My journey at Ad Astra started right out of college — I graduated on a Saturday and started the very next Monday. That was almost 12 years ago. While most of my friends were job hopping through their 20s to find the right fit, I knew I’d found it from the start.
I’ve grown up with Ad Astra, and Ad Astra has grown up with me. Throughout my time here, I’ve had the opportunity to grow my career through several departments from sales to marketing to services to development to product management. In that same time frame, we’ve expanded our offerings, grown our revenue by 338%, and expanded our client base by 157%. It’s exciting to be part of a company with continuous growth.
While the company’s growth is incredible, it only tells part of the story of why I love it. Sure, we’ve got the “cool” software company benefits such as casual dress, free snacks/drinks, standing desks, unlimited vacation, and a kegerator (all great things!), but there’s so much more that keeps me here.
The main reasons are: passion and heart. The people I work with have become some of my best friends — and they’re some of the most passionate people I’ve ever met. They’re passionate about their work, their families, their hobbies, and challenging each other to be better every day. This isn’t only my direct peers — this describes the entire executive team all the way up to the owners (who have hearts of gold, by the way). This doesn’t just feel like a company — it feels like a family.
Our “Astra family” is passionate about it’s mission to improve higher education, but we’re also passionate about improving the world around us. The company’s philanthropic ventures have allowed me to package care packets for disaster relief and even travel to Guatemala on a service trip to help communities with medical and water needs (in partnership with Heart to Heart International).
Visiting schools in Guatemala to administer de-worming medication to children.
On a day-to-day basis, I enjoy coming to work because I know my voice is heard. I have a direct impact on our company, products, and customers with my work. I’m lucky to have a great director who challenges me and then gets out of my way (queue angels singing). Like any company, we have growing pains and hard days — but knowing that I have a voice in the collaboration for improvement is huge.
Oh — and on top of all that, we have a lot of fun. Whether it’s karaoke, Corporate Challenge, riding horses, renting out a theater for the newest Star Wars, or (my personal favorite) the annual chili cook-off, we take the time to enjoy life and celebrate our great people.
For the record, the company didn’t ask me to write this post. I brought the idea to our team because I wanted to share my story and thought other employees may want to share theirs, too. If you’re interested in working for a company that makes you voluntarily want to publish love letters about it to the internet, visit our careers page. We’d love to talk to you about joining our big crazy family.
