Meet the team: Tom

Anna Whiteley
Pobble
Published in
3 min readMay 17, 2019

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Pobble is an approach to teaching writing that is used by tens of thousands of teachers each day. We provide teachers with everything they need to teach writing: great resources, real handwritten examples, peer to peer commenting and moderation tools.

We know the implementation of school-wide initiatives isn’t always easy. That’s why, when you become a Pobble school, you’ll have the support of our Customer Happiness Team. Our team take customer happiness very seriously. We support our school communities with step-by-step action plans, training days, online training videos and supporting materials and we’re always on hand. We love to communicate with Pobble users and always welcome interactions with our community. With that in mind, we thought we’d give you a little insight into our team: who we are, what makes us tick and most importantly why we love Pobble so much!

Meet Tom

Who are you?
Hi, I’m Tom Garbutt and I am one of the co-founders of Pobble!

How long have you been with Pobble?
Pobble first began in 2011 when I approached Simon, then Deputy Head at Grove Road Primary, North Yorkshire, about building a platform to share children’s writing online. The pieces my pupils (and staff) had spent all week creating deserved a wider audience than a classroom wall or the inside of an exercise book. So, we created a blog originally called “LendMeYourLiteracy” and shared work between our classes. Fast forward a few years, Pobble now has over 100,000 examples of children’s writing viewed by millions across the globe!

What is your role in the team?
I am currently Community Manager at Pobble, heading up customer support for our valued Pobble Schools and visitors. In addition, I administer the website, advise the product team, curate leads for the sales team and pass on customer suggestions to our branding and social media.

How does your role help schools?
I want schools to feel they are an integral part of the Pobble family. I help teachers by familiarising them with the website, guiding them through their set up and answering any questions throughout the process. I also update and edit our Help Centre [https://pobble.zendesk.com/hc/en-us] to ensure every visitor has the knowledge they require to make the most of their Pobble journey.

Why do you work for Pobble?
Pobble was originally created to save teachers time and make writing exciting for students and their parents! As a founder, I am proud that one simple idea for two classrooms in the UK has developed into our truly global Pobble Community.

What is the best part of your role?
As you can see, I really enjoy having involvement in so many different aspects of the company, all working towards making writing exciting!

You can follow Tom on Twitter here.

Have a question for the Pobble team? Drop us a line on Twitter or Facebook or email us hello@pobble.com.

We’re all passionate about writing but fun is also a major part of life at Pobble. Even though we are not in the same room every day, it’s great to feel the energy when we are. It’s great to regroup and share stories of our Pobble adventures around the world. You can see what we get up to behind the scenes by following Team Pobble on Instagram. [https://www.instagram.com/teampobble/]

If you’d like a quick demo of Pobble and to hear more about how we work with schools, then drop us a line.

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Anna Whiteley
Pobble

Freelancer 👩🏻‍💻| Owner @_SwaySocial 📱| Voice of @Pobble 📝| Social Media advocate | Reader | Writer | Creator | Taker of photos 📷 | Proud single mum ❤️