When I was an engineer, I started out participating in Meetup.com forums as an organizer asking a question about my group.  I saw that someone wrote me back, which was so cool and that encouraged me to ask more questions until I eventually found myself answering other people’s questions too.

I suppose I was good at it because the Meetup folks asked me to become a volunteer moderator, which I LOVED doing!  It was a blast and I did this in between engineering calculations, at home, on the weekends…it was just a blast.  I didn’t think of this as a career option at the time, but it did stay in the back of my mind.

In 2012, I decided to leave engineering for good and ventured into becoming a freelance web designer.  I fielded questions from clients and prospects a lot (much like a customer support agent) and also dabbled in social media for a few months at a web design company, which was a lot of fun, but while social media was hot, it really didn’t do it for me so I kept looking for my next career venture.

Eventually, I found a job for an internal community specialist position on CMXhub.com  and got the job!   My job was to send out internal communications and remind people to migrate their content by a certain deadline. I loved that job, but since it was only for 6 months, I knew I had to keep looking.

After sending out a bunch of resumes, I scored big by landing a job as a community manager at Zuora where I helped create, launch and manage the Zuora Community which is built on Lithium.  I’ve been there since November 2015 and I don’t regret the career change!