As ioby grows larger — we’re up to 18 full-time employees now! — we are also growing more distributed. We were founded in NYC, and many of our team still sits in our Brooklyn office. We also have offices and team members in Memphis, Cleveland, and Detroit, and will soon bring on team members in Pittsburgh and Washington, DC. We work with partners and resident leaders across the country, and our team spends a lot of time on videoconferences, as well as doing a good deal of travel to interface directly with partners and community leaders in cities from LA to Miami.
We’re actively working on being a better distributed team — to make our work seamless, transparent, and inclusive, so that there is very little difference in working from a home office in Cleveland as there is working alongside ten colleagues in our Brooklyn office.
[Another day, another videoconference at ioby]
At the end of the month, we’ll get another opportunity to test and improve on our goal of being a seamless distributed organization: our Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer Brandon Whitney is moving to San Francisco! After 10 years as a New Yorker, Brandon will be moving along with his partner Matt, who will be pursuing a great professional opportunity in the Bay Area.
Other than having to get up painfully early west coast time for staff meetings, we anticipate Brandon’s role at ioby, and his work life, to remain exactly the same as it has been since he and Erin Barnes founded ioby several years ago. He will still work closely with the teams he manages, our Leader Success, Product, and Operations teams via videoconference, tools like Slack and Asana, and phone. He will likely travel back to Brooklyn frequently to be part of essential in-person meetings with the Board of Directors and all-staff meetings.
[Did you ever know that you’re our hero?]
Brandon’s move also provides some great opportunities for ioby. The Bay Area is home to many partners, peers, funders, and leaders in the civic tech world, as well as countless leading community activist and grassroots groups. We’re excited that Brandon’s move brings a chance to more closely align with all the great Bay Area-based work being done in our various worlds.
Brandon, bon voyage and best of luck getting settled as a Californian! We’ll miss your head sticking up above your cubicle at your standing desk and your bike parked in our Brooklyn co-working space, but we’ll see you on a videoconference very soon!