You first came to Tectonica as a Developer and came back to us as an Account Manager. Now you are taking on a new role as our Head of Accounts. Tell us a little bit about the Account Manager role and what excites you most about the Head of Accounts role you are taking on.

Being an account manager at Tectonica is incredibly unique and rewarding work. I work with our clients to help tease out their vision for their mission into solution designs that then informs digital projects and deeper thinking about their organising work. It means I get to have insight into different sectors, countries, struggles, and supporter bases - it’s very, very special. Moving into my new role as Head of Accounts I hope to operationalise this further so we can keep providing specialised attention to each client’s individual needs that fit their larger aim in creating progressive change, and I hope to grow our partnerships deeper so our collective goal of a better world is ever closer.

How did you end up working in this field?

I got very lucky! I studied literature, languages, and linguistics and worked in restaurants most of my life. I think studying languages both subliminally and explicitly teaches you that there’s a million ways to perceive and express something, and I think working in restaurants taught me the same. Both of these things stoked my belief that compassion is the most valuable trait that humans have. When I began working as a developer at Tectonica I was lucky to get to experience our clients working for progressive gains, which at its root, is an exercise in compassion. Being a developer is very fun work, and I still code for fun, but I wanted a role that allowed me to be closer to the beginnings of ideas - and Tectonica hired me again as an account manager where I’ve been given the privilege of doing just that.

How do you understand digital organising in the current context, and how might it change in the coming years?

Since my last time answering this question - I’ve come to understand digital organising more as digital tools to support organising. The Internet is real, of course it is, but it’s a tool and a place that exists to help us in our true realm - on the ground, face-to-face. Digital organising at this point is absolutely imperative - it has to be optimised as we spend more and more time in online spaces to ensure we are working towards a greater future in our physical world. It’s so much easier to get a million people together online than in a concrete city - but that doesn’t mean that when we’ve gathered those people we should lose sight of the real place they want to improve, and these virtual tools can help us do exactly this.

What do you think makes Tectonica stand out in this sector?

All of Tectonica’s clients, and thus solutions, are unique. We don’t use cookie-cutter remedies for all our clients - we spend time listening to them, identifying their needs, and seeing where gaps need to be filled and customisation needs to happen in order to provide exactly what will help them best. I don’t think many agencies take so much time and care in the process of creating things, or feel as deeply about the mission of the people they work with as we do.

What type of projects at Tectonica do you find most exciting?

I really love when clients come with an idea - like, just an objective and a sort of skeleton in mind and I love fleshing that out with them and our team. It can be anything - tools to support greater engagement, a workflow automation for database management, a specific branding project, etc. I think it’s just very cool to start at the beginning of something with simply a goal and a notion of what’s possible.

Could you share information about any future initiatives at Tectonica that you’re excited to be a part of?

I’m really excited to continue developing our services for web builds with Jamstack that make customisation for clients so easy - making it so they can be quick and responsive in their campaigns, and that utilise a toolkit we build especially for them in order to direct users to action on their sites. The strategy behind the user journeys, and thus the blocks we build for them to create their sites are unlike that which any other agency is doing and grants the organisation a large degree of autonomy in building out their site further as they grow and change.