New Hires: Welcome Josh and Michele

Tell us a little about yourself and where you are from.

Michele: Hi my name is Michele. I am from California from the Central Valley. I moved down to San Diego about six months ago when I started at Community Boost. I moved down here from the Bay Area. So I’m new-ish to San Diego, and I’m new-ish to Community Boost. I’ve been here about six months now.

Josh: I’m Josh and I’m originally from San Diego. I grew up a little bit north of San Diego in Riverside, and back in San Diego, North County. I love it!

What made you choose Community Boost?

Michele: Well, I’ve always had a passion for nonprofits and prior to working here, I worked for the Salvation Army, a pretty large-scale nonprofit. There I was the Marketing Manager overseeing about 30 locations. I worked really closely with a marketing agency where I got to know their work, what they did, and how their teams worked internally. I thought, “Wow, that’s really cool.” I would love to work for an organization like that where I’m getting to do this marketing kind of account management side of things, but also getting to work with nonprofits because that is where my passions lie. When I did decide to move down to San Diego, I was looking for companies like that, I found Community Boost and it was the perfect match. I was going to get all of that. Plus, you know, what seemed like and has turned out to be an amazing culture at the company, even though it’s been all virtual, that’s what made me choose Community Boost. I’m really glad that I got to work here.

Josh: Yeah. Similar to Michele. I started my career in the nonprofit space. For the first five years of my career, I was working with college students on a college campus with a faith-based nonprofit. I was just starting to get really interested in digital marketing. I kind of was looking for digital marketing jobs and found Community Boost. It felt like the middle of the Venn diagram, so to speak, of trying to learn about digital marketing and I’m really passionate about that, but also really passionate about the nonprofit space and doing meaningful work for partners who are doing meaningful work in the world. It just really felt like a perfect fit. So excited to be here.

What have you learned so far at Community Boost?

Michele: Well, one thing I’ve learned so far and also I think that it’s kind of one in the same that I want to continue perfecting, but something that is talked about a lot at Community Boost both internally and looking for people outside is thought leaders and how to be a thought leader. Our jobs here are as consultants for our nonprofit partners. So, just really living into that thought leader role for our nonprofit partners is something that I’ve started to learn how to do, but also I can want to continue learning how to do as I move and grow here.

Josh: It’s hard to boil it down to one learning. I feel like I’ve been learning so much. I will say, I think one thing sticking out, I knew that digital marketing is important for nonprofits, but I think during this year with COVID and everything moving virtual and online, it’s just even more important. I’m just blown away by our partners, jumping into the virtual world and I’ve been learning a lot about that.

What is your favorite core value of Community Boost?

Michele: My favorite core value is that everyone’s striving to be relentless learners. Again, that’s something I kind of just talked about. I’ve been learning, I want to continue learning, but I think that’s really important to think about at your job and also just in all parts of life. Learning never ends. Obviously, school is a very specific place where you learn, but I think after people graduate from whatever degree they’re pursuing, they maybe kind of lose that thought to learn more. I noticed that really every day at Community Boost, people who have been here since the beginning are still learning and sharing that information. And so is everyone else, that’s definitely something that I value a lot.

Josh: Wow. Well, Michelle stole mine. I wanted to do relentless learner too. I’ll choose We Celebrate Life. It’s really cool that Community Boost is just attached to the work that we’re doing. And I just liked that we slowed down enough to zoom out from the nitty-gritty of digital marketing to what are our non-profits actually accomplishing in the world and actually making an impact to better our world together. I just love celebrating that side. And then also the benefits of our culture, just really celebrating our weekends and our birthdays, having those as days off just to celebrate life and really enjoying life, as well as doing meaningful work.

What is your favorite part about working at Community Boost?

Michele: I think my favorite part about working here would definitely be getting to work with nonprofit partners. Like I’ve said, I’m really passionate about working with nonprofits, but besides that, I definitely think the culture of being able to celebrate life and everything that Josh kind of just said. You can tell, again, we worked here the whole time throughout working from home. So even with all of that, you can really just tell the strong culture and community that the employees have here. That also extends to our nonprofit partners. I think definitely that is my favorite part about working here. Just getting to work with all these fun, great people, on a daily basis.

Josh: Yeah. I just keep repeating it, but I think my favorite part of working with Community Boost is our partners. The clients that we do get to work with being nonprofits and organizations really working for social good. I really think that’s the true value of Community Boost. I feel like I really just want to be attached to work that is good and that I believe is meaningful for this world. And it’s nice to work for a marketing agency where I’m not necessarily getting a company that I disagree with or that is doing something like, you know, unsustainable in the world. That just feels like, you know, slimy or whatever. I love that our partners are all impacting the world in positive ways. Racial reconciliation, going towards feeding the hungry, doing all types of things that are actually benefiting the world. I can just feel good about doing my work day to day. 

What is one thing that people may not know about you or do you have any hidden talents?

Michele: Well recently at Community Boost, we started having committees and I signed up for the culture and party planning committee, which is super fun. I actually love event planning, entertaining, stuff like that in my personal life too. I love planning trips and like going all-in doing an itinerary and making reservations or even just like having people over and making insane charcuterie and brunch boards—meals and stuff like that. I’m all about event planning, party planning, entertaining, stuff like that, which is awesome that I’m getting to do that a little bit here, at least. So that’s exciting.

Josh: This man bun is pretty new. It started at the beginning of quarantine and I’m just going to keep rocking with it until the quarantine is officially over. And then you’ll probably see me with a haircut.

What is one place you would love to travel to? And what has been your favorite place you’ve traveled to?

Michele: My biggest travel destination would be Southeast Asia, like Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia. I really want to go there. And my favorite place that I have traveled to already–I really liked Italy. I like historical stuff, and the stuff there is obviously super old. I really love, again, part of my party event planning type thing, just for that, the fun part of planning the tour and getting to see all these historical places.

Josh: Shout out Justin Bieber in that “I’ll Show You” music video, but Iceland. I would love to go to Iceland. I think it would just be super fun to rent one of those off-road SUVs and just kind of travel around the whole place and camp and stuff and just see the different terrains. So Iceland would be super rad. Off the top of my head, I really liked Denver, actually, Denver, Colorado is super cool. Got to spend a weekend out there before and it’s just the view of the mountains from up there. Once you get used to breathing heavily from being in a mile-high city, it’s really amazing. And they have so much good food and breweries. It’s just a lot of fun.

If you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life what would it be?

Michele: I love salads and I think if I could only eat one thing for the rest of my life, it’d be salads because they’re healthy for the most part and you can just do so much with a salad. You can throw almost anything on there, even bread—Panzanella salad. So I’m going to go with salads.

Josh: Okay. I feel like that cheated a little, there are so many different salads. If you had to commit to one dressing, what would it be? 

Michele: Ooh. If I had to commit to one dressing, I’d go with probably just vinegarette because that’s pretty versatile.

Josh: I feel like I’m going to go the opposite of salads. So with this question, if I get to eat one thing for the rest of my life, I’m also going to add the condition that it wouldn’t mess up my stomach. And if that were the case, it would probably be a Texas brisket.

Michele: Oooh, you can put that on the salad.

Josh: Brisket salad, brisket sandwich, brisket by itself. Yeah. 

Bone-in or boneless wings?

Michele: Bone-in but I don’t like saucy wings, so I’m more of a dry rub. I think that’s also kind of a hot-button topic that people at Community Boost don’t talk about enough.

Josh: I feel like the question is more complicated than this or that for me. Hmm. Okay. So I’ll explain. I would choose, in this COVID world, if I’m eating out I don’t want to get my fingers all gross and be like licking my fingers when I’m eating on the patio at a restaurant so I would say boneless becaues I could use a fork and it just feels cleaner. That’s a product of the time right now. But with that being said at a really good wing spot, I would get bone-in.

James Hall