Welcome to our Meet ShareProgress series! Once a week, we’ll be posting a quick profile on a member of the ShareProgress staff. We last profiled Andy Zack, our data scientist. This week, we’re talking to Jim Pugh, our founder and CEO.

1. Where do you live? What do you love about it? I live in downtown San Francisco, near the baseball stadium. The weather in that neighborhood is warmer than a lot of other parts of the city, which is nice, plus I’m right on the bay. It’s also close enough to the ShareProgress office that I’m able to walk to and from work every day. 
2. What do you do at ShareProgress? My work at ShareProgress varies a lot, depending on what’s happening on any given day. My main focus tends to be on directing the vision for the company, finding great people to join the team, and making sure that we’re in a good spot financially. I also will pitch in on web development and data analysis work for both our software platform and our consulting projects as needed.
3. What work were you doing before this that prepared you for your role here? Immediately previous to this, I was the CTO at Rebuild the Dream, which gave me experience with helping to run an organization. A big influence on my work now, though, was being the Director of Analytics and Development for Organizing for America, which launched me on the path of using data and technology to help progressive causes.
4. What’s your favorite part of working at ShareProgress? Working with great people, and helping organizations that are doing important work to be more innovative and effective.
5. What’s one piece of advice you would give about the work you do? Start simple and build up from there. A lot of best practices in tech and data science can feel overwhelming at first, but you can often begin with just a small piece and then slowly develop a sophisticated program over time.
6. What’s your favorite thing on the internet right now? Hmm, not sure I can pick just one. xkcd.com is pretty amazing, though.

That’s all for this week! Look for more answers from the rest of the ShareProgress staff in the weeks to come.