Featuring: Allison McMillan

Allison McMillan takes us on a journey from running a non-profit, to learning code, launching a start-up, running teams and now back to doing her own thing.

Check out her Journey Line here, and learn more about Tavlin Consulting here

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to Journey Lines, the podcast answering the question, how did they get there? I'm your host Kim Minnick. Each episode, I invite a guest to complete a reflective exercise, plotting the highs and lows of their career against a line of neutrality. Together, we talk through the ups, downs, and everything in between. My guest today, Alison McMillan. Alison, how are you? Hello, I'm good, how are you? I'm so good. I'm glad we got our technical issues worked out. We were having problems hearing each other and it was user error on my end, I think. I am so excited to talk through your journey line. It's got some gorgeous AI chat GPT avatars on it. We were just talking before we hit record about how that's a verb now. Chat GPT'd it. I was I was trying to figure out like how to visualize I didn't want just sort of a bunch of like logos or things and I was like, do I go through old pictures and I was like, well, how can I like how can I represent these different areas and phases of my life, make them look cohesive and so like, I know what I'll do. I'll upload an image of myself to AI and then give it different prompts so that it puts me in sort of like different scenarios in different situations. throughout my life, so. I love that. How long did it take you to like tweak things? Not so long, actually. it's I'm very bad. I'm good at AI prompts. I'm very, very bad at image prompts. It's like the creating the right images is still like the thing that I'm really working on. But this one actually wasn't wasn't so bad. And it was, you know, for my early years, it was like, OK, make me like, make me look a little younger. And for my nowadays is like, make me look a little older, you know. But it didn't shockingly. It didn't take as long as I anticipated it would. Well, nailed it. It's gorgeous. Before we dive into it, tell us what's going on today. A little bit about yourself personally, professionally, holistically. Yeah, so I live just outside of Washington DC. I have two kids that are in first and fourth grade, older boy, younger girl, who I will be talking about because they're a large part of my journey and how they've impacted my journey. And I run my own business. So, Tevlin Consulting is my consultancy where I offer advising and mentoring, fractional VP of engineering services, and also facilitating things. So, strategic planning, retreats, off-sites, all of those different kinds of experiences. I basically say like my tagline is like, I help people communicate better and I do that in like a variety of different ways and services. So that's a little bit about me today. I love it. It speaks to your heart. I love a good off-site. I love good corporate communication. I think that's really how we connected in the first place, just a mutual love of those things. Yes, and doing them all the right way, right? most importantly. Like, we're not trying to, you know, half-ass anything. Well, let's dive into your journey line. I'm so excited. So I see we are starting below the line, which is a little rare. Questioning math and science, which, Allison, I have to tell you, I have questioned math and science my whole life. So where are we? What's going on? What's happening in life? Yeah, so this is a really, it's a very interesting part, I think, of my upbringing. I was raised in a relatively traditional household where really the expectation for me growing up was that my goal was to get married and have children, right? were no sort of like, career was a thing that you could do for a little while, but it wasn't like. strongly encouraged or strongly, right? It was really sort of like the goal was like to have someone that would take care of you and to be raising children and that sort of piece. And so a fairly like traditional, traditional upbringing, traditional background. And part of that was that, you know, just like girls don't do math and science, right? That very typical sort of stereotype. ec. Like you don't need to do shop or go do home ec. Go learn how to darn socks. Right, right. I mean, not even like, it wasn't even like home ec, but it was just sort of like, oh, humanities, know, liberal arts, right? Those sorts of like, those sorts of careers as opposed to like the very, the very technical ones, right? Like my, had an older, I have an older brother and a younger sister. And so my older brother was like, okay, he's the one that does math. He's the one that sort of does the heart. Like we got to, computer when I was a kid. But the computer was like, really mostly for him, like a little bit for like a little bit for us. But it was really, you know, this, I think when you grow up that way, right? And when you're sort of encouraged in specific directions. For me, there was a deep belief that I couldn't do math and science, right? As opposed to trying it and being interested in it. And I don't, I mean, I don't even know if I would have been interested in like math and science as a kid, but as somebody who works in engineering leadership, right, there are so many people that are like, oh, I started programming when I was seven, my Commodore 64, I was building computers when I was in middle school, right? That is not my background. My background is one where I was. you know, sort of ingrained and like, that's really hard stuff. So like maybe, maybe do some of these other things over here. and so, yeah, that's like the, the math and science question mark, because there's a lot of, it creates this story that you believe in this story that you tell yourself, whether it's true or not. And I think sometimes those stories that we tell ourselves, are the most difficult to move past or to overcome, you know? It resonates so deeply. grew up in the southeastern United States. There was a lot of tradition, you know, kind of in my upbringing. Similarly, I always thought like, I'm just math and science. That's hard. That's hard. And I'm not good at it. You have to learn it and practice it. But then when I grew up and started doing like in-depth compensation or people analytics, I was like, this is math. I like this. Like, what a sneaky little lie we have told ourselves and I am married to an engineer and I realized like, maybe I'm not bad at math. Like maybe that was just a lie I told myself for so long. Hmm, wild. and the piece like the sort of like move to the next that like college realization, right, was it was I was a political science major. So it wasn't even about it wasn't even about like a math and science realization. It was more about like I can do hard things realization. Right. And like because I was in these university classes. and they were large classes and, you know, professor would ask a question. It was like my first or second year that like, I would raise my hand, like I would raise my hand and answer the question and the answer that I had was correct. And it was like, wait, I can, I think this is hard. And I'm like, I think I'm doing these hard things. And so it wasn't even about like math and science, but it was about know, complex situations or figuring out, you know, there's a lot of like game theory and aspects of that when you're learning about political science. and so, you know, it was sort of like that realization was more like, yeah, it was just like, I can, I can do hard things and I have answers to questions that a lot of my peers don't have answers to. What was it like coming to that realization and exploring it in college? It was, I mean, it was exciting and interesting, right? It was sort of like, cool. Like, I feel like it opened up a lot of doors for me that I wouldn't have opened on my own. So like a good example, I was then a part of like a honors course, which was maybe a dozen of us that propose sort of like undergraduate honors thesis work. And we're sort of on this like different level. And through that, I actually did international research for my thesis and like got grant money to do it because it was like, you know, because there was some support at home, but it was also a little bit like, what are you doing? guess if you can figure it out, you can do this. And so was like, OK, I'll figure it out. And so I went through institutional review board process because I was interviewing people. And I did international fieldwork. And I presented my thesis at a conference. And all of this was as an undergraduate. And that is nowhere near a goal that I would have. reached for or thought I could do or even like I wouldn't have opened that door for myself if I didn't have this realization that was like I can actually do anything that I want to do I just have to figure out how to get there and what it is to do it. That's a huge thesis for an undergrad. feels like, do you mind sharing what was it on? Yeah, was on immigration policy in Israel. basically, Israel has a lot of benefits and things for immigrants. But some of those benefits depend on what country you're coming from and the background. And so I actually interviewed a lot of different immigrant, I had to like find translators. Like I interviewed, it's sort of like nutty actually when I look at like how old I was when I did all of these things. But yeah, I interviewed a lot of like immigrants coming from these different countries and different backgrounds and government officials and research and sort of like pulled it all together into this sort of like immigration policy thesis and what that looked like. So. Totally not relevant to literally anything that I do today or that I've done for the last 10 years. But I mean, but it was sort of and again, it was like just being resourceful, right? And figuring out like, okay, I'm smart. I can do hard things in order to do those hard things. I can be resourceful and figure out how to how to get there and who to talk to, what to apply for, what resources are available for me. yeah, I mean, there was, okay, so I'll tell this wild story. One of the, I was interviewing, part of the, one of the immigrant groups that I interviewed were Ethiopians. There's a large Ethiopian population in Israel. And this was, like decades ago. And when most immigrants moved to Israel, they well, when a lot of immigrants moved to Israel, they live in like an absorption center. And certain absorption centers, like, it's like, okay, you move sort of with your community so that the the landing pad is a little bit easier. I hadn't found anyone who's not deeply ingrained into the Ethiopian community. didn't speak Amharic or, you know, language. so, no, just like that. project? No, not one of the languages I had learned. And so I decided, I was like, okay, but I like, need to interview this community, these people. And so I went to an absorption center and basically, so it's like, usually a handful of different buildings, apartment buildings, and they're sort of a courtyard area. And I hung out in the courtyard and just like struck up conversations with people until I found someone that had enough like Hebrew, English, a maharic who could like act as my and who wouldn't mind like acting as my translator for like a couple of hours. And I had like, you know, I had like my recorder and I had to have everybody sign, you know, because it's interviewing people like had to have everyone sign paperwork. But that was how I as person I met was like, amazing and was like introduced me to people and that was how I got my I don't know like two dozen interviews from from Ethiopian immigrants in Israel. Yeah, as like a I don't know I was 20 years old right like as as like a 20 year old. Just sitting in the middle of a courtyard in a foreign country hoping to talk to somebody in a language you don't speak. I'm obsessed. All for a homework assignment. Yes. Yeah. But again, like it's such like a great again, like this like realization and et cetera. And it's a high point because it was like, you know, sometimes I reflect on like me decades ago and it's like, you know, it's like, oh yeah, I did like that was that was like a big deal. Like as somebody my age, that would be a big deal thing to do. Right. But alone, like as a 20 year old who just was like, yeah, I'll just, and I figured it, was like, well, worst case scenario, like nobody wants to talk to me and then I have to like figure out alternate paths to like get to this goal, right? But yeah. Amazing. Well, great realization to have in college. Incredible stories. So you keep, obviously, like, you're still in college and you do leadership development for college students. Sounds good. Yes, so that was after, so I graduated. Yes, so graduated, post thesis. received? I mean, it was received very well. like I said, I presented it at like a professional's, like a academic conference afterwards, which this is actually funny. I didn't realize that people like don't present undergraduate theses at like professional academic conferences. No, Allison, that doesn't happen. You're an undergrad. Like, I saw a conference and I was like, this looks interesting. And they're looking for like policy like research, like I did some I did some research that I'll like apply to this like, I'll apply to this conference. And it wasn't it really like wasn't until after that it was like, no, these are all like, doctoral students. And I remember like, I presented it, I like got that this is, you know, back in the day. So we there was like an overhead projector. So I had to get like, make slides and had to get transparencies. the transparencies. Hand flip, yeah. of each slide. And people started asking questions and pulling apart different parts. And I was like, well, as an undergrad, these were resources that I had. These were resources that I didn't have. And the room paused. And they were like, wait, this is your undergrad research? And I was like, yeah. But it really wasn't until later that I was like, these like. doctoral students, postdocs, professors, those are most of the people who presented these conferences. You just humbled like a whole room. You're like, this girl can do hard things. Yeah, but for me, it was like, this is like a chance because again, it's like, okay, I spent all this time writing this thesis, I wanted to do something with, right? So was like, I guess I'll present it. But yes, it was well, well received. And, you know, again, like a great a great learning experience for for me. Yes. on. Leadership development for college students. Yes. Yeah, so graduated was trying to figure out sort of what to do next, what my next step was. And one of things that I ended up doing was leadership development for college students on campus. So was really sort of like helping student group leaders, helping them figure out doing like student student group leader training. I forget what it's called, but in college, there are all the clubs and activities that you can do and each of them have a president. It was basically working with the leadership of those clubs to sort of be like, to do some training with them, to do some sort of leadership development, how they lead their groups, et cetera. And then part of it was also just like, I mean, I said joke that the coffee shop was like my second office because I would just like, meet with students for coffee all day and just talk to them about like, you know, where, what they were studying, where they wanted their lives to go, you know, just sort of like helping that, helping that capacity. So, yeah, so was really, really, really interesting, really fun work. I love that. Were you employed by the university? Was it like independent? I'm sorry if I missed that. No, so it through Hillel, which is a international group that serves specifically Jewish students. But on the campus that I was at, was not just about Jewish students. It was really sort of broadly about any student leadership. some of the students that I worked with were Jewish. A large portion of them were Jewish. But there were also just different people involved. Our whole thing. at that Hillel was really specifically about getting out of the building and really being on campus and being like where students are at and supporting them in what they need. that meant like, sometimes that meant them and sometimes they were like, I have this friend who's like trying to figure out what their major should be. Like, can you chat with them? And it's like, yep. just a little bit of life guidance. I feel like I didn't have anything like that in college. Like I could have gone to the student center, I'm sure, or I'm sure they had counselors, but I just don't feel like it was like, so easy to find that connection. So shout out to you for like reaching out and getting them. Yeah, yeah. Well, and that was what was nice was that like we tried to plot like we partnered with a lot of universities, like we partnered with the Alumni Association, different university departments, etc. But, you know, we also just like, we're where students were at, right. And so we would like, yeah, like coffee shops or like a fraternity or sorority thing, you know, sort of all of those different like places to like build trust in a different way than like, going to a student services building might. It was sort of like more, probably more like older sibling vibe as opposed to like professional who does this and who has done this for like 20 years sort of vibe. Yeah, and I like how you mentioned, you know, building trust and kind of helping guide. feels like it feels like that sets you up really well for some of your stuff later in life. But I'm not here to skip ahead on the story. cool. And how long did you do that for? I did that for, so on campus, I did it for three years and then it led to sort of the, it led to the next step, which is where I was actually working with campus professionals who worked with, like who worked with students. So the next step in my journey is sort of like the, the up level of, right? So I was on campus, I was working with my peer campus professionals, I was working with students, students on campus, and then was asked to essentially like play a similar role, but working with internationally with the campus professionals who are working with the students. Cool, and all of this is in a nonprofit too. Like this organization is nonprofit, wild. How did that, did that like constrain some of your activities? Was that an interesting world to start in as you reflect? Yeah, that's an interesting question. I mean, I think that it... I don't think that it constrained the activities, but it made me really... I guess like smart and aware, it's that resourcefulness piece, right? Like it wasn't like, this has been, think, yeah, like this is where like, I think it's actually been really beneficial. There are lots and lots and lots of lessons that I learned from like leadership development with college students and just being where people are at and meeting them, meeting them where they're at, also helping to introduce them to other people. Like that was when I was doing leadership development for college students, like I was a huge connector, right? Like, you're thinking about switching your major. This person is in that major. You should chat with them to see what it's like. Or like, because I knew both campus professionals and all these different departments as well as students, like, you're looking for a professor to ask a few questions too about X, Y, and Z. I know this professor. I know this academic advisor, blah, Let me like, let me connect you guys so that you can have that conversation. And so. know somebody, would you just go wait in a courtyard until someone showed up? I mean, if I didn't know something like it was only a matter of time until I like happened to bump into a person that you know, which is still I mean today running my own business, right? Like half of what I do like I talk to a lot of people but also there's a lot of things that I don't do and so I also like when I chat with people I'm also sort of like, okay, cool. I don't do that, but I know this person who does and they're amazing and you should meet them anyway. So like let me do an email introduction, right? So basically I've just been like introducing people for like decades. So yeah. is back in 2010 and you started doing remote work then, so you didn't have like a home office. No, well, so we had, so this like doing work with campus professionals, we were all based, this is actually the job that brought me to DC. So also previously I was not in DC. This is the job that brought me to DC. And previously the whole office had been based in DC. And I was like, do you know what's silly? Working with campuses all over the country, but having us all based in DC. Like it is too pricey here and too far from the other side of the country. Right, well, because we also like we would have like a West Coast campus liaison and like and it's like, why are they flying every month to the West Coast? Like, what if they just lived on the West Coast? And then they could go to different places each week instead of wild. in courtyards and coffee shops and meet people. actually what the world needs, just more people go hang out in courtyards and coffee shops. But like, but we know through our work of like off sites and retreats and gather rate that that in person time is like, like, I think remote work is very important. And you still need those connection points, you still need those like trust accelerators, you still need those those parts and pieces. So yeah, so I brought our office from being fully in person in DC to to hybrid, which, again, this was 2010. 2010. using that word hybrid. No, there were also like, let me tell you how few tools there were available for remote work. Literally pre Slack, pre Google Drive, pre like Zoom, pre a lot of things. I... maybe Link, not Skype for Business, but Link. yes, Link was how we could, was how we chatted with each other. We used Skype for team meetings and I had to find and set up a shared drive for us to like, for us to be able to use, which was like an old school Google drive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I also, Look, I was like running a nonprofit and I was like, I'm going to buy my staff laptops and docking stations. And rate this, I'm not working in tech, right? Like this is not like cutting edge. People were like, why are you getting laptops? And I was like, so that people can work from where, and I actually like, there were specific days that were like, I tried to role model it as well. So like one day a week, I would try to not be in the office and I would like work from a Smithsonian museum. Courtyard or lobby or you know, I or like like at that point I wasn't like working from home But I wanted to like be like, okay. Well, you can work from anywhere So I'm working from the Museum of Natural History today or I'm working from like the Redwick Gallery today or you know, whatever whatever it was but yeah, I was like people definitely questioned that choice to buy everyone laptops, but I was like, look, it's important. if they're traveling and if we're like working with campus professionals, like in the office is not where we should be. We should be like on campuses, like figuring out what the, you know, it's very different to be on the ground and sort of like in the trenches versus like sitting in your office chair. I think especially for campus professionals doing student work, like, you're it's like teacher right like you are on a lot because you're like having coffees or like conversations or meeting with like university departments during the day but then all the student activities are happening in the evening or on the weekends and so like that's also when you're on duty and when you're working and when you're doing things and so you know to ask the campus professional to be like i like in my office wrote this program that like you should implement with your like with your students they're like You don't know. You don't know. You don't know. Did you see or did you track any like impact from that decision from going hybrid? Did you see like fruits of that choice? I mean, I think the biggest things were one, having access to different talent, right? Which is something that we still see today. You know, being able to like not, if I wanted a person who was very, very familiar with the West Coast campuses, and the thing also with working with college campuses is that there are a lot of different. vibes, right? You have commuter colleges, you have state schools, you have IVs, you have a rate like how a how a UC Berkeley operates is very different than a UC Santa Cruz or you know a Hunter or Brooklyn College versus a Harvard or Yale, right? And it's just like you have different student populations who care about different things and have different constraints put on them and their lives, right? And community colleges were also a part of that, which is a whole different, right? When you're at a community college for an associates versus like a four year university, a commuter school versus like a mostly like live in school. And so, you know, having people that were based in these areas and really had a much deeper, better sense of the student community that was being served and the staffing professionals who were serving those communities. you know, are these campus professionals responsible for one school or are they responsible for five schools? There are big differences there. And so having people remotely in those areas just meant that they could plug in in very different ways and in very important ways to be able to like do their work more effectively. and how is it managing a remote team for the first time? it was, it was pretty good. I mean, I like learned, I think pretty early just like what the, I don't know, like what the expectations were, right? It's funny because like even back in the day, it's like, how much do I care about somebody's like green dot versus like they're not green dot, right? And that was before like the blog posts and all the conversations and the, you know, but you know, we like really, early and quickly established, like it's helpful to over communicate. It's helpful to know like, are you visiting a bunch of campuses and therefore like you're not going to be online all day. you know, we didn't have anyone international, so we weren't dealing with like a lot of time zones, but just like some understanding around time zones. but I don't know, like to be honest, ultimately, like it wasn't that challenging for me. Like I sort of. Like I sort of manage, I'm always like, uh, expectations are clear. Like you set them, you know, early and often like respect, transparency, clear communication, um, early feedback when, know, like when needed. so, I don't know, I don't, I'm trying to remember like, cause it was a long time ago now. Um, and I don't think that it felt like that much different from. like from generally from managing the folks that were in the office. Cool, amazing. Well, eventually you decide to move on. And I do see we're sliding a little bit on our chutes and ladders journey here. But this is so cool. You founded a startup and taught yourself how to code. That is such an interesting spot from math and science feels hard, and maybe it's not for me. And now you can do hard things and you teach yourself how to code. What's your startup? So my startup was called Neighbor Stations. The idea behind it, which I still stand by even though I had to shut it down, I think it was early for its time, was basically this idea that especially in cities, we don't really talk to our neighbors. We don't really like, it's hard to create those communities for ourselves as we get older and as we move out of like college campuses and these sort of like pre-made easy to join communities for ourselves. But the idea was like your best friend could be living three doors down in the same apartment building and this is a way to connect in a hyper local way bounded by your neighborhood where people entered sort of like top three things they were interested in and then got connected with other people again specifically within their neighborhood based on those interests. And then they were recommended a local business. So ideally like a mom and pop as opposed to like a chain to visit in order to like meet up and actually like, and actually sort of like meet and get to know each other, et cetera. But at a business that connected with the thing, the interests that they were connecting about or on. Okay, I very much stand by this idea too. I am so bought in. The one concern I have is next door exists and now I don't want to meet my neighbors. So this is, will say this, Nextdoor started literally at the same time. And that was my big person who founded Nextdoor, had some startup, like more street cred than I did, right? More like credibility than I did. And everybody was like, well, this is the same as Nextdoor. like, that's like, they're gonna be bigger and they're gonna have more funding. And I will say that like seeing Nextdoor evolve, I've been like. It was so different. It would have been so different. But yeah, and again, it like came from this idea of like, I love connecting people. I love people being connected. And it actually came from the inspiration of, we had a downstairs neighbor and I saw him, I went to University of Michigan. I saw him like wearing a Michigan shirt one day and I was like, did you go to Michigan? And he's like, I forget if he went or not, but he liked watching the football game. So we started like, watching Michigan football together and we became, we're still in touch today, like we became really good friends. And you know, I was like, oh yes, like you can actually like be connected with these people that are like, you don't have to travel three neighborhoods over. don't have to like try to, like there are actually people in your neighborhood that are probably cool that you would probably get along with, but you have no way. And at that time it was like the only way to meet people. online to offline was through dating apps. Like that was the only thing available. And I still think that's largely the thing that is available. to say that still feels like the lion's share of the market. And I think even like like Bumble, some of the dating apps tried like Bumble BFF and Be Friends, but it never seemed to quite catch on. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, so, so that was a startup. Well, I noticed Nextdoor did get a lot of funding and they are very big and I haven't seen neighbor stations around. What was that choice like? Like, okay, I'm deciding to shut down. Actually, before we get there, how was it founding a company? Yes, it was great. mean, again, like I think of each of these things as like, wow, I learned a lot, right? And that's always my goal is like to learn a lot and to take all of that knowledge into the next thing that I'm doing. So actually teaching myself to code, there was a Rails Girls Workshop and I literally was like. I am going to, I was like, I'm going to hate this. I'm not going to understand anything, but I'm building a tech company and I'm trying to find a technical co-founder and like, it's really hard. And so I should probably just understand some of the basics. And it was this like day long crash course into Ruby on Rails. And at the end of the day, I was like, this is so. cool, I love this, I can use the command line, I can use the terminal, I had something running locally, I like solved an issue. And so it was like immediately and again, it was like, oh, I can do hard things, right? This like thing that I went in dreading and assuming that I would hate I realized was like all just like problem solving and figuring out how to like solve one problem to get to the next thing to get the thing that you wanted to show up on the screen to actually show up on the screen. And I was super lucky. Like the DC community is like just so kind and amazing and welcoming. And you leave that day and everybody's like, come to the meetups, like ping me if you have any questions. And so it was also just really, really nice to get involved with. So was lucky because I got involved with this like really nurturing, welcoming coding community, this Ruby community. And at the same time got involved with the startup community through this accelerator that was sort of coming up at the time. And founders just sort of like working together, eating peanut butter sandwiches every day and trying to figure out what we're doing and making things work. But they also, that accelerator also brought in mentors for us. So I did like a UX walkthrough and ICP, how to figure out who my ideal customer persona was and different ways to like, it without spending any money. I, the summer, I like worked with a couple of colleges to offer college credit. So I had like these summer interns that like did all these different parts and pieces for like, yeah, it was like our second bedroom in our apartment was like the neighbor stations headquarter. And one time my husband came home and he was like, who are all these people? And I was like, there are, they're my summer interns. I got interns, babe. But you know, it's like that is the founder thing is like how essentially like how can you convince, especially very, very early, how can you convince people that your idea is like worthwhile and interesting and exciting to work on and how to give them guidance, but also enough space and room to like run with what they see as like good, good paths. So yeah, worked with some like, I mean, incredible people who like volunteer their time and were really interested in seeing it and Again, just created this like really close-knit community of like fellow founders and learned a lot and talked to investors and, you know, basically tried to like did pitch competitions, like basically tried to just like soak up absolutely every, you know, little bit of information that I could about all of, about everything in the startup world. something I love that and I'm sure that crash course just helps you as you further your career. But what is it like you have this idea? I feel like founders, that's their baby, right? Like this is my baby and I love it so much. And now I'm bringing people on and I'm giving away part of it and I'm letting them, you know, run with it. How was that transition for you? I mean, it was, I wasn't paying anyone, right? P.S.A. always pay your interns. This is not... The interns were just giving them college credit. I was able to do the college credit thing. But there were a few folks that weren't there for college credit and they were like, they just wanted to help and they were looking for things they could put on their resume. They were new professionals. They were looking for marketing things they could put. And so I recognize that. part of the resume builder for them was like what ideas they could try, what they could do. And as long as they weren't like doing something that I felt was like nefarious or would like tank the business in some way, I was sort of like, yeah, let's like try a whole bunch of, now I would have the like, okay, I think here, these are the important things for us to do for marketing this week or for outreach for this week or whatever. But if they were like, I have this idea or they were like, cool, and I wanna do this. I was sort of like, there's no harm in trying, right? I was trying to find product market fit. I was trying to see if like, I would be able to raise any money to actually keep it going, to like, you know, actually employ these people in a meaningful way. And so, you know, I was sort of down for whatever, whatever experiments they were like interested in, interested in running. Amazing. And did you ever get any funding? No. no. so that's like sort of why it so basically at the beginning and I told myself, I was like, I want to be very, very honest with myself about the success or failure of because there are also a lot of startup founders that sort of like don't know when to call it. Right. Like they just like keep going and it's like, like you just have to be like your baby is ugly. Right. And you have to be okay. Like you have to be okay with that. Right. You have to look at the information. You have to look at the statistics. And so I had saved basically like a chunk of money and I was like, this is the money that I have for this endeavor. When the money runs, like when the money is looking like it's going to run out, it is done. Like if I cannot raise more money, I don't want to keep putting savings and savings and savings and savings into this. do not come from a place where I have like infinite savings or like could raise like a friends and family around, right? Like those sorts of things. Um, and so I, so it was really, so when I was, and through this whole time, I had been like teaching myself to, to code. So I was working with a handful of engineers to like actually code and build the thing, but they were again, like really kind and would like teach me bits and like teach me parts of the code at the same time. And so basically it came to a point where I was like, okay. Um, I. like funding doesn't look like it's going to happen. What do I want to do next? And so what I decided to do was spend a month. And I was like, I'm to spend a month coding all day every day because I think that I like this code thing. And I think that it's like interesting, but I don't know if I'm going to like it if I have to do it like nine to five every day. And if it's like my actual job and the only thing that I do. And at the same time, I was like, and I'm interested in like, if I don't do anything on the startup, if I don't do any events, if I don't send a newsletter out, if I don't like, will I get any emails? Right? Cause we had like, we had some people using the platform. had, you know, not like tremendous numbers, but I think the biggest thing is like, when it goes away, does anybody notice? Right? and it's a good test of like, and so at the end of the four weeks, I like really enjoyed the the coding and like the word and solving those problems and doing that more and more. And also nobody had emailed me to be like, hey, we haven't gotten an email from you in a little while. Like what's going on? Which like, yes was like is sad, but also that was my, you you also have to be honest with your, you have to be honest with yourself about it, right? Like if nobody emails you, then like, okay, good idea in theory. Maybe not, and you know, like there are, thousand things I would change in hindsight as I think every startup founder, both successful and non-successful, when they look back they're like, I would have done so many things differently. But yeah, so that was sort of the idea to shut down the, that was the realization to shut down the startup. But you find this new love for coding and I'm assuming just because again I've peeked ahead, you stuck with it. Yes. Yeah. journey line starts going back up. I imagine shutting down a business. A lot of paperwork. Very tough. It's sad. like, and when I tell people the idea, right, like they're like, well, shit, that's a really good idea. I'm like, I know, I know it's a really good idea. You're like, yeah, that's why I tried to do it. Next door ruined it. We're just gonna blame it on next door. So, yeah, you know, so it's like, it's sad when a thing that you think is gonna be really successful. And you, like any startup founder also will tell you, like, you put in just so, so, so many hours, like just into all of the different things, because that's like, it's like the hustle until the money runs out, right? And so you wanna do as much as you possibly can. And because you don't have a lot of money to spend, a lot of it is like you are doing it all yourself or through like the goodwill of, you know, other people or, you know, whatnot. so, yeah. So, you know, it's like, yeah. So, know, neighbor stations, we wish you well. So you move into an individual contributor role and continue in tech. Yeah, yeah, so that was my sort of official transition in tech. was like, I'm gonna find an individual contributor role. What I didn't put on here is actually I went to a conference and at this conference there are lightning talks and there's a lot of support for newbies to do lightning talks. And so again, I mentioned the JC community was very supportive. And so when I said I was going to this conference, like, Literally every day for like a month somebody would ping me and be like, what's your lightning talk gonna be on? I was like, I'm not gonna do a lightning talk. They're like, what's your lightning talking? And so I got to the conference and I was like and the light the lightning talk signup sheet went up and I was like Maybe I should do a lightning talk. And so I did a lightning talk So prepared. And it was about like mentorship from a newbies perspective, right? So somebody who's getting into code, like of the mentors that I was working with, what I found really, really helpful and really supportive. And lightning talks are, you know, five minutes. And I tell this story because I was at, the conference that I went to was RubyConf and RubyConf runs a scholar program. And it was one of the first years they had a scholar program and I was a scholar. And so what I did after the lightning talk was I just tweeted, I was like, if you enjoyed my lightning talk, like I'll be a great employee sort of thing. And I had so much inbound. I was like, it was amazing. And that's where I had like all of my sort of, you know, early conversations that then, you know, led to eventually like led to an offer. to be an individual contributor. So that was like how I, it's sort of this like, I don't know, wild story of like, I still can't believe that I just like did the talk and then like tweeted something like that out. But you know, it's the virtual courtyard. It was the virtual courtyard you were hanging out in and just, hey, this is what I need. I actually think it's so cool. You're always looking for, know, especially in an employer's market, I feel like folks are always looking for ways to stand out or showcase what they believe in, how they work, what they wanna do. And then you're just like, here, just do it like this. Yeah, well, and I do I mean, like I talked to a lot of people that are like, looking for their first role in tech. And I do think that it's a lot harder today to like to to break in and to like create that those inroads. I also recognize that I was like, very lucky with like the timing and when I was trying to do it and you know, I didn't do a boot camp, right? So there's some grit and some, I did a lot of blog posting as I was teaching myself to code to show lessons that I learned through each thing that I was doing. And those really got me very, very far in that time in terms of not having work experience to talk to, but people being able to sort of look at my thought, look at my problem solving, look at my like. thought process, et cetera. But yeah, so I moved into an individual contriagural and sort of like officially into tech. I love that. That's something I've always been enamored and slightly jealous about with the engineering tech coding communities is there is so much like open source work. I blogged about it. Here's the code I use. Here's the problems I ran into or like, hey, here's a problem you didn't know you had. Like I'm so jealous and trying so hard to see more of that open source mindset within other communities. So you have... flip side of that, which I will say is challenging, is that all that was pre-kids, right? And so that is like, and so a lot of mine, my next step is kid one, which is a down shift, which like on most people's journey lines, right? Having their first child or like, it's like, A peak, right? As opposed to a valley and I promise I'm not a bad mom. And I do love my children. But I'll talk, you know, in a minute about why that's sort of a shoot as opposed to a ladder. But right, lot of it is nice that there are all those opportunities and also being in tech you are expected to. stay up to date with the latest trends, go to conferences, commit to open source, do all of those things, which honestly, like it's not impossible once you become a caregiver, but it is incredibly difficult. And that's whether you're a caregiver to children, a caregiver to parents, like any sort of the things that just suck away your extra time, right? You're outside of work time. So. I that you, I appreciate that you mentioned that. feel like, I remember very early on my career, we were interviewing an engineer and somebody on the team asked like, well, what are your hobbies or what do you do outside of work? And none of the things were like within the world of tech. wasn't coding or open source work or anything. And that was a ding. And it was like, well, what, what other careers do you like? Are your hobbies also your career? It was just such a strange moment to witness. I don't know. so you have your, how was your first IC role as in tech? Like, did you, did you enjoy coding 40 hours a week? Did you enjoy all of that aspect? Yeah, I did enjoy it. mean, I love, and this is like still the thing that I do a lot of, like just asking questions, learning, you know, figuring out like for any problem, this is the thing that I love the most about technology and coding is like for any problem, there are multiple solutions. It's just a matter of like figuring out what the paths and options are. how much time you have to build it, right? it's, but there's a, there's always a solution. It's just a matter of like when and how you think about it or how you have a conversation that leads you to like, yeah, I could like try this path or like maybe this thing would work. And I just love, I love that sort of like, okay, how that deep, deep problem solving, right? How would I figure this out or how would I get one step closer to figuring this out? Like, okay, I figured out like part. A of the problem, but now I have part B, which I didn't realize was a problem until I finished part A. And just thinking about, I'm always still always impressed with engineers when we're talking about a feature or talking about a thing, and they just come up with eight new scenarios that like, what if a user does... x and y, how does this feature or functionality work if they do that? it's like, oh, that's a good question. Like, oh, you are thinking 17 steps later, okay. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, that's, just love like that. I love the problem solving. I love being able to like get to the next error message or like, like there's like a dopamine hit when it's like, yes, I've gotten to like the next part. And then when you actually like ship the thing, um, it's, you know, joyous. And then you pick up the next ticket and like, I think you keep going. So yeah. it. Well then, yeah, you have a kid, which is a life-changing moment in all sorts of ways, I'm sure. How did it change your life? Yeah, so many ways. The biggest though, I mean, I, so, they don't tell you a lot of things about having a kid. There were a couple of things. I think there were a couple of things. At first, and I didn't realize this until I had a kid. At that point in time, this is a while ago, there, were not very many visible women with children, especially with young children in engineering, right? Like, yeah, they were in tech, but they were product managers. They were in marketing. They were in HR, right? Like, they weren't on engineering teams. You did have men that had children, and this is a generalization, but I would say that like, A lot of men in engineering careers who have children have partners who don't work, right? It's like a very lucrative vertical to be in. And there are big differences between like having a two adult working households versus versus one. And just in general, and this is still today, it is different to be a mom than to be a dad, right? Like we put my husband's name as the primary contact person on all of our children's paperwork because we know that I will probably be called first regardless of what the paper says. And sometimes he's also called and sometimes he's not also called. So there's, you know, there's just like societal, like conscious unconscious pressures. So When I had my son and I struggled at the beginning, I had a very, very short parental leave. was the only mom, I was the first mom and the only mom on our team, the team that I was on. First parental leave is so hard, like for the company, for the team, for the individual. Yeah, it's different. It is different if you are a... The birthing parent experience at work is probably different than the non-birthing parent experience. Leave included. yes. I mean, also things like, once I was back at work, I was pumping a few times a day, which means that I have to stop work at a certain point and sort of be away from work for 20, 30 minutes and just like, does that come at a convenient time? Does that come at an inconvenient time? Do I put pumping on my calendar? Because if you just put lunch or a break, like, know, people schedule over that shit. Like, it's not, yeah, it's sort of like, are you like really busy? And it's like, and then it's like, you're already in sort of this, like, precarious spot of like, coming back and not being at your finest, because your baby like, isn't sleeping through the night. And right. So it's like, okay, do I put myself in a more precarious spot by saying like, No, actually, I can't do that meeting. Again, I was still like, nowadays, as an engineering executive, it's very different than like, as an IC. you know, where I was sort of navigate, was, you know, did not have the power, did not have the, you know, any of sort of those, those parts and pieces. And the trickiest part was that in this, they really, I try to say this frequently, because nobody ever talks about this. When you have a child, it can and frequently does shift around a whole bunch of things in your brain. And so and it was, Basically, when my son was probably eight weeks old, and he, again, like, it was challenging, like he had very challenging babies. Like, you know, there are people that like, yes, yes, very, very personality focused. And they're amazing. And their personalities are actually the exact same today as they were when they were babies. And like they're... communicate. now they can talk and I can see how a lot of their personality traits will be amazing for them as grownups in this world. And were also like very difficult for me and when they were babies and also sometimes like extremely difficult to parent. I'm sort of like, this is hard for me to parent, but I don't want to like kibosh this because I know that this will be good for you like in the long run. Anyway. But one thing, so my son had like some weight gain stuff and blah, blah, blah that like took a few weeks for us to figure out. And basically like by time we figured it out, I was like basically back at work. And so there's just also like a lot again, you're not sleeping through the night. You're like worrying about a whole new category of 10,000 different things and what's happening at daycare and who's, you know, how they're sleeping and how they're eating and pumping and blah, blah. Yes. So, you know, there's just like, there's all sorts of stuff. We actually also had very early on, we had our childcare fall through. And so then we were trying to balance sort of like taking care of our son while also working. And so it was chaos. And all of that was actually fine. It doesn't sound fine, but all of that was actually fine. You know, I would like speak aloud things that I was coding to my... to my son as I would like wear him and like sway so that he would nap while I was trying to like code out a feature sort of thing. But the part that was really, really challenging was that how my brain learned changed. I went into this panic of like, I can't learn things. I was like, can I never learn things again? I used like how I used to learn things isn't how like I can retain information and learn things anymore because that come back, is it gone forever? And again, there were not that many women to talk to. And so I like went on a search for women with children who were engineers. And I would just like scroll through like Twitter, like any like Ma, any person that I knew who I knew was on an engineering team who mentioned anything about kids or who like I heard from somebody else had kids, like I would send them a Twitter DM and I would just be like, how is it? I had just had my first like, here's that, you know, and I, and virtually there were a number, I was like, can I hop on a call? and there were a number of like women who, who connected with me and really helped me feel better about like the stage of life that I was in and like, just tips and suggestions about like, yes, you might learn differently. Here are ways to experiment to figure out what that looks like for you now, or here's what my situation looked like. And that was one of the first conference talks that I did after having my son was about being a parent in tech. And I ended up having a podcast about being a parent in tech for a few years because I found that there were so few people that were really talking about the expectation of the extra time that you put into tech, how learning changes, having to pump as part of your work day, having to all these sorts of different things, but also the amazing things that we as technologists bring to our households around retrospectives and prioritizing of tasks and all of those things as well. So, but that was, you I'd say it was like, it was a struggle and I learned a lot through that, through my first child. But, and yeah, I mean, it was wonderful like being a mom and blah, blah, blah, but that balance, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, there's also, there's also, yes. And there's also so much pressure, like everybody's like, oh, you should like. love and it like you should enjoy your baby so much and you should like stare at them and like awe and glory and it's like I'm just trying to like survive the day sometimes right like my son like yeah like my son like didn't like he took six 27 minute naps every day like that was that was his napping schedule And he slept through the night, unlike my daughter who didn't sleep, yeah, just didn't sleep through the night for a long time. He slept through the night, but there was no glorious three-hour nap that he was taking during the day, which enabled me to do all of this stuff. And so there was also this pressure of, everybody's telling me this time goes by quickly. I should be enjoying every second. I'm not. This is really fucking hard. And I feel like all these parts of who I am, some... feel gone forever. Some feel like, am gonna do this? And so, you I think that that challenge isn't talked about very frequently. And like, again, kids are always seen as like this like glorious high, wonderful point. And in some ways it was, and also when I look at like my career journey, like having a child is hard and takes you a step back in your career and slows you down and makes it really, really challenging to balance all the things. that you want to be doing and just can't. I love you highlighting that. I appreciate that call out. I have worked with a lot of new parents and seen like just, it's tough. It is tough and the first one is hard, but it doesn't stay like that forever. I love that you started sharing what it was like to be a parent in tech. I loved the bringing retros and priority tasks to household. Cause I think I just understood my husband a little bit better. But you you learn. You grow, maybe even in new ways you learn, and you have your second kid, and you grow your career in this time, moving into a manager role. Another two giant changes. But we're on the up and up this time. Tell me about it. Yes. Yeah. So, um, so I, uh, was 36 weeks pregnant when I started interviewing. Um, and my husband was like, what, like you're like literally in your last month of pre- like who goes out and interviews and this is, I don't know. And women like slacks when people are like, Oh, I'm pregnant. Like, but I feel like I need to make them like, should I, is it fair or unfair to my employer? I'm just like, girl or like, you know, birthing parent, like, go for it, you know. So yeah, so I was very pregnant. And, you know, all the interviewing was sort of done, done remotely. And I did, I didn't lie. But when they said that if there was anything that they would need, I would need to like plan around for my like, start, I was like, I have some like family things that would need to be considered. But you know, like, we can have that we can have that conversation. So And I got my offer when I was exactly on my 38, 39, 38 weeks pregnant was, I took a picture every week. And so I have like a, know, a 38 weeks like signed an offer and like 38 weeks pregnant. And maybe it was 39. I think it actually might have been 39 because I literally, yes, very, very, very pregnant because I was literally like, I need to finish. I was like, do not come out yet. I need to finish negotiating this offer before I give birth. Yeah, yeah. But again, was like, was super lucky. Like, you know, was able to sort of talk about the start date and situation. And I knew for myself, like what I wanted. more maternity leave so that could figure that out, like so I could figure things out with my child. I knew what kind of support I needed at home, you know, just in terms of like mother's helper, postpartum, do like just like not all the time, but like, okay, a couple hours a week. I knew that I needed to like really plug in socially and like get out of the house once or twice a week for like my own mental health. So I was just like the kid Two was on the up and up because I knew what support structures and what my pitfalls and stuff were from kid one, so that I could build that around myself and make sure that I was supported for my physical health, for my mental health, for what I wanted to do. working at GitHub was an incredible opportunity. And so that was just like, like a household name company with like, as a career switcher, one of those sort of like, oh wow, I'm working for like a company that everybody in tech knows, knows what GitHub is, what it does. And so just, and the fact that I could have that opportunity in a way that also was supportive of my family and what that was looking like. was just really awesome. I know I feel like GitHub, well, it's a popular name in my household for sure. But it seems like they are incredibly supportive of their employees. Like, I haven't met a lot of people that have anything bad to say. How was like navigating that early maternity leave? Like, coming into the role, was that still great? Yeah, it was good. And I was fortunate that I had a manager who really advocated for. So that was when GitHub was only doing in-person onboarding. And I said, was like, I'm not going to fly until my baby's four and a half or five months old. And so basically, I started remotely and part time. then when, so I started before that five months. And then, yeah, when she was old enough, I was able to then do sort of my in-person onboarding with my official cohort. I also negotiated for MilkStork, which is a milk shipping company, which was very early. Yes, and they were very, very early, but I knew like... that there would be travel in the first year. And so I negotiated for like basically them paying for milk stork deliveries for like that whole, like until until my daughter was a year, which was really nice. And that stuff adds up. And again, like the offer was good. You know, so was when I was looking at like what I wanted to negotiate as well. Right. It was like, OK, well, I want to be able to ship breast milk home. I want to be able to, you know, be able to start remotely. and then do my in-person cohort a couple months later sort of thing. yeah, so it was, yeah, just lucky to have a manager. My peer group was a lot of women, parent, really supportive folks. And so, yeah, just a very different experience. And I also think the world was the tech world in terms of like moms working was a little different even just like a few years later, like, you know, just in terms of how many visible moms or parents there were in tech, how people talked about their kids that, you know, all of that. There was a big push for mothers rooms and wellness rooms and getting those a lot more visible. Yeah, I remember kind of that curve. And I mean, it sounds like everything was great at GitHub. You stayed at GitHub a long time or, yeah. for I was there for a good handful of years. I was there through the Microsoft acquisition, which again, like I was there through like lots of reorgs, Microsoft acquisition. So again, just like learned, learned a ton was put into a lot of different like running a lot of different like smaller teams, larger teams, larger departments, R &D, you know, experimental work, know, pull requests and repositories, which is a big part of what GitHub does. So yeah, just lots of, and like experience at scale, right? Cause that's beforehand, I had been mostly at, was at a consultancy, I was at a smaller startup, like, you know, I was, I just hadn't seen that sort of like scale of usage and user base and, you know, name of customers that used GitHub. And so yeah, was just able to like learn a lot. And, but as startups are, there's a call to startups. They get into and pull you back in and you took the call. You went back into an early stage startup. Yeah, so at some point GitHub just felt like it felt really big, right? I was there through the acquisition, like it felt there were more layers of management. was sort of harder to, it was harder to get things done. And yeah, and so I was interested in going back to, and I was a director at GitHub, I ran a decent sized department. But you know, there was sort of like a, what would I do if I... could completely run an engineering team and really like add an early stage to sort of like build the foundation of the culture that I want to see in the world. And so, yeah, so went back to early stage companies, you know, running those engineering teams. And that was sort of like, it was middle, right? There were some things that were less fun about that than GitHub. There were some things that were more fun, right? It's like, I'm not gonna lie, right? Like it's fun when you like are at the meetup or at a thing and you tell people that you work for GitHub, there's like, whoa, like, you know, and I had like piles of GitHub stickers that I could always hand out and you know, like there is something like ego boosting and enjoyable about being able to, you know, as opposed to like, you know, a startup where like maybe some people know them, but a lot of people don't, you know. So, And, like an early stage startup, was like rolling out career ladders, you know, providing just like that, the foundational building blocks, the processes, the rate, those sorts of things that really like, you know, set earlier stage startups up for success. that as they scale and as they grow and as they become a GitHub, ideally in the future, right. That like those, the, those building blocks are there to just keep creating that culture. And how was that? Like, how did you feel creating your own culture and building those foundations? Like, what were some of your takeaways and learnings and excitements? Yeah, it was fun. like the thing that I feel like my main takeaway, which is really what I've brought a lot into my own business is like, I'm very much not a one size fits all person, right? Like you have to, no team is the same. No company is the same. And so it's really a matter of taking the parts and pieces like. what works from big tech, what works from startups, what works for these different areas and sort of like smushing it all together to be the right thing to roll out for your people at the company that you're at. And so that's, even like, you know, pulling back to my nonprofit days and leadership development and, you know, off sites that I've run through a variety of industries, right? It's sort of like, okay, I have all of this experience in all of these different places doing all of these different things. If I go through my mental Rolodex of processes, of templates, of whatever problem I'm trying to solve, okay, here's eight different solutions, five different ways that I've personally solved this in the past. What mix and match, what puzzle of things is the right thing for this company? And so, yeah, and it's fun, you know, at early stage startups when there isn't usually something there and you can sort of roll, roll that out or adjust it and change it in a way that it's not like, it doesn't take months to change it, right? You're sort of like, let's do this experiment and see if we like it for a couple of months. Totally. So I like the building. Speaking of building, you build your own consultancy. We are coming towards the end of the journey line. I love that we're ending on a high point. Tell me everything about Tavelin Consulting. Yeah, so going out on my own was really, I had thought about it before, but I sort of wasn't, I wasn't sure about it. And this moment in time, felt, it felt like the right moment in time. And really what I did was I, I have what I think is like an interesting sort of eclectic background for what I do. And so the thing that I really wanted to figure out was given my background, what are the things that I can uniquely offer? What is like, what is my value add that is maybe not different from everybody's, but different from a lot of people's, right? And so that was really, and then, you know, I just sort of like workshopped it and I like talked to a bunch of people and when I talked to them, I like noticed, you know, facial expressions like, okay, when I see this, like, it doesn't look like they get excited. Did they like, can they immediately think of somebody that they should introduce me to? Or are they like, interesting, you know, like, again, it's like, okay, am I calling my baby ugly? Or does this feel like it? Does this feel like it hits, right? So just experimenting with that until I got to both a few offerings and a pitch that felt really great and unique and interesting. So yeah, so that's how I landed on the things that I offer. And it's like, it's always evolving, right? Like I just recently I started talking, yeah, like I recently started talking about, I'm trying to do a little bit more work. with nonprofits and I recently started talking about doing a talk about sort of AI for nonprofit professionals. And that's been like resonating. And so, you know, like, it's I've done a couple of times and that's on my website as a workshop that I can do. again, like the the offsights and the retreats, right, taking sort of like for profit and nonprofit tech, non tech and being able to provide a really like unique and bespoke experience for a retreat for strategic planning for a, you know, whatnot. They're just threads that I can sort of pull from my, from my background and from doing all these different things that sort of lead to what I can offer to other people today. Do you want to give your pitch? I mean, I feel like you practiced it, you worked on it, you got a pitch. Yeah, I mean, my pitch for talent consulting is that I help people communicate better, right? And that's through one-on-one mentoring and advising, you know, better meetings, doing better business through off-sites and retreats, you know, through strategic planning or prioritization, just getting to know each other better. And through being a fractional VP of engineering where I really help. great teams become even better and figure out sort of what those gaps are that are missing and how to improve. Absolutely gorgeous, which brings us to the end of your journey line. Anything you're looking forward to next in the future. Ooh, that's a good question. I think just continuing to, my business feels like my ultimate, like always able to continue learning and growing, right? And because it's mine, I can always like take offerings off the table and put new offerings on the table and pivot in different ways. so I'm just, I'm excited. There's like some. There are some marketing things that I want to try. There are some like, you know, new things that seem to have been resonating recently that I want to, you know, build up a little bit more. And so, yeah, I'm just really excited to continue running my business and seeing where goes. Hell yeah. And where can folks find you if they want to get in touch with you? Yes, great question. Folks can find me easiest is LinkedIn, Allison McMillan. I'm also AllisonMcMillan.com is my website. My websites, you can also go to engineeringoffsites or so many meetings suck.com and both of those will redirect to my website because I am an engineer and I must buy many domains. And then I'm on blue sky as Ali P. L-A-L-L-I-E P is where you can find me on blue sky. Amazing. Well, at least one of those is linked below in the description as well with Alison's journey line. Alison, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for telling us your story and we'll see you all next time. Yeah, thanks for having me.