A few days ago, I hit my 5-year work anniversary at Praxis, and after taking last year off from my yearly post, it’s time to bring it back.
Here are some notable memories from the last 12 months:
Team Building
With the team being fully remote, I did a few fun Zoom happy hour calls including a Thanksgiving scavenger hunt (which ended up being very biased against those living in Florida who do not experience the fall season), Secret Santa (where I was very embarrassed as the organizer to not have my gift arrive on time), and Trivia (where I still have entire categories of questions leftover for another game because I overprepared).
It’s almost time for this year’s Secret Santa where I will redeem myself!
New Teammates
We added two new members to the Praxis team in the last month (Evan, an alumnus and Ryan who is a returning member of the team), and Imma let you finish on being new and awesome, but this section is dedicated to Jackie Nevins.
Jackie joined the team in March 2021 to take over Placement (from me) and Business Development (from Cameron), and she quickly became one of my favorite people. Not only is Jackie extremely competent and a diligent and organized worker, we also have a lot in common! Our birthdays are a couple of days apart as are our son’s birthdays, and she’s a Potterhead, too. Like I said, she’s the best.
Promotion
When Jackie joined the team, I got promoted to Chief of Staff! It’s always a little funny to me to talk about a promotion since our team is so small, but here I am.
I was excited to phase out my involvement in the Placement process since I found in my year+ there that I don’t thrive in such a reactive environment. My role has changed a lot in 5 years but the general structure of some day-to-day operations mixed with longer term projects has stayed pretty consistent except for when I was running Placement. In that environment, it was really easy to neglect longer term projects to focus on participant communication all day every day, and that wasn’t fulfilling to me in the way completing projects is.
Some projects I focused on after the transition were:
- Rebuilding our revenue tracking in Salesforce
- Building cash flow tracking into Salesforce
- Planning Praxis Weekend
- Revamping the Program Onboarding experience with our previous Bootcamp Manager Brittany
And I still have communication with participants both in the Bootcamp and in Placement! I am just now more of the fun aunt who checks in rather than the nagging mom who talks to you every day.
Praxis Weekend
It was so nice to see everyone in person at Praxis Weekend 2021! We hosted the event at the CYJ Retreat Center just outside of Austin, and it was a blast!
Instead of a stuffy hotel conference room, we decided to make the event “summer camp style” with attendees staying in cabins and participating in events like rock climbing, archery, and axe throwing. There were few scheduled events, so most of the time was open for everyone to socialize or play basketball or generally hang out. I highly recommend running a low-key event like this. It’s much more fun than sticking to a strict schedule over the course of a weekend.
I’m thankful for Year 5 and looking forward to more! Onward.
Sara Morrison 