Getting to know Persefoni: Meet Matt Palmer

1. And you may ask yourself, "Well... how did I get here?" (Tell us your journey?)

It has been a wild ride so far. If you had told me in college I would someday be working at a tech startup in IT, I wouldn’t have believed you. I earned my degree in Finance and spent the first 13 years of my career in various accounting roles, working in Higher Education and then for an Oil and Gas company. During the last downturn in oil prices, my accounting team continued to get smaller; we weren’t hiring and the workload wasn’t shrinking. I picked up a VBA programming book and began writing macros in Excel, and eventually began using VB to do SAP GUI Scripting to automate our accounts payable processes in SAP. I was hooked. Soon after that, I found myself on our RPA team building Bot’s (digital workers), and I spent several years building Bot’s for both the Marketing and Drilling/Completions teams. When Persefoni co-founder Kim Stroh contacted me and shared the opportunity they had to help build business processes with automation first, it all sounded super exciting. I couldn’t turn that opportunity down.

2. And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile. (What do you do at Persefoni?)

I’m on a small team here at Persefoni building an internal-facing solution where all our business processes will live. Our grand plan is to centralize the employee digital work environment into a single cohesive internal platform. Still awake? :) Basically, what that means is we want to build out all our business processes and systems with integration, efficiency, and automation into a single platform with a high employee experience. This internal platform should allow our employees to manage their work better, find answers to their questions, and reduce application switching between all the various business systems into a single employee experience.

3. And you may ask yourself, "Where does that highway go to?" (What are your hopes for your time at Persefoni?)

In the last few years, it has become undeniable to me that the world is experiencing the impact of climate change. As a former accountant, I can appreciate the carbon accounting and reporting functionality within the Persefoni platform; "you can't fix what you can't measure" resonates with me. To fight climate change, businesses must know where they are with their carbon emissions in order to drive actionable change. To play a small role on the Persefoni team building solutions to that problem is extremely rewarding.

4. And you may say to yourself, "My God! What have I done?" (Why is Persefoni a great home for you?)

In my previous RPA developer role, it was sometimes frustrating to build automations around old, inefficient, bureaucratic business practices where you couldn’t modernize the process. To have the opportunity here at Persefoni to help steer the business processes away from those problems towards integration, automation, and efficiency from the very beginning is both ambitious and very rewarding.

5. And you may find yourself in another part of the world... (Tell us about your life/hobbies away from work?)

These days, outside of work and three little kids (3, 5, and 7 years old), my life revolves around playing pretend with Peppa Pig, Paw Patrol, and Star Wars toys and making trips to the park. When I do get some personal time, I enjoy lifting weights, yard work, and reading.