The Commons Digest (03/10/2022)

The COmmons Insider Newsletter

Welcome to the latest issue of the The Commons 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 👇

Strategies We're Pondering 🤔

A recurring theme in community discussions here at The Commons is the concept of serendipity surface area.

It's a mental model for career success that basically amounts to: "put yourself in as many positions to get lucky as you possibly can."

It's a nice maxim. But you're probably asking yourself what it actually means to put yourself in these situations. What steps can you take, in other words, to make sure that you're actually increasing your odds of becoming lucky?

In his most recent article, the writer Sahil Bloom has done exactly that. We especially endorse his advice to "spend time in digital communities" 🙃

"The world has changed—you no longer need to live in a big city or have a fancy degree to connect and build valuable relationships.

[..] Join a Discord [note from The Commons: or a Slack community!], engage in good faith. Create value, receive value."

Spot on.

Our obvious appreciation for community aside, Sahil has a host of other areas you can lean into if you want to increase your odds of getting lucky, like writing, sending cold DMs, asking great questions and more. Check out the full article here.

The Commons Spotlight 💡

Today we’re featuring Anna Dabrowski, an incredible business strategist who is currently Team Lead, Strategic Planning at Clio, a legal tech unicorn. She’s also a mentor here at The Commons, where she has made a massive difference in the lives of dozens of Commons grads. She’s even hired two of them onto her team at Clio!

Anna has a varied career, with roles like product, entrepreneurship, ops, finance and strategy, all of which span industries like electric motors (Tesla), industrial lightning, fintech and, now, legal tech. We think that she’s the perfect example of how testing out multiple functions can lead to a highly successful and satisfying career. That’s probably one reason her mentees rave about her so much 🙂

Anna was also kind enough to let us peek into her schedule recently. We love when mentors do this because it’s a great way for job-seekers to get a sense of what the day-to-day in a given role and field looks like. You can check it out here.

Celebrating #internationalwomensday

We’re grateful to have so many incredibly talented and generous women in our community, who lift each other up and inspire us on a daily basis.

The Commons is premised on the impact that skills-training, mentorship and community can have on accelerating career outcomes. In honor of International Women’s Day, we are sponsoring two full scholarships for The Commons Sprints for women, to help them achieve more in their careers, faster.

To nominate someone to receive a full scholarship to our Core Sprint, simply complete this form before 11:59pm EST on March 13th. We'll provide at least two amazing candidates with a full scholarship to the March cohort of our Core Sprint 💫

Last Call: Apply for March Sprints

Applications for our March Sprints are closing soon! The deadline to apply is 11:59pm EST on March 18th.

Join hundreds of professionals on a journey to level up and make world-class connections, focused entirely on strategic business roles in the tech industry. We're running the following Sprints in March: The Commons Core, Product Strategy and Strategic Finance. Each cohort will begin the week of March 21st.

Remember that once accepted, Sprints are first-come, first-served. If you want to secure a spot, applying ASAP is your best bet. Our last cohort of Sprints filled up before we could even finish reviewing applications.

Apply Now - The Commons Core

Apply Now - Product Strategy

Apply Now - Strategic Finance

Questions? We've got you covered. Just reply to this email and we'll be glad to help.

Events @ The Commons

  • Saturday February 26th: We wrapped up the January cohorts of our Product Strategy and Strategic Finance Sprints! Congrats to everyone for the incredible work they've done 💚
  • Saturday March 5th and Sunday March 6th: We ran the first ever edition of our Tech Discovery Weekend! This was a two day-long conference focused on helping top professionals identify the right roles for them, acquire tips to land and nail interviews and, in true Common fashion, make meaningful connections with amazing people from all over the world. Thanks to everyone who attended, and to the incredible mentors who led sessions over the weekend.
  • Sunday March 6th: We wrapped up the January cohort of our Core Sprint! Our largest ever, with some incredible feedback from mentors and students. Congratulations to all of our newly-minted alumni 💚
  • Monday March 14th: We're hosting the latest edition of our Pitch Yourself workshop! We'll break off into groups to practice and refine our answers to the age-old question: "tell me about yourself." Join to share feedback, reconnect with familiar faces, and meet other Commoners! Community members can sign up at the link posted in the #general channel in Slack.

#community-wins 🥇

We celebrated quite a few hiring announcements and promotions!

  • Amanur Rahman joined KOHO as Senior Manager, Business Operations, where he'll be working with Shane Parkhill, mentor and advisor to The Commons 💳
  • Mentor Imran Moledina was promoted to Manager, Strategy & Special Projects at Uber 🚗
  • Tim Nowacki joined the BizOps team at Causal 📈
  • Nicole Wang is joining Arrange to work on data analytics 🧱
  • Sybil Ramos Sheen joined Clio as a Senior Business Operations Analyst, where she'll be working with mentor Anna Dabrowski and fellow The Commons alum Julian Sconza ⚖️
  • Alysha Anzik joined the BizOps team at ResQ, where she'll be working closely with mentor Jordy Winkler and fellow The Commons alum Raza Khan 🔧
  • Rachel Coleman joined the Strategy & Operations team at Google 🔎
  • Megan Richards joined PartnerStack as Strategic Finance Lead 🤝
  • Curtis Leister joined Varo to work on growth & partnerships 🏦
  • Jalal Ahmad is working on the Strategic Finance team at Lightspeed Commerce 💸

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

One (Community) Thing

Here's The Commons mentor Steph Chiu (Senior Strategy & Operations Manager at DoorDash) grabbing dinner and drinks with David, Jarson and Rose - some of her amazing mentees from the most recent cohort of our Core Sprint 💚

Meeting up with fellow Commoners? First round of drinks or coffees are on us. Simply DM us before your meetup 🍻

***

That’s all for now ✌️ 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 The Commons. Sign-up to receive all things The Commons right here.

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Skillful is now The Commons.
We’re more than just skills training. We're the place where high achievers come to fulfill their career potential. We combine education, mentorship and community to empower the next generation of ambitious professionals to achieve their career goals.
The time to build the education institution of the future is now. And we're doing it.

Careers are catalyzed through skills-training, mentorship and a supportive network. At The Commons, we're delivering those critical career elements together through learning experiences that are social, mentorship-based and community-first.

Join to learn and stay for the community.