Introducing Sher!, Director of Workshops

A Message from Erin Becker

I am thrilled to announce that SherAaron Hurt is advancing to a Senior Team Lead role and will now be serving as The Carpentries first Director of Workshops. SherAaron joined the team in 2017 in a part-time administrative support capacity. Over the past four and a half years, SherAaron has epitomized The Carpentries value of “Always Learning”, growing her teaching skills, technical abilities, and leadership skills immensely throughout her tenure with The Carpentries. I know that SherAaron will continue to lead the Workshop Administration Team with heart and confidence, and am excited to follow her as she blazes a new path for The Carpentries workshop of the future.

A Message from SherAaron Hurt

Oh happy days! It is with such excitement that I inform a community I have grown to love and appreciate, that I am now the Director of Workshops. This journey has been an incredible ride that I never expected to get on.

With a background in Business Management and Hospitality Management, leading a team that promotes data science and data literacy was far fetched to even fathom. And now, I could not imagine myself anywhere else. I am right where I want to be!

August 30, 2017, I began my journey as a part time Workshop Administrator with The Carpentries. I was responsible for logistical planning and communications related to individual workshops and assisted with general events. In this role, I was able to understand the daily core operations of the department. In addition, I learned the pain points of the tasks asked to be completed by the team which has allowed my decisions for the team to be experientially driven.

As I continued to grow professionally, I became the Workshop & Logistics Manager. Additional responsibilities included doing administrative tasks for the Instructor Training Team (ITT), planning the first inaugural CarpentryCon in Ireland, which had over 120 participants, and managing the global Workshop Administrators which was soon transitioned to Regional Coordinators.

After successfully accomplishing those goals, I was named the Deputy Director of Workshops. In this role, things shifted drastically. Being in this role during the pandemic we had to quickly make adaptations for offering online workshops. To date we have run over 750 online workshops since 2020. Also, I led the transition for CarpentryCon Madison to become CarpentryCon@Home, which had over 700 participants.

Being a part of the Workshop Administration Team, I have seen so much growth in myself. Prior to working for The Carpentries, I would not have deemed myself capable of leading a technical project without having a technical background.

To date the projects I have led are:

• Revising the Workshop Request Form
• Updating The Carpentries Workshop website section with updated and useful information
• Developing an FAQ page specifically for Workshops
• Automating the Workshop Administration Teams workflow. With this implementation we have reduced the amount of time it takes to coordinate a workshop by 50%.

On average the Workshop Administration Team coordinates over 550 workshops a year. We now spend our time enhancing our program and looking for ways to make our workshops more efficient for the Core Team and the external participants and not just coordinating workshops.

As Director of Workshops my focus will be to:

• Provide more support to our Instructors
• Manage and support the Instructor Develop Committee
• Develop a policy for safely returning to in-person workshops
• Audit our workshops to provide an enhanced experience for all participants
• Coordinate Carpentries hosted workshops to allow more access to our resources
• Update our tracking metrics to provide detailed reports of our impact

After 3 attempts of applying for a position in The Carpentries, I believe I was hired for the position and department that was perfect for me! I started as a part-timer and have worked every position in my department. We have progressed immensely under my leadership as Deputy Director. And now as the first Director of Workshop, there are many more improvements ahead of us.