Yuppie Nomad

I’m moving back to SF next month. (!)

Two years ago, I got a call from Foursquare to build products for all things discovery. It wasn’t just a job - it was a dream opportunity for me to encourage people to explore places around them. As a travel geek, I loved the idea of taking some of that curiosity about the world and turning into the everyday experience of checking out your own city.

I’m incredibly proud to have worked alongside talented colleagues to build Explore on mobile and web, contextual place pages, a big honking rethink of the entire app, the best location database in the world, and more. We’ve transformed from a little start-up to a big-but-not-so-big company. I’ve learned so much from dens and the rest of the team about how to build and launch well-loved products full of personality.

It’s bittersweet to leave such a great team and product. Whenever you build something new and shiny that do things other companies can’t do, you leave a piece of yourself behind. I’m leaving it in good hands though and can’t wait to see the next things to come!

Lots have happened outside of work in the last two years, too. I got married (yay!), dove into the NY food world (yum!), and have met some great folks (yo!). New York has been awesome - I’m thrilled to have witnessed the burgeoning tech community, and I’m going to miss its energy and culture. 

But San Francisco calls, and at heart, I’m a west coast gal.

As for what’s next, I want to continue my focus on mobile first experiences. I’ve been lucky to find a product that I love and folks passionate about gorgeous design. I’m super excited to join the Flipboard team and focus on how users discover news, media and content that matters to them.

To the next adventure!

I travelled fast, in hopes I should
Out run that other, what to do
When caught, I planned not, I pursued

- Edward Thomas’s “The Other”

I just cleared out my nightstand bookshelf and found this gem - Graham Greene’s autobiography, Ways of Escape. Greene’s The Quiet American is one of my favorite political novels, and his Travels with My Aunt is the funniest take on old age. His characters are foreign correspondents, liaisons, shadowy governmental figures, monied itinerants - characters with a lot of depth and flaws. As much as I’ve enjoyed them, I’ve always had a feeling that they were mere shadows of himself. I knew he was a MI6 agent, journalist, and traveler of the lands he depicted in his novels - in short, an emblematic, 20th century British wartime man of the world.

The book was like happening into him at a bar, starting a conversation, and ending it 10 whiskies later. There was little rhyme or reason to his narrative - it was a stroke of stories that he meandered through. There were captivating tales. Then from time to time, he would verge into the personal thoughts of an old man self-indulging in the past. But like classic Graham Greene, he would make a poignant statement to zap you back into sobriety.

Highly recommended if you are a Graham Greene fan.