We’re excited to announce Stephanie Vasquez’s promotion to operations manager at Robot Creative. Stephanie has flourished at Robot, having been successful in every capacity. Her speedy trajectory has taken her from project coordinator to project manager and then from operations assistant to her current position as operations manager. Stephanie feels that her 10+ years of teaching experience has helped her succeed in her roles at Robot Creative.
Get to know Stephanie
Q: What were you doing before you worked at Robot Creative, and how did that experience prepare you for this role?
A: I spent more than a decade teaching. I spent a couple of years in public school and transitioned into private home-schooling opportunities, where I worked as a math interventionist for kids who struggled in math. The biggest thing I learned from teaching that I can translate into this role is how to manage people. Teaching helped me manage kids and get them to complete things, and now it’s like I’m doing the same thing, but with adults. Also, being well-organized has helped me greatly because I know how to stay on top of the millions of things thrown at me daily.
Q: What’s your favorite thing about working at Robot?
A: The team! It’s so cool to vibe with everyone. It’s unusual to have a team of people that works so well together, gets along and genuinely enjoys each other’s company. We even spend time together outside of work.
Q: What’s something you’re jazzed about outside of work?
A: So many things! I am a super crafty, creative person. I enjoy doing things with my hands, bringing color to my life through creating jewelry and crocheting. I also enjoy spending a lot of time with my family.
Q: When did you realize Robot Creative was the right place for you?
A: I felt it on day one. I fit in so well with everyone and knew I was supposed to be here. I felt comfortable immediately just being myself.
Q: What is it like being a part of the leadership team?
A: Moving from a project coordinator role into a leadership role has helped me understand my role more profoundly. As a part of the leadership team, I see my role in the grander scheme of things and now have a deeper understanding of not just how my role affects the company but also how each individual person here and the work they do affects the company’s overall goals.
Q: How has Lara August’s leadership helped you in your roles?
A: Lara helped me find a voice in all the roles I’ve been in. I didn’t have leadership skills before this position, and Lara has trained me to be a good leader. She’s very inspirational, smart and confident, and she strongly believes in people. She’s made me feel extremely worthy to be in this position and makes me feel like I deserve to be here and that I deserve a place here. Her attitude and ability to be a role model have helped me step into this leadership position and feel comfortable and confident. I hope that one day, I can also be a good leader like her.
Q: Tell us about your love for numbers.
A: I’ve always been a numbers person and naturally drawn to math. Numbers come easily to me because they work. It’s concrete. Math is very black-and-white to me. My love for numbers now in my current role relates back to what I did best as a teacher: teaching math.
Q: What are some challenges you’ve encountered? How have you overcome them?
A: The biggest challenge has been learning the accounting part of the Operations Manager role. Working in QuickBooks and understanding its backend – how a bill affects our P&L, how to categorize it and how it affects our accounts receivables was a huge learning curve for me. I was learning the new software, but working closely with Lara greatly helped me. I have received a lot of support from Lara and our accounting team. I think it’s important to be totally transparent about where you feel you fall short and to speak up when you don’t know how to do something.
Looking Ahead
Q: What are you most excited about in your new role?
A: I’m most excited about my participation as part of the leadership team and to see how I can help Robot grow. I see so much potential.
Q: What do you look forward to when thinking about the future of Robot Creative and where it’s heading?
A: I’m looking forward to the growth. The growth is inevitable. I see it coming, I see it on the horizon, and I’m excited to see how it’ll impact the people here who work hard.
Q: Do you feel the path you took to being promoted to operations manager has had a better outcome than if you had just jumped into the role?
A: I wouldn’t have been able to join Robot Creative as an operations manager without the experience in my previous roles. While they were brief, the experience I got from being the project coordinator to the project manager was tremendous. I learned to manage the people at the project level and now at the operational level I’m managing everything. There’s no way I could’ve done that without first being in the previous positions.
