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 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!

[#3]

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.

[#4]

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.

[#5]

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! 

[#6]

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.

[#7]

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.

[#8]

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!

[#9]

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!

[#10]

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.

[#11]

@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!