What do you do in your role at Affinaquest?

Tell us about your professional journey. How did you end up at Affinaquest?

My high school offered the first programming class in the county, and I took it my junior year. In college, I started out as a computer science major but changed to management information systems because I wanted to bridge the gap between end users and programmers.

I worked at JSI Fundraising Systems right after college. Jeff Shy, the founder of Affinaquest, was the president of the company at the time. I wore a lot of hats doing implementations, tech support, on-site visits to install and configure the software, conversion crosswalks to convert the data, and training end users. I loved it because I got to know the software inside and out really quickly. After working as a client representative I was promoted to operations manager, then I moved into sales.

After a demo, one of the IT guys asked, “Are you our sales rep?” I said, “Yeah.” He said jokingly, “But you could answer our questions.”

I like having credibility with different kinds of users. Demos are my strong suit, and I’ve been doing that ever since. I worked at JSI Fundraising Systems for 11 years, Sungard Higher Ed and its different iterations for nine years, at iModules (now Anthology) for a couple of years, and then came to Affinaquest five years ago.

What makes you proud to work at Affinaquest?

First of all, the product is a great product, and it’s far beyond any that I’ve worked with in the past. But really, it’s the people that make the company.

Jeff Shy has always been a visionary in the industry, so that’s what initially drew me to Affinaquest. But some of the people that I work with here I’ve known for decades and I’ve worked with at other companies. When you have a product you believe in, and a company that’s growing rapidly, and you get to work with people that you like and you trust, that’s kind of what you strive for. I’m proud to work at a company like this.

Before working at Affinaquest, what was the most unusual or interesting job you’ve ever had?

When you aren’t working, how do you like to spend your time?

What’s something most people don’t know about you?