order to get Endless OS into the hands of as many people as possible, and to ensure its quality. I defined the strategy, created product roadmaps, managed the budget, and led the global and remotely distributed implementation team.

As part of this initiative, I created and launched the Endless Ambassador program to support deep product localization and user growth, and I set up community forums in multiple languages to provide customer support.

Maintaining a Help Center and writing product documentation

I worked with the VP of Customer Support to come up with a strategy to provide various levels of global customer support. My team owned the community forums where we provided non-paying users with support when possible.

I also personally managed the Endless OS Help Center, which was a product feature. This including the development of new features and content. I worked with Design, Engineering, Legal, and Customer Support teams to first design our Help Center, and then I created the content which consisted of XML based files.

Throughout updated versions of Endless OS, I maintained technical user documentation and Help Center content up-to-date in 3 languages.

Improving collaboration workflows and processes for Engineering

While working as a Senior Program Manager, I reported to the VP of Engineering and was one of four members of the Engineering Management team. As we continued to grow into the largest department within Endless, I helped the Engineering team migrate to Phabricator, a project management tool that allowed us to collaborate cross-functionally with other teams.

As part of this, I helped to define the best workflows, and how to set up Phabricator in order to do things like: easily allow employees to report bugs while dogfooding our products, quickly report our progress on milestones and sprints, know who is working on which issues, easily identify any release blockers or issues.

Setting up websites and creating marketing material

I worked with the Design and Marketing teams to create various websites for Endless. These websites had purposes like: attracting talent, attracting investment, selling a product, fostering a community, and providing customer support.

I both project managed some of our websites and wrote and edited content for them. I acted as a thought partner for our Sales and Product teams when entering new markets, and I assisted in the websites’ localization.

Growing an open source community

Through my work on the GNOME Engagement team, I have been helping to find ways to attract new contributors to the GNOME project, and to make GNOME an awesome organization to be part of. As part of my work in this area, I helped grow the contributor base on the Engagement team by over 200%.

One of the things I am most excited about is making GNOME accessible to people who are new to open source software and the way that open source communities work. This year, I started an initiative to address Diversity and Inclusion within GNOME.

I also helped to define a workflow for the engagement team and assisted in the migration of the team to GitLab. During GNOME’s 2019 conference, I also started an initiative to help start to measure impact at GNOME.

Broadening the market for Linux desktops

I have been a main organizer and lead strategist of the Linux App Summit, a conference that has contributed to a 500% increase in Flatpak apps for Linux desktops.

One of the main challenges I see facing the GNOME project (and Linux desktops in general), is that the ecosystem is too fragmented. The Linux App Summit is designed to bring together the biggest players in the Linux app space to collaborate where it makes sense and create a viable and widely adopted marketplace for Linux apps.

In 2019, we decided to go one step further and co-host the conference with KDE, the organization that is often seen as GNOME’s biggest competitor in the space. This was a strategic play to reduce fragmentation and to pool our resources into creating an ecosystem that will benefit us all.

Overhauling a 20+ year foundation

I led the GNOME Foundation as President during a period of historic growth and 140% growth in revenue.

During this time, I led the hiring of an Executive Director after a period of not having had one for 5 years. After the ED was hired, I managed him directly, in addition to managing the Board of Directors and chairing Board meetings. I established an annual Foundation Hackfest to accelerate our work on big initiatives, and defined new workflows and processes to allow us to collaborate more efficiently when working remotely.