After working as a practitioner of analytics and optimization for the past six years (at Adobe, the Apollo Group, and most recently Google), I’m excited to announce that I’m ‘officially’ making the move to the vendor side of the house! I’m joining the Google Analytics team as a ‘Best Practice Advocate’ for analytics and optimization.

Five years ago, I would have said this role was my dream job. Two years ago, when I joined Google, I still would have said that this role was my dream job. And today, now 5 days in, I’m happy to say I’ve actually landed my dream job! 🙂

I say ‘officially’ with quotes for two main reasons:

1. I’ve already been at Google for two years, many might think that I’ve been on the vendor side since joining… Not so! I was doing some other really cool stuff.

I actually spent the past two years at Google as an in-house practitioner, working with the ‘Google for Work’ team to build out their analytics & optimization practice. It was a very exciting journey – I learned a ton, made many great connections, helped build cool tools and websites, experienced Google from a unique angle, and solved many business needs and goals.

As my director would often say, the goal is to make yourself redundant in your role. I feel I’ve done a good job of that and am leaving the Google for Work team with a solid analytics & optimization practice and a skilled group of practitioners to continue to push it forward. I will miss them, but I know they’re gonna kill it.

2. I’m joining the GA team… but not as a product manager or an engineer. I won’t be building products. Instead I get to teach people how to use our awesome tools.

I’m joining the education part of the Google Analytics team which focuses largely on teaching and advocating for analytics as a practice, toolset, and medium to be best in class digital marketers.

I’ll still be a practitioner of analytics (in my heart and in this role) – I’ve gotta keep my skills sharp! But I’ll also be helping to put together a lot of great content around best practices for our products, training materials, and will be out in the industry advocating on behalf of digital analytics and optimization.

In this role, I’ll be working closely with some of the most experienced and knowledgeable analytics people I know (and whom I’ve looked up to as mentors): Justin Cutroni, Louis Gray, Adam Singer, & Daniel Waisberg. I’m really, really, really (would it be weird to throw in a few more reallys here??) excited to bring my background and experience as a practitioner to the Google Analytics Education team in this new role and to work with such an awesome team. I’m looking forward to what the next few years will bring!