Hi, all! Welcome to the Viva Community. We are thrilled you are here to connect and engage with peers and experts in the employee experience space. To get to know the members of the Viva Community, we are going to start this very first discussion forum with introductions. We hope this thread continues to grow over time so members of our community can continually get to know one another. Some ideas of what to include in your introduction: your name, where you are located, your role in your organization, topics of interest, and why you are excited to join this Community. I'll go first! My name is Melissa Barry and I am part of the Microsoft Viva team. I lead our customer empowerment team as part of Viva People Science and launching this site is one of the many projects that I am fortunate to be part of in my current role. I am passionate about making people happier and successful at work, and I believe when individuals succeed, organizations succeed. I am interested in the intersection of organizational psychology and technology and what that means for the future of work, especially as we think about AI. I am thrilled to be part of this community to connect and learn from all of you. Outside of work, I love exploring our local NYC parks and restaurants with my husband and daughter.

Hi all! I'm Eric Knudsen, my background is in organizational psychology and people analytics, and I lead the analytics and research arm of Viva People Science. My team loves taking a human-centric approach to exploring, researching, and testing questions about how the workplace and employee needs are evolving! Our goal is to produce insights and learnings that elevate the human-centricity in Viva products - an interest I suspect so many of us share! Fun fact: before I was helping to weave humanity into software products, I worked with a team building a series of assessments to identify and hire high-potential airline pilots - who had never yet flown a plane!

Hi Everyone! I'm Carolyn Kalafut, part of the People Science Team, MSFT Viva. I'm located in San Francisco and work directly with our product teams to imbed the science of people success and happiness at work into the products we build! I love thinking about how we can keep humanity at the heart of technology and am excited to connect with and learn from everyone here on the Viva Community!

Hi Melissa! My name is Kevin McDonnell, I'm a Microsoft MVP, member of the Viva Explorers, co-host of the GreyHatBeardPrincess podcast and Solutions Architect at Avanade. This gives me the fortunate position of being able to not only live the Microsoft world for a day job but also be able to share my passion for it outside of work as well. I love being able to have the time to keep up with the latest changes in the Microsoft space, especially with Microsoft Viva, and then share that with others to help them be more productive and collaborate more effectively. Many of the Viva Explorers have a persona and mine is the Viva Transformer as I like to be able to take the implementations of Viva and help organisations make that happen, getting the adoption and change in place to realise the value of the investment. Outside of the work and MS passion, I am the father of three boys and two cats who keep me busy enough but just about leave enough time to also volunteer as a Cub Scout Leader, sharing skills for life to 8 to 10 1/2 year olds in the UK.

Hey Melissa! I'm Brittany Harper, and I'm on the Microsoft Viva Goals team. I work on our Growth Foundations team specializing in customer advocacy and scaling customer programs - one of the coolest projects I've been part of so far is being the Viva Goals Community App Owner and helping to launch this site. I'm passionate about the customer's voice and making sure they are heard in all of the programs we launch in Viva Goals! When I'm not at work, I spend my time diving into other worlds via books, soaking up the sun on long walks with my partner and dog, and traveling as much as possible (fun fact, this year I will be visiting 6 countries for the first time!). I'm so looking forward to learning from you all!

Hello Melissa & World! Thank you for inviting me in. My name is Lesley Crook and I'm a Microsoft MVP of 7 years based in Brighton UK with my husband and 2 rescue doggies. I am the unintentional founder of the Viva Explorers. I regard myself as not too technical with a focus on employee engagement, user adoption and change management. Started with Yammer successes then Teams and now Viva! I love helping businesses to nurture Champion networks of which the Viva Explorers is and is gaining momentum from a high majority of the product groups but at this time predominately SharePoint expertise. I am see myself as a visionary and excited to see how Copilot is developing. I think the first application where this will really shine is Viva Amplify with writing guidance. To preview this Spring/Summer 2023. Here is a blog I have written on how I see Viva as a very kind new hire buddy!

Introductions | Microsoft Community Hub

30 Replies

RobSoto
Iron Contributor
Oct 28, 2024
Hi everyone!

I know I'm late to the group, but I thought I'd introduce myself anyway. My name is Rob, I've been with Catapult Systems/Quisitive since April 2019. My career started 2007 in infrastructure, I evolved to cloud app support and in 2019 I moved full time into a consulting role. Since then, I've been exploring M365 and everything is has to offer. I landed on the Viva Suite and found my niche. I advocate for authentic change by supporting tools that foster it, like the Viva Suite. I want to help organizations bring about lasting change and positive influence and the Viva Suite can help do that. Looking forward to supporting the Viva Suite here!

-Rob
NickAnderson1983
Copper Contributor
Dec 07, 2023
Hello All,
I am Nick Anderson out of South Dakota. I work for a large regional healthcare system in the midwest. We are in the process of implementing Viva Connections and Viva Engage. I am one of two that are developing out our Viva Connections experience and the main one building and maintaining our Viva Engage ecosystem. I am not super familiar yet with all that can be done with Viva Connections and want to learn more about adaptive cards and how to dynamically display data using adaptive cards. Looking forward to chatting and meeting others in this community.
- Loreen La Penna
  Microsoft
  Dec 11, 2023
  NickAnderson1983 Hi Nick! I don't know if you've seen our technical documentation yet, but here's a page with some good examples of Adaptive Card quick views for Viva Connections: Viva Connections Adaptive Card Extension Quick View samples | Microsoft Learn. You'll find more documentation in the TOC, too!
Dazza21
Brass Contributor
Jul 04, 2023
Hi everyone!

My name is Darion Mannie, and I'm a Collaboration Consultant for Theta, a Microsoft Partner based in New Zealand. I am passionate about the employee experience with a keen focus on helping people work smarter not harder. Microsoft Viva is still something people are not sure about within the circles I've come into contact with, and I'm really excited to be able to work with teams to improve their adoption and investment into Viva. My weekends comprise of family time, music, movies, cooking and the occasional outdoor adventure.

Hoping to learn and grow within this community, and contribute wherever I can!
Jaclyn Richardson
Microsoft
May 19, 2023
Greetings to all, My name is Jaclyn Richardson, and my role in HR centers around optimizing the employee experience through our exceptional products Viva Insights, Viva Pulse and Viva Glint. In my quest to continuously improve the quality of life for all, I proudly label myself as a quality crusader!

I'm here to eagerly absorb your wisdom, contribute my own insights (yes, pun intended), and bask in the greatness of this community. Cheers to new connections!
RuthHollands
Microsoft
May 04, 2023
Hiya!

I'm Ruth, content designer for Viva Topics. Currently, I focus on a variety of features within Viva Topics ranging from managing topics to user & engagement metrics. I'm passionate about creating user-friendly UI through research, knowledge, and customer feedback.

If you have any questions about content design, UI, user/admin guidance and resources, or features in general within the Viva Topics space, please don't hesitate to reach out to me! Let me know how I can help and how we can continue to make Viva Topics a great tool for your organization.

Currently, I'm based out of Georgia, but a Texan at heart. Outside of my role at Microsoft, I'm a climate activist and advocate. I also love baseball and hanging out with my golden retriever, Hank.
Loreen La Penna
Microsoft
Apr 26, 2023
Hi everyone!

My name is Loreen La Penna and I'm a Content PM for Microsoft Viva documentation.

My team focuses on technical and support documentation, and we love working with the product and content teams across the Viva apps.

We want to create great content to help admins, operators, and end users adopt and use Microsoft Viva with the ultimate goal of creating great employee experiences!

I'm so glad to be part of this community to learn about what people need and the problems they're trying to solve to inform our content strategy, planning and updates.

I'm based in the Seattle area, but our content teams are located all over the world.

Outside of work I spend a lot of time walking my dog. I also like to travel, and once a year go to Thailand to volunteer at an elephant rescue, which is a passion of mine.
NicolasKheirallah
MVP
Apr 22, 2023
Hello everyone! My name is Nicolas Kheirallah and got abit of a mixed role but Microsoft 365 Architect/Specialist with focus on SharePoint and Viva. So alot of focus on Designing intranets from scratch but also what happens after with improving the daily work of the employees so I'm really passionate about Viva and the whole employee experience!
Allison Michels
Steel Contributor
Apr 20, 2023
Hi! Allison Michels here -- I am the Viva Engage and Viva Connections teams and happy to help customers take their next step in adoption with employees.
craigramsay
Microsoft
Apr 20, 2023
Hi friends, I'm Craig Ramsay, Principal People Scientist leading foundational research on the factors and conditions that enable people to be happiest and most successful at work. I've been with Glint for seven years through the LinkedIn acquisition, and for the past year, as a part of the small but mighty People Science team supporting Viva Product development. I'm excited to see how the Glint science and understanding of employee experience and engagement will help our customers take full advantage of the Viva suite to empower their employees and improve their business.
I live in a tiny cabin in the redwood forest near the seaside town of Santa Cruz, California. For fun, I like to travel, play home-chef with my girlfriend, skate- and snowboard, and practice guitar. I have one daughter who is graduating this semester from SJSU.
Beth_Demko
Microsoft
Apr 20, 2023
Hi all! I am Beth Demko and I am a Senior People Scientist at Glint. I live in the Atlanta area with my husband, 3 high schoolers and 3 dogs. Yes I live in a bit of chaos always! 🙂 Thankfully, I am always up for an adventure and I love to travel too. At work, I am lucky to partner with our amazing clients to share our best practices and thought leadership to help bring their vision of People Success to life through our technology and POV. I am an I/O psychologist, was a client prior to coming to Glint, and love to bring these perspectives together to add value and support our client's business/people/cultural strategies. I was an active user of the Glint community as a client and have personally experienced the value of bringing customers together to learn from each other; I learned so much!! I am thrilled to be a part of this team to support customer enablement and learn with all of you!

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Introductions

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