Why I work at Soofa: Opportunity, serendipity, and women helping women

Presenting about Customer Success to the Soofa team.

Samantha Ward, Director of Customer Success

I came to Soofa with a marketing and creative services background, working in advertising agencies where the leadership was primarily male, and the mid-level and junior employees were at least 50% female. At the time, it wasn’t noticeable what was missing. I grew up in a family with a mom who worked long hours in a managerial role in an engineering company, and a stay-at-home dad.

My upbringing was at odds with my workplace day to day—where I worked with amazing women, but I didn’t see them making stakeholder decisions.

It was a bit of serendipity that I read about Soofa while browsing the web the night before I planned to attend InspireHER at District Hall, a women entrepreneurs focussed gathering. When I saw that Soofa’s CEO and Co-Founder, Sandra, was speaking on one of the panels, I made sure to meet the team that was present at the event.

And as on the nose as it sounds, I did find the event (“inspireHER”) to be inspiring. Hearing stories from the women behind companies like PillPack, Boston Harbor Distillery, and of course, Soofa, reminded me to reevaluate what I considered to be a normal leadership team makeup and what I wanted from the company I work for. In just a few weeks, I had joined the team.

As the Marketing and Customer Success Manager at Soofa, I’ve had more opportunities to network and grow in my field than ever before.

Women helping and empowering women is an important value of this company. I’ve never felt more pushed to meet mentors in the Boston network, participate in the tech community, and help others who are more junior. I’m proud to be part of a company that challenges the status quo and is paving the way for other women leaders.

To end with a quick story: As we were pulling up to the a house in remote Bethel, Maine for the annual Soofa ski trip, my Honda Fit got stuck climbing an icy hill. When we called for help from the team, the first brave heroes that showed up to push the car were three women. They were soon joined by some of our wonderful male coworkers slipping and sliding behind them, but when they first crested the hill alone I was perplexed (old habits die hard), but quickly realized—Oh right, this is what we’re all about.