Boxer Spotlight - Laura Brings Her Problem-Solving Self to Work

"Bring Your _______ Self to Work" is an important pillar of our Box culture. We're a pretty mixed bag of different backgrounds and values around here, so the blank is perfectly different for each Box employee. In this series, we'll interview one of our own to give you a look at our diverse family of Boxers around the world.

Our subject this week is Laura Tomas, an Associate Technical Support Engineer based in our Redwood City, California HQ. Here's our interview:

Tell us a little about yourself and what you do at Box.
I'm a Technical Support Engineer at Box, handling customer escalations and, with my team, handle public communications during site events. I started at Box in the fall of 2014 after six years of academic IT at Yale (three as a student, three after graduating). I'm from LA and love to bake (and bring treats into the office!).

How does what you do contribute to Box’s success?
Box is doing amazing things with mobile, API integrations, and our webapp but we're nowhere without our customers. I enjoy working directly with customers in order to understand what we're doing well, what our gaps are with the product and documentation, finding bugs, and learning more about customer environments.

How has Box helped your career development? One career lesson you would like to share?
Box has helped me learn so much about the tech industry and the SaaS model. What has been invaluable at Box is the low barrier for connecting with other teams and learning about what they do. I've been able to work with my managers to attend internal trainings and dedicate weekly time to explore more technical topics.

How is Box culture/values reflected in your team? What's your favorite team tradition?
Everyone on my team is helpful to each other whenever we may face an issue we're not sure how to tackle or need to work as a global team to support a customer. It's very much an "all-hands-on-deck" attitude whenever a major event takes place. All our team emails include gifs of some sort! Plus, our team has donuts every Friday and Waffle Wednesday once a month (I'll make sourdough waffles in the kitchen!).

Not everything is sunshine and rainbows, what’s been the most difficult challenge?
Finding the answer to something isn't always easy, especially if the issue is customer specific. It's always surprising how customers use our product and how environments differ from company to company. Accounting for these differences is challenging and contributes to the problem-solving aspect of my role.

What’s your biggest goal for this coming year?
I'm running my first marathon! I want to make sure I finish it without hitting a wall at mile 20. A year-long goal is to run 1000 mi in 2017.