Behind the Scenes: Technology Tales
AMA Toronto’s technology infrastructure has changed in the last year. We’ve upped our game under the leadership of VP Christy Varicat Digital Marketing and VP Vincent Mok Technology.
Vincent and his team of Luis Francisco Vega and Michelle Hung have provided new internal technology opportunities for our chapter. These include adoption of Slack for internal volunteer communications and external communications for Members with the Membership Networking channel. They’re working with our Marcom team to explore new email opportunities. Vince, thank you for becoming our “go-to” for tech questions.
If you’ve been on the AMA Toronto website recently, you hopefully noticed big changes. For more than 6 months VP Christy Varicat, has led her team and other volunteer teams through a major and welcome web relaunch that went live with Phase 1 in July.
Our new website has moved us to a new CMS platform and strategically brought together three AMA websites: AMA Toronto, Mentor Exchange and Canada’s Marketing Hall of Legends into one AMA Toronto site. Sounds difficult right? It’s even harder with a very limited budget and when you’re relying on a volunteer team who does this in their spare time.
Behind the scenes there’s been an army of volunteers. Our expert digital volunteers include: Michelle Fernandes Director Design/UX, Mihir Naik Director SEO, Praveen Cherian Director Web Analytics and Astrid Monge Director Digital Content and of course Christy. They’ve collaborated with team volunteers from Marcom, Mentoring, Canada’s Marketing Hall of Legends, Volunteers, Membership, Partnership and more to determine requirements, approve design and generate content for a more user-friendly website. Even Miglena, our Past President, was busy writing copy and picking stock photos for the new site.
These new technology improvements are just the beginning. Thank you to the AMAzing volunteers who have made this happen for our community. Phase 2 here we come.
Meet our July Rockstars
Every month I’m delighted to present our latest group of volunteer Rockstars. We never have to search too far to find inspiring leaders who have impact on our community. Thank you for your awesome contributions!
Akhil Tharaney: Manager Volunteer Onboarding
Akhil has taken a strong role since he started working with Director Volunteer Onboarding and Rockstar Jermaine Wellington. They updated our onboarding PPT to become a broader information source for volunteers. He and Jermaine came up with the idea of our new Ask Us Anything events for volunteers and is helping us launch this monthly program. He’s a great source of ideas and a talented contributor.
Flavia Barbosa: Manager Volunteer Engagement
Flavia has had major impact since joining the volunteer team. In April she worked with her Director Maithili Khansaheb (also a Rockstar) to develop a social media campaign thanking AMA volunteers during National Volunteer Week. In May she worked with Maithili on the Town Hall launching our new brand promise to volunteers. She developed an internal Slack teaser campaign and helped develop and deliver an agenda which included a novel spinning wheel for our prize draw. She’s creative, enthusiastic and a joy to work with.
Mihir Naik: Director of SEO
Mihir Naik joined our Digital Marketing volunteer team last year to lead SEO and digital marketing efforts for AMA Toronto. During our website relaunch he was instrumental in the challenging task of migrating three websites into one on a new CMS platform. He has worked closely with AMA partners and teams to ensure both a SEO first and customer first approach. We’re all benefiting greatly from his amazing work.
If you’d like to learn more about our volunteer community and opportunities, please contact me at [email protected]
