Meet the Edpuzzler: Our Top Woman in Tech
Get to know Iciar Puigpelat, one of Edpuzzle’s very first employees, who started as a customer support intern and now works as Product Manager.
- When did you first start working for Edpuzzle and what was the company like back then?
It was the summer of 2016, and it was very, very different. They had just moved into the new office in Barcelona, and it was just the three founders based in Barcelona, plus Jaume (Head of Security and Infrastructure), and me. There was no furniture, so we just had the tables where we were working. It was more like the stereotypical start-up, so geekier, with coffee everywhere. It’s changed, but it still has the same spirit, and we’re still a family.
I started doing a summer internship. I was working eight hours a day and my official title was customer support intern.
Basically in the past, since there were just six people in the company overall, each of them had to do customer support and answer emails from teachers, and it took them a lot of time. I was supposed to learn how Edpuzzle worked, first by playing with it and then by looking through the code, and then answering tickets. It broke down into four hours of answering users and then four hours of studying the code.
I knew code, but I was using another language, and I needed to learn the code language that they were using at Edpuzzle, so I had four hours of learning every day, and as time moved on, that helped me to be able to better help the teachers, so I could check the code for bugs when the teachers had problems. I did that for the whole summer, and then once I started back at university in the fall, I cut back on my hours so I could finish my degree in telecommunications engineering, specializing in computer science.
One of the things that I remember the most is that the four employees at that time were seated across from each other, and they put me at the head of the table. And it was such a friendly environment because they were all friends before they started the company. They were kind of like my older brothers, with me always asking, can you help me, can you teach me?
The friendly environment they had created allowed me to feel free to make mistakes and ask even the silliest of questions. I loved it and learned a lot (and I’m still learning, by the way). It is very easy to communicate with anybody at Edpuzzle.
I remember the first time we hired a designer, and it was like, oh man, now we can have a beautiful page and we don’t need to add so many colors, and then the copywriters came, and it was like, okay, now we have good English, and we don’t have so many typos across the website! It’s been really nice to see the evolution and see it go from a startup to an established company.
2. How many emails do you think you’ve answered over the years? And how many different ways have you seen your name spelled?
Six years ago it seemed like a lot, but back then probably what I answered in a week, today we get in one day. It has grown exponentially. It’s been amazing because I’ve been able to talk to teachers from my own childhood school, to some kind of head of IT for New York state schools, and I was like, oh, this is a big fish for me as an intern to talk to.
I have some teachers who I communicate with so often that we always ask each other how they are. We know each other, and they ask for me specifically. With my name, it’s such a different name that some people imagined that I was a guy, and I had one person tell me they loved my name, and he even told me in an email what my name means.
3. Why did you decide to pursue a master’s degree in education?
I loved education so much that I wanted to learn more about it, so I started my master's degree in education. It was really interesting. It was really good to actually talk to teachers and learn their insights and get to know more about the pedagogy of education.
4. What’s your current role like?
I’ve had a ton of evolution through the company. Maybe this is my third or fourth role. I went from customer support intern to tech support manager, and then I became a fullstack developer, and now I’m in the product management role, which is really fun. I also help junior fullstack developers.
5. What kind of growth have you seen at Edpuzzle?
When I started at Edpuzzle, it was hard to imagine we would ever get this big. At first when I explained where I worked, I had to say, yeah it’s a startup, we help teachers deliver awesome videos to their students, but now when I say where I work, they say, yeah I know, my daughter uses Edpuzzle, or I use Edpuzzle, and it’s like woah. Especially because the market was mainly in the U.S. Here in Spain, there were a few teachers, but it wasn’t that big.
Now that we’re starting to grow, especially in Spain, a lot of people know Edpuzzle, and it’s like wow, it’s really fun to see that. The numbers are just crazy. It blows my mind.
I remember I was able to answer the tickets as they came in, now it’s impossible. I remember my boss once told me, that if you put all the teachers who use Edpuzzle, you would fill up Camp Nou (Barcelona’s famous soccer stadium). And now we have millions of users. It’s incredible.
6. What’s it like being a woman in tech?
I want to distinguish my answers. Being a woman in tech is not that easy, but being a woman in tech at Edpuzzle is really easy.
It’s really interesting because I think without doing anything special, you’re helping society, just by being a woman in tech. Just by doing what you like, you’re helping other people break these myths.
I have always loved tech, but I did have doubts about going into this field because of everything that surrounds it. Like, are you sure you want to be in a male-dominated field? And you know you will have to fight harder to make your voice heard sometimes, but that didn’t stop me from going into it.
I adore my decision and I love being in tech. You become part of a sorority along with all the other women in tech around you.
As a woman in tech, however, in university, it was kind of hard. You’re dealing with some inherited cultural things, and you even start to doubt yourself.
I’m a feminist, but internally, you’re used to hearing all these comments from guys, like wondering why did that girl pass? She must have played the beauty card. You had to make your voice heard and say I deserve to be here, and I work just as hard.
On the other hand, here it’s so easy. At Edpuzzle, it’s never been an issue. It’s something we pay a lot of attention to when we’re hiring, that the new hires work and communicate well with everyone, regardless of gender. It should never be a problem.
But here at Edpuzzle, I’ve been able to pursue my career without ever having to wonder if being a woman will be a setback at some point.
7. What excites you most about your future at Edpuzzle?
For my future, I would love to continue on the path I’m on. I’m currently juggling three or four positions: developing, helping engineers, product management, and doing some people management. I love that I can get to try them all out a little and see exactly where I want to go and where the company needs me to go. It’s one of the things that I like, that you can try and then choose, and the company tries to adapt as much as possible.
If I had to choose, I love product management. It allows me to be in touch with the coding and tech side without having to know too much about it, just the big picture, and it helps me help the teachers. I love education, I love getting to know exactly why some feature would be helpful or not.
Regarding Edpuzzle’s future, I would love to make all the features that teachers ask for. It’s one of the things that I really want. As our team continues to grow, we’ll be able to take on new projects and make these features a reality even faster! I’ve been working with customer support for a long time, and I know about some features that they’ve asked for, and we want to make them. We may not have the time at the moment, but we want to!
We know those features are going to benefit everyone, and I want to improve our product so teachers can enjoy teaching more and students can learn even better.
Want to join Iciar on the Edpuzzle tech team? Check out Edpuzzle’s open positions!
