Career Journey Spotlight: Shaleya Solomon
Get to know Product Operations Manager, Shaleya Solomon.
What’s your name?
Shaleya Solomon
What are your preferred pronouns?
she/her
Tell us about your background!
I am a second-generation immigrant — both my parents moved from Trinidad & Tobago to the US in the 80s, and they met here. I’m born-and-raised NYC-adjacent, in southern Westchester, and I still live there today. I went to Carnegie Mellon for Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering and graduated into the last recession, so it was hard to get a job (also I was, admittedly, a mediocre engineer).
I got a part-time job through my sister as an academic advisor at a community college in the South Bronx, with the goal of reducing the attrition rate for student-athletes. This motivated me to want to help students earlier on in their academic journeys. I got into the NYC Teaching Fellows program and began teaching high school math (mostly Calculus) to students in the Claremont Village section of the Bronx. I did that for 6 years and it was great — I loved my colleagues, my school, and the students. But teaching is a perpetual state of “homework” where for 75% of the calendar year you have literally no work-life balance. I’d be in the school building for almost 12 hours most days, and for half the day on Saturdays. I spent every “vacation” lesson planning, and thinking about what happened during a school day or what was going to happen the next day frequently kept me up at night. So after my second advisory cohort graduated in 2017, I left teaching. I worked as the Testing Coordinator at the CUNY School of Medicine at City College for a little bit, but it wasn’t for me, so I left that role in June 2018.
What made you join Teachable and how long have you been at Teachable?
When I left City College, I browsed Built In NYC a lot, and came across Teachable. As a former teacher, I was interested in the ed-tech space. The Customer Support Specialist role, at the time, was known as a “Customer Educator” and I liked the idea of getting to help “educate” people on the product.
What department did you start your career at Teachable and what led you to where you are today?
I started as a Customer Educator in September 2018. I really enjoyed the work, the product was interesting, and I enjoyed helping people. I really liked my team and everyone else from the company that I met — usually through hanging around the Flatiron office every day after work for way too long. I gained a ton of product knowledge, and I took pride in my meticulously clear and thorough answers. I also got to be the Money Pod Subject Matter Expert for a few months before that program was discontinued.
The customer support role is very challenging, and everyone on that team works very hard. But after some time, I was ready to switch gears. I wanted the opportunity to put to use some of the other skills gained through my education and experiences in engineering and teaching. Over the course of two years, I applied for internal roles as a Product Solutions Specialist (the precursor to TechOps, then ProdOps), a Tier-2 Technical Support Specialist, an Associate Product Manager, and a Technology Operations Specialist.
After some time, I was ecstatic to be able to transition into a role on our TechOps team. The process to get there had a few twists and turns, but ultimately our leadership team invested in my potential and the value I’d already brought to the company thus far.
In your current role, what has been your experience?
I was super excited for the ProdOps role when I originally applied in 2021. I was actually really upset when I didn’t get it because it was exactly all the things I like to do — help fix bottlenecks and pain points, as well as improve or build processes where needed to help us be more streamlined, work faster, and work more efficiently. So I was ecstatic when I was offered the position.
In my role today, I’ve had to grow lots of new skills and muscles very quickly. I’m still working on it, and (I hope) improving every day, but I still really enjoy this work. I feel really privileged to be able to be in this role.
How has Teachable supported your growth?
Kelli, our now Chief of Staff, has been the best manager I’ve ever had across every job/role I’ve held anywhere in my life. I’ve been working since I was 15, and I’ve had managers that have run the gamut from “trying their best, but unable to help me grow” to “downright incompetent, giving me busy work, and then throwing me under the bus for their own mistakes.” Kelli has given me so many resources and so much good advice. She really helps me see what I’m doing well and what I need to improve on. And then helps me think about and create actionable steps to improve on those things. She pushes me to think deeply about how to get to the core of an issue so that I can create solutions that work for our teams.
While I’m always interested in growing and taking on more responsibility, I’ve never had an interest in being a manager that has direct reports. Kelli asked me about this very early on, and she’s shown me a different path I can take that aligns with my interests. I’m very happy that there are still other ways for me to grow and advance even though being a people manager is not something I want to do.
What is special to you about Teachable’s culture?
I think what has always been and still is special about Teachable, to me, is the people. I’ve met a lot of really cool, interesting people here, and everyone seems to genuinely care about the work that we’re doing. I think people generally have a real desire to work collaboratively and to listen and learn from each other.
Additionally, even though this isn’t necessarily unique to Teachable, I do enjoy the shift to being a remote-first company. It allows me to travel more and work from anywhere. I actually spent the month of October last year working from Peru. And since my commute to the office was almost 3 hours round trip, I’m happy to reclaim that time and make better use of it.
