Meet the Kajabi Team: Audrey Sperry

Welcome back to another fabulous edition of the Meet the Kajabi Team blog series! 

If you’re a Kajabi user, we want you to know that you have a huge team of people committed to your success. That’s why we publish this series: to introduce you to our team members who make things happen at Kajabi.

Today you’re going to meet Audrey Sperry, who started her career in the nonprofit world and discovered a craving for logical-based challenges. Programming fed that part of her brain. So she went an entirely different direction, enrolled in coding bootcamp, and became a software developer.

Name: Audrey Sperry

Job title: Developer

What do you do at Kajabi?

I'm a developer in business operations, where we build tools and create better workflows for internal departments like billing, customer support, and human resources. Right now, for example, we're trying to make it easier to onboard new employees. I've really enjoyed getting to know the other departments and the work they do, and understanding how all the pieces fit together at Kajabi. Ultimately, I'm trying to make my teammates' lives easier, and I think that's a really fun goal to have. We're building tools to help them do their jobs more efficiently and effectively. 

Can you tell us about Kajabi projects you’ve worked on that have made the biggest impact?

We recently streamlined the workflow for the billing team to make their job a lot less stressful. The billing department needs a lot of functionality for all kinds of things: issuing refunds, changing plans, extending trials, and more. The new system saves them time — which saves our customers’ time — because our billing support specialists only have to go to one place now.

We’ve also been working with the customer support team, making sure that they have everything they need to best serve our customers. When a customer support team member opens a ticket in one system, for example, they no longer have to search for account information in a different tool. Instead, they can access all the information they need from one place.

Can you tell us about an experience that shaped your worldview?

After college, I joined AmeriCorps VISTA, which is a branch of AmeriCorps that strengthens organizations that alleviate poverty. You serve people living in poverty, while also living in poverty yourself. I was a youth health educator focusing on teen pregnancy prevention, and I made $11,000 that year. They basically create an environment where you’re living at the poverty level. It was a really interesting time. The experience definitely changed my worldview on poverty in America, and it shaped my professional and personal values going forward.

How did you get interested in software development while working in the nonprofit space?

When I was working as a nonprofit consultant, I realized there was a big need in the nonprofit industry for better technology. Nonprofits needed an easier way to create basic documents to successfully run a nonprofit. There are a lot of policies, for example, that could follow a mold. 

We tried to use existing tools online to enable our clients to easily create their own policies. Through that process, I discovered software development. 

But even before that job, I knew nonprofits needed better technology. I once oversaw a bicycle program that lent people donated bikes for $15 for three months. When they returned the bike, they got their money back. A lot of homeless people relied on that program as a way to get around because it was pretty much a free program. 

But getting the program organized was awful. All they needed was a really simple piece of software. I would’ve loved to go back and volunteer my time with them to build them a tool, but that program no longer exists.

What do you like to do when you’re not working?

I love gardening and woodworking. House projects are my favorite! I built our dining room table and now, I'm building railings for our porch.