Meet the Unsplash team: Chris Liverani
‘Meet the Unsplash team’ is a series of interviews with members of the Unsplash team, giving an insight into the people behind the platform.
❓Who are you and what’s your role at Unsplash?
I’m Chris, and I’m the Controller at Unsplash.
My role encompasses handling all things money-related with the company. That varies from smaller things like payroll, invoices and accounts payable, to larger projects like cash management, maintaining accounting standards, creating financial statements for our investors and being responsible for corporate taxes. With Unsplash being a small team, the finance side is really a one-man department that consists of yours truly 🙂
Lately I’ve also been trying my hand at helping the team in forming some great partnerships to make Unsplash even more accessible.
🏡 Where do you live?
I live in Montreal, strolling distance from Unsplash HQ. Being a traditional 26-year-old Italian boy, I live with my parents (one of which also works at Unsplash) and in the same building as my sister and brother in-law (both of which are co-founders of Unsplash).
🧮What’s your working background?
My first full-time job after I got my undergrad degree in accounting was as an accounting technician at an architecture company called Bleu Tech — which is a subsidiary company of a large multinational engineering corporation called Permasteelisa.
I enjoyed my time there and learned a lot, though it was short-lived as I left after two months when Crew (at the time a sister company to Unsplash) needed a full-time accountant. I officially became a full-time Unsplash teammate in April of 2016 and worked here while getting my CPA designation, which I finished in September 2017.
During my time at Bleu Tech I was still working part-time at Crew; in fact, I had been working part-time at Crew since we were still called Ooomf. Prior to Bleu Tech I worked as a concessions manager for both the Bell Center 🏒 and Molson Stadium 🏈 — basically ideal jobs for a college kid who loves sports.
👫What does a regular day at Unsplash look like for you?
No two days at Unsplash are ever the same. Like most accountants, my schedule gets pretty packed around period-ends (month-end, quarter-end, year-end). During the other stretches, I work on different projects with my teammates. Right now I’m working with Wyn Sutuntivorakoon on reaching out to API partners. Recently Luke Chesser and I worked on a large tax project together. Given that I’m the only accountant on the team, I tend to work solo unless there’s a specific project at hand.
⚙️ What tools do you use?
My toolbox consists of:
- Quickbooks Online for accounting
- Trello for organizing projects
- Slack for communicating
- Gmail and Google Calendar for organizing my life
- Spotify for inspiration
❤️ What is your favourite thing you worked on at Unsplash?
This is going to come across weird, but it’s Unporn and by a large margin. The day that Charles Deluvio told me about his idea, I thought it was genius. And being his photography quasi-protege, I had to get involved. The result was a lot of fun and a little embarrassment — there were more than a few photos that were even too NSFW for Unporn.
🎧 What do you like to listen to while you work?
One of my very favourite things to do is kick back, listen to John Mayer, and get some solid work done. I could listen to 10 hours of John all day, every day. But unfortunately the office sound system is hooked up to my Spotify, so I get around 5 hours of the best guitarist alive and 5 hours of whatever the office consensus is that day.
😛Favourite working snack?
I’m a big fan of fruit smoothies — they’re sweet, packed with vitamins, and I convince myself that they’re low in sugar. My freezer at home is packed with frozen fruit. Sadly we don’t have a blender at the office, so it’s really a working-from-home snack.
Happy Village Figs are my go-to office snack. When I’m craving that mid-afternoon snack, I’ll grab five or six of those figs and I’m good to go.
🍹 What do you do when you aren’t working on Unsplash? Hobbies / past-times…
This past year I’ve been learning the art of photography on my spare time. Luckily I work at Unsplash so I have some of the best inspiration out there. I actually struck a deal with Charles where he teaches me photography and I teach him accounting loopholes.
I still think I came out on top of that negotiation.
You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I’m also a big gym rat. I love being in my zone in the gym and working on being better than I was the day before.
🕵️ Where can people find you / chat to you?
My Twitter account is pretty lonely — I’m sitting pretty at 92 followers. So if you message me there I’m sure to write back.
You can view and download my photos here.
