Mentor Spotlight: Ally @ Snapcommerce

Mentor Spotlight

Meet Ally, a Mentor at The Commons and Director of Operations at Snapcommerce.

To summarize Ally's career path in one line: Ivey HBA → Management Consulting (learned great data skills and a lot about e-commerce) → Strategy & Operations at Uber Eats (launched 4 cities, did a secondment to launch a stealth Uber startup) → Director of Operations at Snapcommerce (manage a team that helps the business run and ‘work’ across 3 product lines)

Describe yourself with three emojis

🔥 I get excited by everything and think everything is ‘fire’

💪 I love to roll up my sleeves and get to it

🥳 I love throwing big events!

Current role & location?

📍Director of Operations at Snapcommerce. Based out of Toronto.

We're so glad you're part of The Commons! What do you love about being a mentor here?

  1. Meeting so many great people across mentors, mentees and community members
  2. Learning something new every time I run a Sprint: people think about things differently and I enjoy learning from them
  3. Having career conversations with mentees: I love hearing everyone’s stories

Has there been anything unexpected that you've got out of mentoring with The Commons? 

Not totally unexpected but I have developed as a leader myself. It’s been excellent growth for me.

What's your favourite way to keep involved with the community?

I love doing coffee chats with mentees and other community members to see how everyone is doing & help where I can beyond just project Juniper. 

What should people who are thinking about joining The Commons know about it? 

You get what you put into it: the more of an investment on your part, the happier you’ll be with the return. Take the time to learn - it will be worth it. 

Tell us more about your role at Snapcommerce! What's a cool project that you've worked on?

  • Project Objective: Bring down product issue rates (e.g., someone having a poor product experience)
  • Project Overview: Needed to bring down our issue rate to improve customer CSAT and manage company expenses. This is tricky though as we don’t make our own products (we are an ecommerce company that sells other vendors’ products) nor do we have control over hotel experiences on our travel business.
  • Your Role: Guide my team through scoping this, running the data models and ideating what can be done about it. Pressure tested their recommendations with them. 
  • What made it so rewarding? I worked with a team of 6 on this. It was great cross functional exposure and we actually made customers’ experiences better!!!

What makes it so great to work at Snapcommerce? 

We’re growing so quickly that your own personal development and learning can mirror that. 

What's a fun perk you can expect working at Snapcommerce?

Facetime with the co-founders and C-Suite Team members:) You’d present your ideas to them

Thinking back to when you pivoted into tech, what's some advice you would've given yourself? 

  • Talk to everyone: you never know where your next lead will come from.  It can be exhausting and discouraging but don’t give up!! Try to find the ‘interest’ in it too… what little joys can you find from talking to others:)
  • Always put your best foot forward: the community is smaller than you think. This will definitely help you (see above) but also is a reminder to think about your brand and how you ‘show up’ to coffee chats.
  • Don’t get discouraged: trust in yourself and the process. Easier said than done but it’s always the answer.

What's an unpopular opinion you hold about careers, tech or the job search? 

Don’t take a role and assume the money will come. Make sure you are confident with the financial implications of your role or you’ll just stress and it will affect your performance. You don’t need to look to be the next billionaire but you should be able to comfortably support whatever it is you need. 

And now, a few fun tidbits about you!

Tell us some of your favourites:

🎙 Podcast: The Daily (New York Times), in particular the Sunday Read

📰 Where you get your daily news: The Skimm, The Peak, The Hustle

💻 A tech company you think should be on everyone's radar: Snapcommerce!!

📚 Book: Too many to count, I read A LOT

🎨 What you're doing outside of work: Building a house!!!

🌟 A CEO or leader you admire: Leader of BCG Canada

Three fun things to know about you!

  1. I will stay up all night reading a good book on a weeknight (scandalous!!)
  2. I watch more TV than anyone I know
  3. I’m a huge sports fan. I’ll watch any sport and google all the rules

Join our Strategy + Operations Sprint to get 1:1 access to mentors like Ally!

Interested in more?
Mentor Spotlight: Aritra Ghosh
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Mentor Spotlight: Aritra Ghosh
Meet Aritra, Product Manager at Azure (Microsoft) and Product Mentor at The Commons!
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