Immune Deficiency Foundation

What I Was Hired to Do

Which I was waiting for my work permit to come through, I volunteered at IDF. As soon as I got it, they hired me to help clean up and manage the database (CiviCRM) and expand the role beyond data entry.

Accomplishments

• Completely overhauled and re-wrote the operational systems to make them more automated and efficient.

• Consistent appreciation from colleagues about how I could help them out whenever they were stuck – even in things that did not fall into my job description.

• Led the implementation of large-scale projects (user portal, mail chimp, physician search)

• Being recognized and appreciated for holding our consultants accountable when they did not deliver at the standards they promised.

• Was promoted twice - from Database Specialist to Database Coordinator to Database Manager.  

Additional Thoughts/Learnings

IDF is a very comfortable place to work with predictable routines and little change. Most of roadblocks for new initiatives came from a lack of company-wide strategy. IDF had many departments with competing priorities and leadership was reticent to commit to any direction.

This manifested itself as a company-wide resistance to change. Since there were few opportunities for career growth, individuals were secretive about processes for fear of being made redundant or having their workloads increase.

I learned that it was important to have a team that shared my growth-mindset. I wanted to continually automate tasks and level up, but there was no structural support prevented the effort.