Introductions

[melissabarry]

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.

[#2]

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.

[#3]

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!

[#4]

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!

[#5]

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!

[#6]

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!

[#7]

Hi everyone!

My name is Akshat Dani, I'm a Customer Experience PM on the Growth Foundations team on Viva Goals. I get to work closely with Brittany on our Voice of Customer initiatives and taking those learnings and insights to our pm/eng teams and influencing our strategy and roadmap for viva goals. My most recent project was with FT and enabling FT to be fully enabled to run viva goals deployments with the help from our SME's. Outside of work I enjoy hiking, spending time with my 3yr old son, reading, and am always down to binge watch a show. Looking forward to being a part of this community and learning different ways technology can help us achieve more by doing less.

[#8]

Hey there, Melissa 8)

My name is Nathan Roberts. I am a Windows Insider MVP, Xbox Ambassador and Windows & Xbox Insider. I am currently studying IT & Computer Science at university and work in a school full time (study part time). 

In my free time I can be found helping people online on the Microsoft Community (Nathan Roberts (SN) (microsoft.com)) and can be found working on development projects of my own and experimenting with AI and technology, or playing on Xbox. 

I use Viva at work to help me manage what tasks I have and to help organise time. I am playing around with the feature in Teams to see what else there is on there. 

Look forward to meeting new folk :)

Nathan

[#9]

Hello @melissabarry & everyone in the community!

I'm Michaël, M365 Dev MVP at onepoint (France) and curious about the Viva world. I like to solve daily problems my customers and coworkers meet everyday and love to extend the platform features with some code 🤩. I want to guide companies on how they can engage their employees through Viva modules and eventually, find use cases that would involve extensibility with Viva Connections!

In my spare time, I spend time with my wife and kids, I contribute to the PnP Initiative and occasionally I give some conferences. I really love the M365 community and learning new things from it!

[#10]

Hey, everyone! I'm Sonya Bedi and I'm a proud member of the Glint People Science team in London.

I work directly with customers to figure out what their employees need to feel fulfilled and happy at work. I'm passionate about helping people connect to their unique blend of strengths, understand themselves better, and find purpose and growth in the place where they spend most of their waking hours. I’m incredibly excited to connect with the wonderful Viva customer community and learn about what your organizations want and need from your integrated Viva experience.

Outside of work, I am a busy mother of two little girls who remind me to be a better listener. Currently, I am basking in this Spring feeling, and planning fun things with my little family.

[#11]

What a start! Hi everyone! I'm Molly Merkel, a Principal Customer Success Manager for Glint and currently part of the GCP world in LinkedIn! I am obsessed with creating an incredible relationship with my clients where I can help them in providing valuable strategic partnership to enhance their engagement programs. When they succeed, I succeed. I thrive on problem solving and bringing efficiency and productivity to my internal and external clients! I currently live in Atlanta with my puppy Leo, husband and 3 kids. My oldest daughter is about to graduate GCSU, middle daughter is at UGA and my youngest is a sophomore in high school. I love working out, reading and spending time with my people!

[#12]

Hi everyone! My name is Varun Gorur. I am based in Toronto, Canada, with my wife and a 3-year-old toddler. I am a Senior Customer Success Manager on the Viva Glint team.

Apart from helping our amazing clients achieve their People Success strategy, I am also one of the leads for the Viva internal Enablement, working on the Viva Newsletter for Glintsters, Viva Speaker Series, Glintster Viva Engage Community, and other projects.

I am passionate about learning and trying new technologies, especially the ones that make our lives easier, connected, and included, like Microsoft Viva. I have spent the last 10+ years in the HR tech industry and am fortunate to be part of the next wave of transformation in the Employee Experience space.

I am excited to join this community to witness all the goodness around Viva in one place. I am also very excited for our Glint clients to find all the information on Viva, Glint's transition to Viva, and explore the other exciting Viva apps.

Outside work, I like hiking, traveling, and exploring new restaurants with my family.

[#13]

Hi all! My name is Kathryn Bowen and I, too, am a Senior Customer Success Manager on the Viva Glint team. In my day-to-day here, I spend part of my time helping our fantastic customers project manage their survey programs and part of my time on Viva Community knowledge management/learning & development.

I have always had a passion for the "psychology of business" where we get to take a deeper look at what makes employees happy and allows them to bring their best selves to work. Being a part of Viva Glint has allowed me to be a part of project teams that are directly impacting employee engagement and making meaningful differences for employees. I'm seeing first hand how this "meaningful difference" can be increased through the use of technology, and it is so fascinating to see the future come to life! Thinking about this community space, while I am excited about SO many things, I'm most looking forward to having a great place to share our insights on what we're seeing on our own teams,  especially in regards to the relationships between technology, productivity, and engagement. I know we all have so much to learn from each other.

Other than my day-to-day work, I'm based near Sacramento, California and frequently pop into the Bay Area to see my teammates. I spend a bunch of my time hanging out with my 2.5 year old niece, and I'm also an avid reader, foodie/amateur chef, and show binge-watcher! 

Looking forward to getting to know everyone!

[#14]

My name is Flemming Goldbach and I am the Chief Product Officer and Head of Engineering at LMS365. We are Learning Management platform built into M365 and have been an early adaptor and supporter of Viva Learning.
I am passionate about how Viva can help drive more engagement and learning opportunities to people in organizations using Microsoft 365 everywhere.

[#15]

Hi Everyone,
I'm Louise, I'm based in the Netherlands and I work for Cargill. We are bringing Viva to Cargill and I'm really curious to see real examples of how other companies are using Viva to make life better for employees.

[#16]

Greetings all!

I'm Arin Komins and I'm the Microsoft 365 product owner for Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. We are just now getting our feet wet with Viva (starting with Viva Connections and personal Viva Insights), and looking to get lessons learned for the other Viva modules to assess if they make sense in our org.

Looking forward to Viva Amplify and Viva Pulse, and when Viva Learning starts to speak Workday!

[#17]

Hello everyone! My name is Larissa Linton and I am a Senior People Science at Glint. I am passionate about helping customers uncover insights that lead to practical, meaningful actions to improve the employee experience. I am really excited about all of the opportunities to leverage different aspects of Microsoft Viva to help people be happy and successful at work!

I am located in Michigan, USA. Outside of work, I enjoy spending time with my husband and two children. I love to travel and am always planning my next vacation!

[#18]

Hi everyone! My name is Avneeta Solanki and I work alongside Melissa on the Customer Empowerment Team as part of Viva People Science. I am focused on listening to what customers need, what problems they are trying to solve for and how we can empower them through scalable People Science content in Viva. The other half of my job entails working directly with customers as a Senior People Science Consultant, helping to improve the employee experience within their organizations. I am based in London, have two kids who keep me very active, and we are excited to do more travel together this year! I look forward to connecting with you all in the near future!

[#19]

Hi friends, my name is Marcus and am a director of employee experience at Microsoft. I've been at the company for over 15 years and my specialty has been driving global technology change programs. The latest one that I've driven is the adoption of Microsoft Viva for our own 200,000 employees over the last two years. I'm excited to trade notes with all of you about our experiences leading change. I'm based in Boise, Idaho, and can't wait for summer : - )

[#20]

Hello there, I'm Caribay Garcia! I'm a member of the Microsoft Viva People Science team, and I'm responsible for leading thought leadership efforts. My primary focus is to ensure that our team conducts innovative research and develops perspectives on the topics that are most important to our customers and best support the development of a human-centric product that helps employees be happy and successful at work, and helps organizations perform at their best. Like some of my great colleagues on this thread, I'm and organizational psychologist and get excited by the idea of technology that transforms and makes work better for people everywhere. On a personal note, I'm Venezuelan but currently reside in San Francisco, and I'm on a mission to find the best Venezuelan food in the bay area. Thrilled to connect with you all here in Viva Community!