Our people are core to who we are. With a year spent at Artium comes a brief reflection of the path to craft, successes along the way, and how to continue to learn and grow. Today we sit down with our Operations Coordinator, Ashley Yancey, to discuss building fellowship among Artisans, lessons learned in scaling, and what year two at Artium holds for her.

What is your craft? What brought you to it?
I would say my role is operations, organization, and high-level admin. I had always been an executive assistant, and then, coming into Artium, that was just the base of what was needed. This role has taken on many branches that go into a lot of different areas of the company. The branches that I've chosen, or perhaps that have chosen me are the people, culture, and events. I've gotten to dive more into that side and come up with ideas on ways that we can build fellowship and come together, just overall improve the quality of life as an Artisan and define what that means.

What are you most proud of from your past year?
Well, this last year has all culminated into the Artium Beach Weekend [more on this to come soon]. It was an idea that casually came up months ago on a stand-up, and from there, we started talking about what would it look like if we actually were to fly everybody out? I sat down and looked at everything from flights to hotels, and that just builds and builds to an entire agenda for the weekend. We wanted to make it an event that captured the essence of Artium and our people, and we were able to put together something that was really special. As far as what I'm most proud of, it’s the growth and the opportunities that I've been given. I’ve been given an immense amount of trust in what I do and so I'm very proud of that.

How do you keep learning / refining your craft?
The big thing is each time we scale, treating that as a significant learning opportunity. What are our internal onboarding operations? How do we get creative? When it comes to massive companies and small companies, everybody's dealing with this question of what is the best way to grow? Artium changes every day, and as employees, we are the decision-makers of how that is going to go. For me, it's starting every day by asking how do I want to grow as an individual? That is up to me; it’s my responsibility. Things that we are figuring out now are: working remotely and fostering togetherness, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and community engagement and volunteering. There are so many opportunities in these areas alone and sometimes I get analysis paralysis; it is something that takes constant iteration and learning on my part because I want to keep everybody excited and engaged. I don't have to know the answers, but I need to have a plan. That's where I am at right now—that’s the start of my year two.