As 2022 came to a close, we had much to celebrate in the neighborhood including recognizing our six Values Award winners. These individuals represent Nextdoor’s Core Values which act as our north star and guide us and the work we do as we aim to connect neighbors around the world.
Each award winner received postcards mailed to them with the nominations from their colleagues and the winners were revealed during our company-wide All Hands meeting. Each individual is praised by their managers on how they embody the value they’ve won and our company slack channel gets a flurry of messages and emojis from the team. Additionally, as a way to celebrate each individual who was nominated across the company, our team sends out postcards with the nomination written by their teammates.
We are very proud to see these six individuals recognized as they continue to live out our Nextdoor Core Values. Let’s get to know Q4 2022’s winners!
Earn Trust Everyday
Winner: Andy Sugden, Data Scientist
“Andy is a senior data scientist within the growth marketing team and supports Neighbor growth and engagement analytics for all things International. He has built a great deal of trust with the international leadership team and established himself as the go-to person for understanding and analyzing the impact of various initiatives including paid marketing, local, and brand marketing, key tentpole initiatives across international markets, etc. The quality of work produced is very reliable and critical to Nextdoor’s long term growth strategy.”
Invest in Community
Winner: VK Xu, Analytics Engineer
“From a professional perspective, VK is always looking for cross-functional collaboration and input from subject matter experts on various teams. She brings us all together to accomplish big things! VK also leads our SEA [Nextdoor’s ERG for South East Asians] and does a wonderful job of not only engaging the community but also pulling others in who may not necessarily identify as South East Asian. VK’s very essence is warm and welcoming, and all interactions with her leave you feeling happy and hopeful.”
Customer Obsessed
Winner: Michelle Mercurio, Support Operations Manager
“Michelle is in the office every day to work hard and focus. She is a great team leader for the NOPS team in the EU and always goes the extra mile performing additional tasks and educating herself. She is one of our biggest points of reference in the Amsterdam office, everybody goes to her for all kinds of different questions. She is one of the best and most dedicated people I know at Nextdoor.”
Think Big
Winner: Jaewon Yang, Machine Learning Engineer
“Jaewon has quickly become a respected presence in all key machine learning-driven initiatives, including notifications and feed. Jaewon is currently spearheading a project to holistically optimize across the Nextdoor ecosystem, rather than point-wise optimizations that may drive results for one team/feature at the expense of another. This sort of project requires deep expertise and foresight, and Jaewon is uniquely qualified to lead it. For all his contributions to making Nextdoor succeed through machine learning, Jaewon deserves to win the Think Big award.”
Experiment and Learn Quickly
Winner: Delano Willis, Email Marketer
“Delano is a senior lifecycle marketer within growth marketing who joined us in early 2022. He has very quickly become an integral part of the team and built strong cross functional relationships across product, marketing, and engineering teams. He is always challenging the status quo and bringing new ideas to the table. He audited our email journeys across SMB strategies, launched a test with an onboarding email journey for neighbors to drive WAU growth, and supported several marcomm efforts working with others on the team. He is not afraid of taking risks and his desire to test new ideas coupled with a positive attitude are contagious.”
Act like an Owner
Winner: Waleed Malik, Machine Learning Engineer
“Waleed is deserving of the Experiment and Learn Quickly award. On the notifications team, Waleed has led dozens of experiments, primarily in machine learning, which have led to sizable sessions increases and contributed to sequential WAU growth. Waleed has an incredible work ethic to experiment and learn quickly. Waleed has also demonstrated leadership through his involvement in other growth and engagement projects in the company to drive new neighbors on the platform and improve the feed.”
