Employee Spotlight: Nancy Pineda

Last month we launched our Employee Spotlight series, whereby we show-off one of our talented team members and share a glimpse into what makes them tick.

November saw us we sitting down with Nancy Pineda, a Senior Onboarding and Ad Operations Manager at Publisher Collective.

Keep reading to discover more about Nancy's work, how she found her way to us, and what keeps her motivated 💪.

1. What's does a typical working day look like for you?

My role as the Onboarding and Ad Operations Manager is primarily centered on ensuring the smooth and efficient technical integration of new and scaling publishers. I lead the onboarding activities, focusing on optimising processes for better cross-collaboration and efficiency, monitoring performance, helping remove roadblocks and build automations.

I start each day with a pipeline review. This involves a deep dive into the status of all current projects: assessing where we are, identifying any missing requirements, and ensuring all tasks are accurately tracked and documented. This allows us to mitigate any additional delays or blockers in the onboarding process, particularly if they involve our SSPs. By doing so, we can stay on track with our KPIs and provide Account Managers with historical records of the onboarding tasks and activities, challenges and so on for their long-term account support.

The rest of the day is split between projects, reporting, planning and team leadership.  I oversee the entire onboarding workload, which includes conducting regular team huddles and 1:1s. These sessions are needed for discussing execution quality, defining priorities, and performing deep-dives to resolve complex technical issues. I work with an incredible team of brilliant minds that are excellent in collaboration and team work.  I prioritise creating a culture of continuous improvement, regularly seeking feedback from my team to refine our workflows and increase efficiency.

A significant portion of my time involves cross-functional collaboration. We work closely with the Sales and Account Management teams to ensure a seamless transition from deal closure to technical implementation. By providing this "white-glove" onboarding support, we not only achieve successful initial integrations but also directly contribute to increased publisher retention and scaling success to support the Account Manager and Sales goals.

While the core focus remains the same, not two days are the same. Every onboarding is slightly different so there is always a new opportunity to learn and improve our process to drive value. 

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2. Looking at your role, what’s your favourite part?

I like having the opportunity to drive operational efficiency and integrate workflow automations. Taking a time-consuming process or any other technical roadblock and finding a way to improve it. This involves analyzing bottlenecks, designing better workflows and building automations. Knowing that a step that took 45 minutes previously, can now be done in seconds with a click of a button, or a 15-step process can be reduced to 5 is satisfying. It's not just about staying organized and keeping things tidy, it has a positive impact on our business and our team.

I'm in a unique position where every day is a new learning opportunity, working alongside a brilliant team that readily shares their knowledge and expertise. By implementing these improved processes, I free up my team's brilliant minds to focus on complex, high-value technical challenges to help achieve our team's goals, rather than repetitive manual work.

3. Thinking about your career path, how has it evolved?

My initial career goal was to be a Phojournalist, driven by a deep interest in media, communication and telling a compelling story. While that still remains, my journey ultimately led me in a different direction, which is somewhat related but with a more technical and digital media optimization foundation.

In college, while working part-time, I became heavily involved in the growing field of digital marketing. This exposure to data, targeting, and online consumer behaviour captivated me. I understood how the media was shifting and my interest transformed from capturing stories to processes that monetize content. This later landed me in the world of AdTech, working closely with various agencies.

From there, my career progression continuously evolved. I spent time working with website-building and SEO, gaining knowledge on user behaviour, UI, traffic optimization - skills that are still useful to this day. I then returned to AdTech and programmatic advertising, working with marketers to set up successful campaigns which gave me better understanding on the buyers side and how they operate.

My current role is on the publisher side, and the perfect culmination of this journey. Having worked across agencies, website development, and the demand side, I'm now on the opposite side of the coin, helping publishers monetize their content.

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4. Thinking about inspiration, is there anyone or anthing, that inspires you professionally?

What inspires me most professionally is knowing my work has a positive impact across the board. When onboarding a publisher, I don't just see a checklist of tasks; I see a system that starts with sales, flows through my team's technical implementation, and ends with account management and publisher monetization. 

I like to think about the entire ecosystem and not just what will impact my team the most. Continuous team feedback whenever a change is implemented, and understanding the impact it has, motivates me to keep improving. 

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5. Can you think of a particular skill, habit, or mindset that’s helped you succeed in your career?‍

Instead of focusing on reactive troubleshooting or simply completing a task, my priority is always to increase efficiency in a way that minimises future friction. If my team has the optimal tools and processes to complete tasks and remove roadblocks, then I am bringing the most significant value to the business. Feeling successful in my role is directly tied to the ability to accomplish this. Stepping back and seeing a smooth, resilient system that enables high-performance across the onboarding pipeline.

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6. You're giving a piece of advice to someone considering a career in your field...What do you tell them?

Constantly work on shifting your mindset from a firefighter, to a proactive problem-solver. It’s a journey to move away from just wanting to constantly fix the immediate issue, and instead, to watch, ask questions, learn, and truly understand the root cause of a situation. I would recommend that someone entering this field always ask themselves: "Why is this the way it is?" and then, you have to dig deeper by asking, "what else?".

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7. Describe your team in three words...

• Brilliant
• Collaborative
• Driven

I’m lucky to work with such talented individuals that are always ready to go, are not afraid of learning new things or facing new challenges. 

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8. Finally, we need to know...Do you have any pets?

I have two lurchers, Tina Turner and David Bowie. They are the sweetest couch potatoes on the planet.

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Keep an eye out for our next Spotlight in December 🎄