Team Member Spotlight: Karen Bickford
Karen Bickford is a master at making big changes sound fun and is a puuuuurfect fit at Dynepic!
As a Technical Product Manager IV, Karen says you can think of her role as a switchboard - coordinating and focusing communication among many connections, and radiating information in return to empower everyone to move forward.
“This role requires keen communication, creativity, and experience,” Karen explained. “Right now I’m learning how to do custom automations in Jira to help streamline cross-company initiatives such as ATO maintenance and employee onboarding. The depth of these programs is vast and will continue to grow along with the company, so it's critical we start this now to save more time and money in the future.”
One other attribute that's been important to Karen’s success is her willingness to learn new things and “just dive right in!”
During her career, Karen spent more than a decade as an environmental scientist for state and local government, managing and building databases and companion GUI’s that could handle the amount of data she was collecting. Looking for a new challenge, she pivoted to freelance work and started her own business building databases and applications for a home inspection company.
“That’s where I figured out I didn’t want to do my own payroll and taxes,” she said half-jokingly. “Sometimes being a sole proprietor isn’t as exciting as people say.”
Before joining Dynepic, Karen once again switched up her goals and went to work for the FinTech industry as a software engineer and eventually a Site Reliability Engineer. She “transitioned from writing code and managing platform infrastructure to coordinating the backlog for people writing code and managing platform infrastructure.” Pretty soon, she set her sights on the opportunity to be part of a smaller company and continue to work remotely with the Dynepic team.
“I love that it’s a much smaller organization than what I’m used to - things move much faster at Dynepic than other companies I’ve worked with,” she shared. “Plus, I can still wear yoga pants and the commute is fabulous!”
Remote work also provides Karen more time for the things she loves most - outdoor adventure and her four cats who regularly make appearances on Zoom calls: Bucky Barnes, Peter Parker, Rosie, and the very sweet but a tad grumpy Maine coon, Kiki.
A Florida native, Karen is an experienced scuba diver, a certified instructor for the American Canoe Association, and mountain biker.
“For those who can’t wrap their head around the irony that Florida has no mountains and yet we mountain bike, we can heretofore refer to it as off-road trail riding,” Karen explained. “Peninsular Florida has excellent off road trails built on former phosphate mining pits, which provide a surprisingly fun variation in topography that mimics what it’s like to ride on mountain trails.”
Looking ahead, Karen said she’s excited to be part of Dynepic’s growth and a company that is a “force to be reckoned with in our market space.”
“I have no doubt we’ll just continue to kick ass!”