Sam Torres

I have been here for just about a year now! I started with Liz and Amani when we originally formed the team last summer.

Our team has grown from 3 people to now over 25, and we've all accomplished so much in such a short period of time.

As we can all attest to on the Hitchhiker team, our projects and priorities shift monthly, weekly, and sometimes daily. I have categorized my projects into three buckets, listed in order of recency:

Hitchhiker Site Launch:

• Creating and developing training content for Hitchhikers
• Working collaboratively with the team to QA and iterate on the site
• Creating Experiences and Pages for the Hitchhiker site (like the Spotlight page you're on now, but also Hitchhiker Blog, Hitchhiker Events, and Hitchhiker Answers Search)

Answers Free Trial:

• Growing our team to be able support 100s of AFTs and Answers implementations
• Working with Product and Engineering to ensure the technology scales
• Training and onboarding plenty of new Hitchhikers as the program grows

Answers Beta Customers:

• Working with customers as project manager of an Answers implementation
• Ensuring successful launch of a newborn Answers product; helping to deliver a successful, Answers-focused ONWARD19 (made possible by happy Answers beta launch partners)
• As Yext's Hitchhiker, liaising with Marketing, Consulting, Leadership, and other internal teams. Being the Yext HH has allowed me to meet so many new people and work with almost every team at the company, and I'm incredibly grateful for that.

I have to say that the work we all did on the State Department COVID19 site was the proudest moment for me. We were able to stand up, in one week, a COVID19 hub that has since handled over 100,000 queries and over 100,000 clicks, contributing to the successful repatriation of over 100,000 citizens. We did it all in record time, and a contact at the State Department called Yext an "absolutely essential business". It was extra motivating to know that we at Yext can help bring citizens home amidst a pandemic, and that definitely showed when you look at some of the crazy deadlines we hit!

I was also inspired by the other pro bono work that our team has done during the pandemic for both state and local governments.

This is easy! It's definitely the technical skills that I have acquired:

• HTML
• CSS
• JavaScript
• JSON
• SQL
• APIs
• Domains & Publishing

I really had no technical background before joining the team - especially the HTML/CSS/JS concepts - and now I'm writing training on them for posterity. I'm also helping others out and debugging their issues rather than my own; let me tell you, it's much better being in this position!

Even if I don't use these skills directly in my career going forward, just knowing how these concepts work together and how technology comes to life is incredibly valuable. I have a much more "big picture" view of technology and software that I did not previously have.

My favorite CSS project was Aspen Dental, pictured below.

As an Administrator, you're really helping to define the future of our products. Initially, we had to "close the gap" to make our products externally-facing, and that required work from just about every product and engineering team. Now, as we launch the program, build out our AFT machine, and bring external Hitchhikers into the mix, we're going to have to keep redefining and growing our products. Administrators' input into the product is incredibly important and helps shape our company strategy.

Approaching ONWARD19 with our beta Answers customers was incredibly challenging. I joined the team and within months had to not only learn a brand new product and new technical skills, but I also had to successfully deliver Answers to our beta customers. Also, given BBVA and IHA were going to be on stage at ONWARD, I had to make sure they had a positive overall experience and outlook with the product. It definitely took a village of teams across Yext to make this a success, and it was very challenging for everyone involved.