![Leading through a Crisis: a head of Customer Support Reflects on 2020 and Workplace Racial Equity Artwork](https://www.buzzsprout.com/rails/active_storage/representations/redirect/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBCSGdrZWdJPSIsImV4cCI6bnVsbCwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ==--1fe3c8acca398a5c21c8c672202bb418a47ec819/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaDdDVG9MWm05eWJXRjBPZ2hxY0djNkUzSmxjMmw2WlY5MGIxOW1hV3hzV3docEFsZ0NhUUpZQW5zR09nbGpjbTl3T2d0alpXNTBjbVU2Q25OaGRtVnlld1k2REhGMVlXeHBkSGxwUVRvUVkyOXNiM1Z5YzNCaFkyVkpJZ2x6Y21kaUJqb0dSVlE9IiwiZXhwIjpudWxsLCJwdXIiOiJ2YXJpYXRpb24ifX0=--1924d851274c06c8fa0acdfeffb43489fc4a7fcc/nicole.jpeg)
manager.flow
manager.flow
Leading through a Crisis: a head of Customer Support Reflects on 2020 and Workplace Racial Equity
Nicole Patterson is a seasoned leader of customer support operations at a Castlight Health - a health tech navigation company. Two years ago, her entire support center uprooted from Charlotte, NC to Salt Lake City, UT and Nicole was tasked with maintaining business continuity while establishing the new campus. Just as the dust had settled, COVID hit, and her new Utah-based team had to not only ramp up but pivot quickly into responding to the COVID crisis and economic uncertainty of the pandemic.
Nicole and I spend some time discussing this herculean effort as well as her journey into leadership and management more broadly and how she brings her authentic self to the workplace, encouraging others to do the same. It's not easy to be a gay, Black female people-leader in the tech industry, and Nicole shares some of her insights with us as well as advice to new people-managers.