Name: Dan Alcalde

Department(s): Product

Joined: 2019

Hometown: New York City and Lake Grove, NY

Spoken Languages: English

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Joining the Cherre Family

Company culture is super important to me, especially in my role as an Agile Coach; I’m a strong believer in creating and maintaining an environment that fosters collaboration, assumes best intent, and enables people to be their best selves. Cherre’s culture document and my subsequent meetings with members of the Cherre team truly sold me on that fact that the company is founded on the belief that if you hire great people and give them the environment to succeed then those people can accomplish anything.

I’m a Snow Leopard

I am an Agile Coach, which doesn’t always mean a lot to people. Basically my role is to help fill in the gaps, helping the company improve processes, practices, and principles so that each member of the team can operate at their fullest potential and be given the opportunity to grow and learn. Usually this takes the form of starting with agile frameworks like Scrum but evolves and iterates into many forms, depending on what will be best for the unique group of people and context at Cherre.

Having had the pleasure of working with so many intelligent and talented people throughout my career, I’ve seen a myriad of ways that allow someone to be successful — and more than a handful that don’t. This experience, and the ability to weave it into meaningful stories that may be applicable to any given situation, allows me to truly act as a servant leader. By guiding people, coaching them, I help them find the right solution for their situation, rather than attempting to mandate or command it.

As a still fairly new person on the team, I’m still learning and growing my domain knowledge around Cherre, our products, and our world while trying to help the people and our processes where possible. We’re doing amazing things and I’m looking forward to helping us find ways to be even better at what we do.

Changing our World

Equality, in all its forms. The extreme disparities that are created (whether it’s around gender norms, income gaps, national or racial conflict, and so forth) prevent us from the huge benefits of collaboration amongst a diverse group of people. The best ideas, the most innovation, arises from a group whose composition is truly a cross-section of viewpoints, where a diversity of thought and an open mind can lead to finding the best, most impactful solution to any problem.

Growing Personally and Professionally 

I tend to read about a book a week, though mostly fiction and mostly for pleasure.  In addition, I am a voracious reader of web content and am constantly scouring my LinkedIn feed, a whole diaspora of blogs and news sites, and other social media for new and exciting thoughts, opinions, and analyses. One of the best sources of content for what I do day-to-day is Stefan Wolper’s weekly Age Of Product email newsletter, where he handpicks and handful of articles each week specifically related to agile, product, and general workplace culture.

Saturday Morning Fun

Batman was always my favorite cartoon or comic character; despite his tragic upbringing, he was also looking to make the world around him a better place so others would not have to suffer. Unlike so many of his peers, he was also just a human — something that any of us, with enough money or effort, could achieve.

The Narrator of Your Story

I’m sure everyone wants their narrator to be Morgan Freeman or David Attenborough, but they can’t narrate all the things. How about we go with someone different: Kristen Bell.

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