At their core, all great companies have people who unite teams and inspire everyone to bring their A-game to the table every day.
At SwiftComply, our VP of Customer Success is one of those people!
Sarah Schenkerberg started out at SwiftComply as an Implementation Team Lead. Sarah quickly proved to be a natural-born leader, bringing out the best in those around her.
We could tell you all about Sarah, but you should hear it from her instead.
What did you do before you started working at SwiftComply?
I had been in Electric, Gas, and Regulatory Compliance for over a decade and wanted to move over into renewable resources. I’m very passionate about compliance. I believe what we do matters, and I get passionate when talking and working with clients within compliance.
What are you most proud of since you started working with SwiftComply?
I have been at SwiftComply since May of 2022, a little less than a year. When I first started working at SwiftComply, I was hired into a different role, and what I really saw and what I really noticed about myself was my value. I was immediately put into a different role in SwiftComply, tasked with growing and leading a team, and that is my proudest accomplishment at SwiftComply. The team that we have grown in Implementations is…
I consider us the best!
We are the most dedicated group of people. I surround myself with brilliant individuals, and I listen to them. We work together as a team to develop the tools we need to succeed in implementations. We appreciate the autonomy that we’re given. We appreciate that our ideas are valued and that we can put them to use. But really, the thing I’m most proud of is my team. They are an amazing group of people.
What does your job entail?
So, I am the VP of Customer Success at SwiftComply. I wear two hats. In previous roles, I have worn ten hats, but right now, I wear two hats, which is an amazing feat for me! That goes back to work-life balance. The two hats that I wear are as follows:
I’ll talk about the first one.
After the sales process, we walk clients through the implementation process. Then, we have a handoff to our amazing Customer Success Team.
I am passionate about Implementations and our customer’s long-term success; I love working with clients as the end user. I’ve been the end user, so I have a lot of empathy for clients.
I enjoy looking at data and finding cleanup opportunities. I love providing clients with software that makes their lives easier and simplifies their jobs. And really, a customer said it best:
‘The software enables them to focus on what matters most: water safety!’
The second hat that I wear is Team Mom.
I am a mom of three kids, but I’m the team mom for my team.
I am there to be their biggest cheerleader. I am there to solve problems for them. I am there to escalate things. I am there to obtain resources. I am there to encourage, and I am there when they need me to be a vulnerable, empathetic ear, to listen to them when they feel vulnerable.
Those are my two roles.
What is your favorite part of your job?
My favorite part of the job is the people.
I love my team. They’re amazing.
But our real freedom within our siloed part of SwiftComply is just to be ourselves and try new things.
The freedom to fail.
The freedom to be ambitious enough to fail is a wonderful thing we have at SwiftComply. I love our team culture and that we rely on each other. I love that failure is celebrated and encouraged, and we look for opportunities and wins that can come from failure. I love that we have the autonomy to do that and to try things.
They may work, they may not – but it’s fun to try!
What’s the most exciting project you’re working on right now?
We have some ambitious goals, and after hearing a bit from me, you probably noticed that I’m a pretty ambitious person. Most people at SwiftComply are!
We’re a brilliant, driven group who take our jobs seriously and like having fun. The most exciting thing we’re working on is making small changes in our processes that make a big difference.
We have lofty goals of implementing a large backlog of customers who all deserve our time and attention, and we have limited resources. So, making those small adjustments, working together as a team to determine what fits best, and steering the ship in the right direction is an exciting time.
How would you describe the company culture at SwiftComply?
The culture at SwiftComply is special.
It’s something that I value because I came from Corporate America. Corporate America is challenging sometimes.
I didn’t know I needed a startup until I got here. I didn’t know I needed a small team until I got here, and the culture at SwiftComply is open, honest, and vulnerable; it’s all these things that make us love being here.
We enjoy our jobs. We all have our bad days, but when we have our bad days, we’re in them together.
Another important aspect of the culture at SwiftComply is having that work-life balance. I came from a job where we were all extremely overworked, wearing 10 to 20 different hats in every role, never valuing time off or rest. So, as ambitious as we are at SwiftComply, there’s a strong emphasis on rest, and that’s important to me.
Is there anything particularly unique about our culture?
I think that the people are the most unique part of SwiftComply.
I think that there is a diverse community at SwiftComply. Our uniqueness is celebrated, and when we work in team environments, we can take all those different perspectives and bring them together to form one collective thought and one collective community.
What are some of the perks of working at SwiftComply?
My favorite work benefit, and most people know this about me (I hope Mick, our CEO, knows this about me!) is that I know this about myself: I want to play hard on the weekends and rest when needed.
And guess what?
I start my weekend early every single week, by noon on Friday.
I’m out of here. My Slack status is off, and I’m starting my weekend because I need to decompress. I need those four hours at the end of the day to think through the list of things that didn’t get done that week and to prioritize them for Monday. So, I think the biggest perk for me is that I know myself, know what works best for me, and that Friday afternoon is beneficial for a refreshed Sarah come Monday!