Women in Technology: Amanda Gorman

Director of Customer Success at StellarWP, Amanda Gorman, on collaboration, connection, and what customer success means to her.

Amanda Gorman was born and raised in Rochester, Latest York, where she still lives, raising her three-year-old son and fifteen-year-old nephew together with her husband. She loves spending as much time as possible outside, preferably visiting a body of water. “I really like slowing down, reading, moving my body, and twiddling with my son,” she says.

Entrepreneurship was a giant a part of Gorman’s childhood. “My parents are ambitious, hard-working individuals with big dreams. They’ve created a stupendous life from pretty desperate times once they raised my brother and me,” she says. When she was growing up, her parents owned three businesses without delay: A restaurant, bar, and golf course. “I learned a whole lot of customer support skills back then, which led me down my path towards where I’m now,” she says.

She has now worked in tech for just over five years. “My first job was working at my mom’s law firm as an assistant-type, mainly doing filing and odd jobs,” she says. “I ultimately climbed the ladder there throughout my teens and early twenties to land a part-time position as a paralegal managing a whole lot of house closings each week.”

While on the law firm, Gorman was learning WordPress and learn how to construct web sites. “I had a deep desire to get into the tech world, specifically the WordPress world, as my mentor and friend, Michelle Frechette, taught me the ways of WordPress after I was attempting to make use of Adobe Muse to construct my first website for my parent’s restaurant,” she says.

Then, after years of planning to begin her own agency, a chance arose when Michelle asked her to use to be a Customer Success Manager for GiveWP. “Five years later, Michelle outgrew her position as Director of Customer Success to do what she loves at Liquid Web, and I took over her role as Director!”

Now, Gorman is Director of Customer Success at StellarWP. “My role is to be a champion for our customers, their voice,” she says. “Listening and communication are crucial to my each day work, specifically listening to our customers for what they are saying and don’t say, then communicating their needs, desires, and pain points across teams. My role is deeply collaborative as my value is just nearly as good because the impact we are able to create together, across teams.”

What she loves most about having a job in a technology company is the creativity. “I’m surrounded by so many incredibly talented people whose creativity and ingenuity blow me away each day,” she says. But her most important profession highlight to this point is moving into the Director role of the Customer Success department at StellarWP. “Taking the step into leadership felt so right for me. It was the following stepping stone in my journey and the natural next step. All of it felt perfectly lined up. All I needed to do was leap.”

Instrumental in helping Gorman step into that leadership position was Michelle Frechette. “Without Michelle’s guidance and support, I wouldn’t be here,” she says. “She opened the door and cheered me along every step of the way in which. She knew I had what it takes to make moves and make things occur, but her guidance and support along the way in which was the grace I needed to make all of it possible.”

What most motivates Gorman is straightforward: connection. “Feeling connected to others and the entire interplay of life motivates me,” she says. “After I feel like I’m in ‘the flow’ or playing my part, that motivates me to maintain going, enduring, and pursuing.”

Gorman says she’s witnessing more woman representation in tech leadership and fully expects that to proceed to turn out to be the norm. “I’d encourage young creatives to think about how their creative energy will be utilized in some ways. I never saw myself as an artist, though I all the time and still deeply appreciate the humanities. But I now understand what I do to be very art-like. I flow, I collaborate, I listen and experience, then recommend something latest,” she says.

She also encourages young women excited about pursuing a profession in tech to do not forget that there are individuals who wish to see them succeed. “The WordPress community, specifically, is amazingly supportive and stuffed with resources,” she says. “An important thing is to work on your individual endurance and perseverance. Know that if you wish to make something occur, all you would like is the need to achieve this. The remainder will come in case you ask for help and keep going regardless of what.”