Over my career, I’ve had the opportunity to work in business operations, analytics and PM roles across a variety of industries and businesses: food delivery, vertical farming, insuretech, healthcare, real estate, and now mortgage servicing.

I’m often asked what ties these experiences together or what I’ve learned from navigating such different spaces. When I really think about it, I realized I’m most energized by the messy, complex operational challenges that demand structure and clarity. The kind where processes are still done manually, where systems barely talk to each other, and where scaling feels like pushing a boulder uphill. I love these problems for the opportunity to make actual tangible impact to the systems, users and teams I support, and I love these challenges because it’s an expression of creativity to be immersed in ambiguity and still, somehow, navigate a path forward.

That might sound frustrating to some, annoying to others, but to me, that’s what makes work fun, and there’s much fun to be had here at Valon! I love figuring out what’s really broken, designing MVPs and for scale, and iterating quickly to build something better. Not just launching software and processes, but shaping the actual systems that power it and deeply understanding the core problems and job-to-be-done. Additionally, I love working on and with a brilliant team – partnering and collaborating with talented colleagues to brainstorm, build, and execute. 

What I Learned from Uber Eats

One of the most formative chapters of my career was at Uber Eats during a time of their intense growth. I joined the restaurant team when we were still manually shipping tablets to restaurants and stayed as we scaled to thousands of new restaurant partners a week, offshored operations to far-flung countries under the banner of scale and efficiency, and expanded the Uber Eats footprint internationally.

Scaling required rethinking everything, such as:

• How do we programmatically handle taxes and fees in different states and counties?
• How do we keep top restaurants successful and prevent churn?
• How do we determine, sell, and onboard the right mix of restaurants in each market?
• How do we scale support to 50k and then 100k restaurants across U.S. and offshore teams?

During my time at Uber I grew tremendously as both a professional and individual, partially from encountering tough problems and learning from mistakes, and even more so from working with and learning from talented, sharp, and friendly teammates – other bizops, PMs, data scientists, engineers, GMs, support and activation specialists, and more. We were a team – in it together everyday and supporting and learning from one another.

The pace was wild, but the lessons were lasting: move fast, stay close to the work and build with scale in mind

I left Uber with a lingering feeling of wanting to find something earlier, a chance to help lay the foundation.

Finding That at Valon

My search in many ways pulled me to Valon. We’re a highly ambitious business operating in an exceptionally complex and regulated space. And Valon is still very early in its journey.

Mortgage servicing is one of the most operationally heavy industries that I’ve worked in, touching layers upon layers of compliance and dealing with many hundreds of government and third-party audits. Our system is a sprawling behemoth that expands everyday. Most mortgage servicing businesses still run on dated systems and human workarounds – think individuals using offline Excel spreadsheets to manage cases, think early 2000s UI, and think huge businesses employing many tens of thousands of individuals held back by technology and unable to scale efficiently. That’s exactly why this industry is so ripe for innovation.

On the Escrow team at Valon, we handle everything from property taxes to insurance claims to vendor integrations. Our software has to be precise, scalable, and flexible, with the goal of mirroring the messy reality of the physical world and then using that information to drive downstream servicing decisions.

Every day, we ask:

• Are our data models accurately representing what’s true in the world?
• How do we capture and model information like property layouts, tax parcels, insurance coverage, and home values?
• How do we remove manual work from our operators’ plates without sacrificing accuracy?
  
  

Building With (Not Just For) Operators

Some of my favorite moments at Valon have been launching brand new tools and workflows in partnership with our operating team, Valon Mortgage. I love collaborating with them to understand the problem, sketch out an MVP, build with engineering and design, test together, and finally iterate based on real-time feedback. We’re lucky to be able to work so closely with our direct users and customers, and consequently the feedback loop between product, ops, and engineering is fast and tight, with all of us sitting close to the work. We move quickly, iterate frequently, and we can see our impact constantly. That collaboration is critical to our ability to move quickly and build great solutions.

Of course, we don’t always get it right the first time. Resources are limited, priorities shift, and trade-offs are real. But there’s a shared sense of ownership across teams. We figure it out together, support each other, and keep moving.

Why Join Valon Now

Valon is at a pivotal moment. Some teams are just getting started; others are pushing to scale. It means every week brings a different kind of challenge.

We’re expanding our platform and bringing on new tools and frameworks to accelerate even faster. AI is a  part of that – and we actually have real-world use cases for it. That’s what we’re doing here. We’re not chasing trends, we’re building real systems, using the best tools available, and doing it with people who care about getting it right.

What Makes Valon Different

It’s the team. High talent, low ego, and a bias for action. People here are kind, sharp, and deeply collaborative. You’re trusted with ownership, and supported when you need it.

In a way, I’ve been chasing the energy I felt at Uber Eats ever since I left. I’ve found it again here.

If you’re interested in becoming part of Valon’s team check out our open career opportunities.