{"id":1273,"date":"2024-07-12T05:14:32","date_gmt":"2024-07-12T05:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yellowfalconmedia.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/12\/automattic-women-damianne-president-wordpress-com\/"},"modified":"2024-07-12T05:14:32","modified_gmt":"2024-07-12T05:14:32","slug":"automattic-women-damianne-president-wordpress-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yellowfalconmedia.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/12\/automattic-women-damianne-president-wordpress-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Automattic Women: Damianne President – WordPress.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

WordPress.com News<\/a>
WordPress.com Staff<\/p>\n

Welcome to Automattic Women<\/strong>\u2014conversations with some of the remarkable women working all over the world<\/a> to design and develop Automattic software and make the web a better place. Today\u2019s interviewee, Damianne President<\/strong>, talks to us from her home in Prague.
 
I was a third culture kid<\/a>, now a third culture adult. I like to think of myself as a world citizen, a curious person.
At Automattic, I\u2019m the product liaison in Woo<\/a> Happiness. I help drive change by working at the intersection of Happiness and the Woo Business Unit (BU). My role is focused on what<\/em> Woo Happy does, ensuring that communication is clear and effective between Woo Happiness and the Woo BUs, and that Woo Happiness is contributing to the priorities of the Woo division. 
I like to wake early, usually around 6:00, preferably before my alarm goes off. I begin my day with a walk around the block, and have time to putter around the house before I dig into work.
I typically work from 7am to 5pm, with a longer lunch that involves a walk. I work at home, moving between my kitchen table and my desk, but I also like to work for 3\u20134 hours at a cafe two or three times a week. Breaking up my time and location that way gives me just enough human interaction.
I rely on Asana<\/a> and my calendar to know what I should be doing all day. In the morning, I look at what I have to do for the day. I like to start with a more complex task, or one that requires more thinking and creativity. It can be anything from working on a project to figuring out a process or documentation for one of the teams I work with.
After that, I usually respond to pings in P2s<\/a> and Slack<\/a>. I slot in email sometime during the day as well, usually as a reset<\/p>\n

I was a teacher for 15 years. I taught in K-12 schools as a Maths teacher or a technology coordinator. When I left teaching, I looked at my skills and one of them was WordPress.
I was attracted to Automattic because I had a WordPress<\/a> blog and had been a proponent of WordPress as a teacher. I thought that I would enjoy being a Happiness Engineer, and that it would use my skills but I wasn\u2019t sure I was qualified. Long story short, I applied anyway and got the job. I\u2019ve changed my role twice in the 4.5 years that I\u2019ve worked for Automattic, and I continue to love the work. I enjoy working remotely, I like my colleagues, and I\u2019m adequately challenged, which is an important element of retention for me.
What\u2019s your favorite non-work activity?<\/strong>
I love reading. I blog about it at spoiltheending.com<\/a>, and plan to expand that into a podcast. (After four years, I\u2019ve just paused my other podcast<\/a>, Changes Big and Small<\/a>, to allow me enough time for this new project.) Beyond that, I love traveling and would like to go to Vietnam and New Zealand next year. I have a sabbatical<\/a> coming up, and have one eye on visiting Oceania during that time.
Connect with Damianne on LinkedIn<\/em><\/a>.<\/em>
That\u2019s it for this edition of Automattic Women. Follow<\/em> <\/em>Developer Resources<\/em><\/a> and<\/em> <\/em>Automattic Design<\/em><\/a> to meet more great women of Automattic. And if you\u2019d like to do more than just read about these great people, consider working with us!<\/em> <\/em>Join our team<\/em><\/a> of diverse, global perspectives building a better web, and connect your career to the power of Open Source.<\/em>