Hi, I’m Diana!

Day Job

I wear a lot of hats, but customer education and engagement is my jauntiest hat of all. I figure out what customers need to do (to make a SaaS company happy), I figure out what customers want to do (to make their bosses happy) and I figure out how to make sure the two overlap. Content strategy, product adoption, churn reduction: I do it all. I particularly love rendering order out of chaos: transforming a pie-in-the-sky idea into a deliverable, spinning up a new role or function that’s never existed before, taking a big stack of data and turning it into actionable results. The only item I’ve ever impulse purchased from social media is this shirt.

Previously, I worked in: SaaS implementation, recruiting, very fancy political fundraising and event planning and volunteer management.

Career Highlights:

• 1997 – sold first published work
• 2005 – finally figured out how to get pizza toppings off of work shirt
• 2010 – met an ex-President, didn’t faint (bonus picture: cool meeting, uncool scarf)
• 2011 – started working in nonprofit development
• 2014 – promoted to #girlboss, ran my first department
• 2016 – moved into the tech industry
• 2018 – built my own role, specializing in customer engagement and retention

Talents & Skills:

• Sifting insights from colorful spreadsheets & turning those into measurable improvements
• Teaching: longform content, in-app cues, webinars, technical documentation
• Creating lively, engaging presentations with minimal (I didn’t say zero) star wipes
• Enthusiastic karaoke participant at most company Christmas parties
• Winning over office dogs

Want to learn more?

Podcast

After realizing that you have to get something done right by doing it yourself, I decided to put my love of storytelling and researching to good use. On Bastille Day 2016, I launched The Land of Desire, a podcast about French history and culture. You can also find it on iTunes. Please let me know what you think!

Podcast highlights:

• 2016 – launched The Land of Desire podcast, made it to the front page of the iTunes store
• 2017 – crossed 250,000 downloads
• 2017 – began Medium series: How To Start A Podcast
• 2019 – crossed 500,000 downloads and launched a newsletter

Spare Time

Baking along to GBBO, perfecting my bœuf bourguignon, reading 52 books per year, binge-watching eerie Scandinavian crime dramas, getting overly competitive at Scrabble.

 

“If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.”

— Peter Drucker