Terminal Member Spotlight: Catherine Nazareth of Dialpad
Catherine Nazareth has worn many hats in her young career. Why? Because she can. Catherine is the kind of versatile team player that fellow Terminal Members describe as “passionate, sincere, and amiable.” she joined the Terminal community a year and a half ago when she first started working for TalkIQ, which was later acquired by Dialpad. In this month’s member spotlight, we find out more about the Data Analyst, her career path, and her experience working and living in Kitchener-Waterloo.
Terminal: Your career so far has taken some fascinating twists and turns. Can you walk us through your journey to TalkIQ/DialPad?
Catherine: It’s been a winding path. I graduated from the University of Waterloo with a bachelor in biology. My first job out of university was starting up a mushroom project (the legal kind!) for The Working Centre, a non-profit organization in KW. The goal was to generate revenue to help support some of their programs by growing and selling gourmet mushrooms. After that project was wrapped up, I tried my hand at sales at another startup in town but decided that a career in sales wasn’t for me. That’s when a friend referred me to a job at TalkIQ. Initially, the position was a very non-technical one and mainly consisted of identifying and labeling key moments in calls. These labels were then used to measure the performance of our machine learning model outputs.
How did you land on data analytics?
I really enjoyed working with the team at TalkIQ (and now Dialpad), but I knew I didn’t want to stay in the role I was initially hired for indefinitely. So I started seeking out more technical projects and learning a lot on the job. That’s one of the things I really love about this team — everyone is willing to teach you something and there’s a ton of room to learn and grow. We now have some of my models in the product — which is a great feeling!
Is there a recent win you’ve celebrated with Dialpad that we can share with the rest of the community?
I can’t say too much, but we recently hit a critical benchmark against our competition, which is a huge accomplishment and really puts us on the map in terms of our transcription quality.
What’s a project that you’re working on now?
An interesting project we are currently working on is action item detection. For example, if we’re on a call and I say “I’ll send you the meeting notes tomorrow,” I don’t have to rely on memory or note-taking. At the end of the call, Dialpad provides you with a summary of the tasks each of us committed to. This will be a great feature for users because they will be able to focus on the call versus taking notes as they talk.
What’s it like to work in the KW Terminal Space?
I really enjoy working in the KW office. Terminal makes sure we have everything we need to be successful — a great office, multiple meeting rooms, and an endless supply of snacks for when you need a little boost! It’s very spacious and regularly hosts excellent events which are open to the community. Being one of the tallest buildings in downtown Kitchener, it also has a great view of the city.
And why did you choose a startup versus going with a larger company in the area?
I really enjoy working on a team where everyone is always willing to learn/teach each other new skills. We regularly have a journal club where we present something interesting we’ve learned or are working on to the rest of the team. I also like the fact that you’re encouraged to take (reasonable) risks and share your ideas — which are regularly implemented.
What do you like to do when you aren’t at work?
I rock climb a few times a week, and I also love camping/hiking in the summer (I’ve tried winter camping and learned that it’s not for me!). I also enjoy making jewelry — it’s my creative outlet.
That’s great! Can you tell us more about the jewellery business?
Yup! I enjoy being creative and experimenting with making things. My jewellery business is more of a hobby and I enjoy making custom orders. I also sell some of my creations through a few stores in the KW region.
Hypothetically, if you couldn’t work for Dialpad or in tech and money weren’t an object, what’s another business you would launch
I think I’d like to create a company that’s a hybrid of Etsy and Kijiji which would allow makers to market and sell to local buyers. I have no idea if this would be a viable company, but it’s something I would love to use for my own jewellery business.
Can we wrap up the interview with some of the books, podcasts, resources that you love and that inform your work?
I really enjoyed reading Freakonomics because it made me think about the relationships between seemingly unrelated things. This kind of thinking comes in handy when trying to measure and evaluate internal metrics. I also enjoy listening to Radiolab and learning about new and interesting topics.
Want to read about more Terminal Members? Check out previous Member Spotlights here.
