Janice James · Community and Program Leadership

Community and program leadership · Remote, based in Texas

I build communities that move real business metrics.

I design onboarding, moderation, and growth programs, measure what they deliver, and use AI workflows to scale them. Previously at Atlassian, AuditBoard, and Pinterest.

See the work Get in touch
82%of customers active in the communityAuditBoard · 2022
44%surveyed support-deflection rateAuditBoard · 2022
5×month-over-month traffic growth at launchPinterest Business Community
+7.3%site-wide registrations in one monthAtlassian growth experiment

All figures come from internal program reports.

Selected work

Four programs and their results.

For each one: the problem, what I built, and the measured outcome.

AuditBoard · Head of Community · 2021 to 2023

Building a customer community from scratch

AuditBoard’s customers, audit, risk, and compliance professionals, had no shared place to learn from one another. I built the community function from scratch, including the platform, brand, onboarding, live programming, and integrations with Khoros, Zendesk, Salesforce, and Yext. I measured it against support deflection, retention, expansion, and product feedback, and hired and managed a Community Engagement Lead as the program grew.

0 to 1 buildpeople managementROI reporting
82%of customers had at least one active community member
44%surveyed support-deflection rate
3,219attendees across 43 live office-hours sessions
402customer ideas captured for product teams
Pinterest · Business Community Program Manager · 2019 to 2021

Launching the Pinterest Business Community

Small businesses and creators had no self-service community on Pinterest. On a two-person team, I led the Pinterest Business Community from soft launch through general availability. I led a redesign of the homepage and profile experiences with executive sign-off, secured support from partner teams to integrate email, analytics, and SSO, and migrated the creator hubs for Germany, Brazil, and Latin America onto the platform.

community launchexecutive alignmentcross-functional
5×month-over-month traffic growth after launch
2person senior team running the whole program
3international creator hubs migrated in
Atlassian · Global Community Operations · 2023 to 2025

Testing gated content to grow registrations

On community.atlassian.com, used by millions of customers and partners, I led an experiment that placed select content behind login and promoted it through organic and paid social. Group page views rose from 2,621 to 7,881 in a month, and site-wide registrations rose 7.3%. Other factors also changed that month, so my readout presented the result as a strong signal rather than proof of cause.

Limits stated in the readout
+200%group page views, 2,621 to 7,881
+261%unique visitors to gated content
+7.3%site-wide registrations that month
Atlassian · Global Community Operations · 2023 to 2025

Resolving a moderator misconduct case

One of the program’s longest-tenured community champions misused their moderator privileges. I investigated, made the call to remove their access despite their standing, and wrote the member communications myself. I then helped introduce a moderation agreement so future cases follow written policy.

investigationmember commsgovernance playbook
1stmoderation agreement, so future cases follow policy
0improvised escalations after the playbook shipped
Additional work
  • Project Welcome MatOwned both phases of Atlassian’s onboarding redesign, from the registration email rewrite to a 90-second welcome video.
  • 31 to 26 collectionsLed the consolidation of Atlassian’s product collections from 31 to 26, merging high-traffic boards without breaking links.
  • Partner community escalationsEscalation contact for Atlassian Marketplace partners; built the community’s first moderation playbook, with a staged, education-first approach.
  • Kudos recognition programPart of the Atlassian team behind it: community membership up 53%, accepted-answer rate up 13%, speaker participation up 62%.
  • 43 Community Office HoursLive sessions at AuditBoard that reached 3,219 attendees and captured 402 customer ideas for product.
  • Triple-A initiativeUnified Pinterest’s community strategy across international markets and moved every creator hub onto one global Khoros platform.
Two ways to work with me

Full-time roles and fractional engagements.

Community programs rarely struggle for lack of members. They struggle without a clear strategy, working systems, and someone accountable for running them. That is the work I do, in either arrangement.

Full-time

Own the community function

I’m looking for senior roles where community is treated as a growth lever: first community hire, senior program manager, or head of community. I set the strategy and run the program myself.

  • Full lifecycle ownership, onboarding through advocacy
  • Programs tied to adoption, deflection, retention, and NRR
  • Close partnership with product, support, and marketing
  • Clear reporting for executives
Hiring? Let’s talk
Contract and fractional

Short-term and advisory work

I take fractional, contract, project-based, and advisory engagements for teams whose community should be delivering more than it is.

  • Community audits and health assessments
  • 0-to-1 program buildouts with Crawl / Walk / Run roadmaps
  • Community-led support and deflection ROI cases
  • Champions, advocacy, and ambassador programs
  • Platform builds, migrations, and integrations, including Khoros, Zendesk, Salesforce, and Gainsight
  • AI-assisted community and content workflows
Scope it on a call
Experience

Career history.

Trust & Safety Quality LeadTaskUs

Evaluated LLM output at scale; built quality-calibration standards and delivered weekly policy training across a 60-plus person global team.

2025 – 2026
Global Community OperationsAtlassian

Growth experiments, information architecture, onboarding, and moderation for a community used by millions.

2023 – 2025
Head of CommunityAuditBoard

Built the community function from scratch, measured it against support deflection and retention, and hired and managed a Community Engagement Lead.

2021 – 2023
Business Community Program ManagerPinterest

Led the launch of the Pinterest Business Community and grew its traffic 5x month over month on a two-person team.

2019 – 2021
Senior Content StrategistTransamerica

Launched and managed two major brand properties, including a forum and learning CMS, and lifted user engagement 30%. Created the marketing team’s voice-of-customer program.

2017 – 2019
Community ManagerKendo Brands · Escalate Media

Brand community management for Kendo’s Artistry Collective, and earlier at Escalate Media.

2008 – 2016
FounderSpecktra.net

Founded and ran an independent cosmetics community for 12 years, growing it to over 400,000 unique visitors a month, with brand relationships from MAC and Estée Lauder to indie labels.

2004 – 2016
FounderSubstratics · Loyaltea Aromatics

An AI-agent content platform and a DTC fragrance brand, both built from zero and still running.

ongoing
AI

How I use AI.

I run Substratics, a daily content platform where AI agents I designed handle research, drafting, design, and publishing. Running it every day has taught me which tasks agents handle reliably and which still need human judgment, and I bring that practical knowledge to community operations.

agent workflow design prompt and context engineering LLM evaluation AI-assisted insight reporting

Builder side

I designed and operate a multi-agent publishing pipeline across several AI models, with automated quality checks, on my own. I also built and published an open-source Claude Code plugin with versioned releases, a full test suite, and a fail-closed security pipeline.

Evaluator side

At TaskUs I evaluated LLM output at high volume and wrote the calibration standards used across a 60-plus person global team.

Toolkit

Skills and tools.

Community strategy

Program design and 0-to-1 buildout, onboarding and lifecycle, community-led growth, experimentation, information architecture, gamification.

Trust, safety, and governance

Moderation policy, escalation playbooks, volunteer-leader programs, platform permissions, crisis and member comms.

Advocacy and programs

Champions and ambassador programs, live events, webinars, office hours, podcasts, recognition systems.

Voice of customer

Feedback loops to product and engineering, sentiment tracking, and executive reporting.

Analytics

Amplitude, Tableau, Mixpanel, Google Analytics, ContentSquare, Khoros Value Analytics, SQL, Databricks dashboards.

Platforms

Khoros Classic and Aurora, Discourse, Bevy, Common Room, Salesforce Communities, Higher Logic, Vanilla, Slack, Discord, Reddit, plus Zendesk, Salesforce, and Gainsight integrations.

About

How I approach community.

I treat community as a business function. I learn what members need, fix what is actually getting in their way, and measure the results.

“Every answered question is small on its own. At scale, those answers are what bring members back and help them get where they’re going.”

That idea connects the work above, from the AuditBoard deflection rate to the Pinterest launch and the Atlassian experiments. In each case I built ways for members to help one another, then measured whether it was working.

I work systematically, support decisions with data, and stay steady when priorities are unclear. Performance reviews from colleagues have highlighted my leadership and coaching.

Alongside my career, I’ve founded three ventures. I ran Specktra.net, an independent cosmetics community, for 12 years and grew it to 400,000 visitors a month. I built Loyaltea Aromatics, a fragrance brand, from product development through Shopify operations and customer experience. The third is Substratics, described above. I’m a member of the Hispanic Business Alliance at my local chamber of commerce.

Contact

Get in touch.

If you’re hiring for a community role or need a program built, fixed, or measured, email is the fastest way to reach me.

Email me Put me on your calendar LinkedIn Résumé (PDF)

Janice James · Austin–San Antonio area, Texas · remote friendly