One year ago, I made one of the best decisions of my life: to join the Moonsail North Team. I am so incredibly proud of what our small but mighty team has accomplished in this short amount of time — I love the culture we’ve created, the clients we get to work with, and the final products we create — so much that I wanted to do a reflection piece about my time here so far.
But first, a word about me. You might remember that my list making is out of control. My first draft of this blog post was–you guessed it, a list of things I love about working at Moonsail North. Then I decided I needed to branch out, and since I am such a big foodie (half my Instagram posts are food posts!) I decided to do this as a Yelp review. A bit tongue in cheek, but bear with me … it’s my work anniversary!
Here goes: (Disclaimer: love fest ahead.)
Overall Rating: 5/5 Will definitely continue to work here. Would highly recommend interns to apply.
Ambiance: 5/5 Moonsail North is a distributed team–we have staffers in Michigan and California. The Midwestern crew works out of our HQ housed in a historic building in Michigan’s state capital, while I mainly work out of my home office, traveling to clients for face-to-face meetings. The flexibility of working from home is amazing. But having an internal communication tool like Slack helps me feel like I’m always connected to the rest of the team. I love that we’re staying on top of work–with organized channels and a repository for ideas–while still being able to get to know each other and crack jokes.
Service: 5/5 Getting to work in such a fun, supportive environment has been incredible for my personal and professional growth. I love our team’s genuine focus on clients, and our shared value of giving back to the community through our birthday donation tradition and event sponsorships.
Recommended for:
- Amazing clients. I love the breadth and quality of our clients — from philanthropists to luthiers (guitar makers) and education providers to sustainability advocates, we are very lucky to get to work with such an interesting set of caring change-makers. I am constantly inspired by their work and am never, ever bored–how many people get to say that about their jobs?
- Innovation: At Moonsail North, we try to practice The Beginner’s Mind — the philosophy of staying open to new ideas and methodologies (as opposed to “experts,” who may be set in their ways of doing things). This means that everyone on our team is always on alert for new platforms, tools and resources that can increase the efficiency of our team, or that of our clients.
- Creativity: Most jobs don’t often make space for creativity. The beauty of working at a start-up is that we were able to be more intentional about building in opportunities to be more creative, whether it’s free writing or design or art. It’s been a great experience to explore visual storytelling and expression more.
- Growth: I’ve had the extreme privilege of learning the ins and outs of the communications world from award-winning communications colleagues.
(Okay. I guess I ended up doing a list anyway. And it’s really similar the Top 10 list we made at the end of 2015… but it’s still true!)
I don’t like uncertainty, so deciding to my leave my job to work with my sister (!) at her brand-new start-up (!) where we’d be “innovating as we go” (!) and didn’t really know what things would look like a year out took a leap of faith. But I knew that Rose and Scott are two of the best storytellers I know, have great work ethics, great attitudes, and vision — so I knew I’d be in good hands. And then I got to work with Bri, who’s got impressive initiative and put-togetherness, and Katie, whose positive energy and kick-ass visual storytelling skills are such an asset to our team. And we share a common love of sharks, so that’s awesome.
There are a million other big and little things that make working with #TeamMoonsail amazing — like the opportunity to work in the San Jose area more again, getting to experience Rose’s pregnancy as closely as I could when we’re 2,200 miles apart, and having the flexibility to travel or to get a later start to my day to build a self-care routine. I’m so excited for all the upcoming projects and creativity, and hope you’ll be part of our journey!