Welcome to the latest issue of the Skillful digest!

This is our bi-weekly round-up of community news, relevant content and anything that can help us level up together.

As always, reach out if you have any feedback or if you’d like anything featured in here.

Now onto the update 👇

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An Operator you Need to Know About 🎙

We recently interviewed Sheldon McCormick, the co-founder and COO of Properly, for the latest episode of Need to Know, our podcast here at Skillful.Sheldon shared how and why he decided to move from consulting into tech, as well as what later led him to co-found a company of his own. He candidly told us about what prepared him for entrepreneurship, frameworks he uses to make career moves, nurturing high performing teams and how his relationship with risk has evolved. This is a must listen for current and aspiring operators, as well as folks who are thinking about becoming founders. We had a *lot* of fun recording this one.You can listen to the full episode right here.

Community Member Spotlight 💡

Today we're featuring Gurmee Sodhi. Gurmee is a former consultant, Skillful alum and now a member of the BizOps team at Uber. Gurmee has been an active member of our community for over a year now and is someone we often point to when Skillfulers ask about breaking into BizOps roles from consulting. Gurmee spent several years at PwC before joining Uber to help scale the Uber Direct vertical in one of its key initial markets. Gurmee has a ton of advice for how to think about career moves and optimize your job search. You can read more about his journey here.

Sprint Applications Are Open 🚀

Applications are open for our March Sprints! Apply at the links below to join one of three Sprints: Strategy + Operations, Product Strategy and Strategic Finance. Hundreds of Skillfulers are currently working through the January cohorts of these Sprints and are having a great time levelling up. Remember that once accepted, Sprints are first-come, first-served. If you want to secure a spot, applying ASAP is your best bet. All three Sprints that are in session right now, for example, filled up before we could even finish reviewing applications.

‍Apply Now - Strategy + Operations

‍Apply Now - Product Strategy

‍Apply Now - Strategic Finance

‍Questions about our Sprints? We've got you covered. Simply reply to this email and we'll be glad to help.

Events @ The Commons

• Wednesday February 9th: Yesterday we hosted a fireside chat with Ben Gusberg, creator of the Crypto Starter Kit. We covered the basics of crypto as well as applications like Web3, NFTs, DAOs, DeFi and everything in between
  

• Thursday February 10th: Today we hosted a primer on Strategic Finance. We're seeing more companies than ever hire for this role, which is one reason we're running an entire Sprint on the topic! Mentors Charles Ratte, Sean Newman and Callum Travaglini were kind enough to lend us their expertise for an intro to this emergent field. These are the folks who lead our StratFin Sprint, so they definitely know what they're talking about
  

• Tuesday February 15th: Mentor Drayton D'Silva will lead a session on negotiating your job offer. Drayton will pass along words of wisdom for 30 minutes and we'll leave ~30 minutes for open Q&A. You can also share scenarios you've faced and ask Drayton for advice on how he would've approached them
  

• Friday February 18th: Next week we're hosting a primer on Product Strategy, led by Thiago Silva and Eric Liou. Just like the StratFin primer, this event is led by the two mentors who helm our Product Strategy Sprint. Join to learn everything you need to know about product strategy and the broader product management career path

Community members can DM us for recordings and access sign up links on Slack.

#community-wins 🥇

We celebrated some hiring announcements and promotions!

• Tiffany Chang was promoted to Product Manager for Rider Trip Experience at Uber, where she'll own on-trip and post-trip user journeys for all mobility products
  

• Ali Inay joined the BizOps team at Unity Technologies
  

• Nivetha Mani has joined Skillz as a Senior Product Analyst
  

• Claudio Carbajal III recently began a new role at Automate Medical as Chief of Staff

Please be sure to reach out with a word or two of congratulations on Slack!

One career resource

Fairuz Hoque is a Data Mentor for our Strategy + Operations Sprint. As if being a quantitative guru and wonderful human weren't enough, he's also dabbling in some writing :) Check out this article he just published on SQL and why it is an essential skill for strategic business roles in tech. He also lists some common functions that you should learn if you haven't already!

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That’s all for this issue ✌️

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If you’d like to access more news and content before the next update, you can hop on over to Slack.

‍P.S. please give us a follow on Instagram - we’re bringing the community directly to your feed :) ‍See anything your friend might find interesting? Feel free to forward this issue! This community grows stronger and more valuable to everyone in it the more smart people - i.e. folks like you - learn about Skillful. Sign-up to receive all things The Commons right here.