For this month's Employee Spotlight, we spoke with Shayam Parasram. Shayam is from Brentwood, New York—a little town in the middle of Long Island. He went to school at New York University and is now living in Manhattan.
Shayam originally started at Cureatr as a Marketing Intern and transitioned into the Commercial Operations Analyst position where he works in between the marketing and sales teams. He has been with the company for a year.
What is your favorite thing about your job?
It’s hard to pick a single favorite. There are a couple things that come to mind. First, I love the people. It is really nice to be able to come to work and feel like you can truly be yourself. Work challenges you to adapt to different situations—you have to show a different side of yourself amongst different people, but also feel comfortable and safe as being yourself.
Starting as an intern made it easier. I was able to take the risk of being who I am up front and seeing if my personality meshed with everyone else in the company. If it didn’t, then that would have told me something about this place and who I am as a person and colleague.
What do you find most challenging about your job?
The most challenging thing is realizing that I do have a voice. It was easy for me to be myself coming on as an intern. But when I started full-time, it took awhile for me to shake off the “I’m an intern, I’m just here to learn” feeling. There’s a point when I realized that I was hired to contribute my thoughts and opinions, and as well as execute work. I always felt valued, but it was challenging to tell myself that my ideas were good enough to be said out loud.
How would you describe Cureatr in 3 words?
Family, innovative, and game-changing.
Why do you like working for Cureatr?
I like the openness of the teams. I like being able to talk to someone on a different team to get their perspective. Everyone has a different field of expertise, and I think getting that different perspective is really helpful.
What is your proudest moment at Cureatr?
Probably rapping Gangsta’s Paradise by Coolio at the holiday karaoke party.
What is one thing unique about you that people would be surprised if they knew?
I like to work on music. Instruments, vocals, a little bit of everything. I’m going to be on my friend’s project that he’s been working on for the past two years. I also really like taking photos on my hipster film camera. I hope to build a good portfolio of all my interests outside of work.
What do you enjoy doing when you are not working?
I like to listen to music, take photos, watch movies, TV, and chill with friends.
What is the first app you check in the morning? And why?
Twitter because that’s where there’s a lot of anything that I would want to know might be: anything viral, news, entertainment… That’s usually all there in the morning. So I’ll check Twitter and it brings me up to speed on everything.
What was the last thing you watched on TV and why?
Oh, no. Oh, no. Um, it was Love Island. Because it was like 100 degrees and I just needed to take my mind off anything that mattered and Love Island delivered. I don’t know.
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