Janice James · Community and Program Leadership

Community and program leadership · Remote, based in Texas

I build communities that move real business metrics.

Onboarding that sticks, moderation that’s fair, growth I can prove, and the AI workflows to scale it. Ex‑Atlassian, AuditBoard, 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 numbers from documented program readouts, not estimates.

Selected work

The work, told as readouts.

Four programs, presented the way I report them internally. What the problem was, what I built, and what the numbers did.

AuditBoard · Head of Community · 2021 to 2023

A community that pays for itself

AuditBoard’s enterprise customers, audit, risk, and compliance professionals, had no place to learn from each other. I built the community function from scratch: platform, brand, onboarding, live programming, and the integrations underneath (Khoros, Zendesk, Salesforce, Yext). I ran it as an ROI function, tied to deflection, retention, expansion, and product feedback, 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 · Community Manager, Customer Ops · 2019 to 2021

Zero to five-x

Small businesses and creators had no self-service home on Pinterest. On a two-person senior team, I led the launch of the Pinterest Business Community from soft launch through GA. I led a redesign of the homepage and profile experiences with executive sign-off, and drove the technical integration, email, analytics, and SSO, by winning resources from other managers’ teams. Then I migrated international creator hubs in 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 · Community Strategist (contract) · 2023 to 2025

A growth experiment, reported straight

On community.atlassian.com, a developer community used by millions, I drove an experiment: gate select content behind login and pair it with organic and paid social. Group page views went from 2,621 to 7,881 in a month, and site-wide registrations rose 7.3%. The part I stand behind most is the readout itself. It said plainly that other factors moved the same month, so this was a strong signal, not clean proof. Leaders trust my numbers because I tell them what the numbers can’t say.

Reported as signal, not proof
+200%group page views, 2,621 to 7,881
+261%unique visitors to gated content
+7.3%site-wide registrations that month
Atlassian · Community Strategist (contract) · 2023 to 2025

Trust and safety, handled cleanly

A volunteer moderator misused their privileges. I investigated, removed the access myself, and wrote the member-facing communications. Then I helped put a moderation agreement in place so the next case would be policy, not improvisation. Governance work rarely makes a highlight reel. It is also exactly what keeps a community worth joining.

investigationmember commsgovernance playbook
1stmoderation agreement, so future cases follow policy
0improvised escalations after the playbook shipped
Also on the ledger
  • Project Welcome MatOwned both phases of Atlassian’s onboarding redesign, from the registration email rewrite to a 90-second welcome video.
  • 31 to 26 collectionsNamed DRI for consolidating Atlassian’s product collections, merging busy boards without breaking a single link.
  • Partner community escalationsNamed escalation contact; helped shape a staged, education-first non-observance playbook.
Two ways to work with me

Hire the function, or borrow the builder.

Most community programs don’t fail for lack of members. They fail for lack of strategy, systems, and someone who knows how to make the machine run. That’s the part I own.

Full-time

Own the community function

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

  • Full lifecycle ownership, onboarding through advocacy
  • Programs tied to adoption, deflection, retention, and NRR
  • Cross-functional operator, from product to support to marketing
  • Executive-ready reporting and narratives
Hiring? Let’s talk
Contract and fractional

Bring me in for the hard part

Need short-term help? I take fractional, contract, project-based, and advisory engagements in any industry where a community should be working harder 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 and migrations, Khoros to full-stack integrations
  • AI-assisted community and content workflows
Scope it on a call
Experience

Where the work happened.

Quality Analyst, Trust & SafetyTaskUs · contract

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

2025 – 2026
Community Strategist, Global Community OpsAtlassian · contract

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

2023 – 2025
Head of CommunityAuditBoard

Built the community function from scratch and ran it as an ROI engine; hired into strategy, stayed for the execution; managed a direct report.

2021 – 2023
Community Manager, Customer OperationsPinterest

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

2019 – 2021
FounderSubstratics · Loyaltea Aromatics

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

ongoing
The differentiator

The AI part, without the buzzwords.

I don’t just use AI tools. I run Substratics, a daily content platform operated end to end by AI agents I designed: research, drafting, design, publishing. Operating it taught me the thing most teams are still guessing at. I know where agents genuinely extend a small team, and where a human still has to make the call.

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

Builder side

Multi-agent orchestration across frontier models, autonomous publishing, and content-quality evaluation at scale. Built and operated solo.

Evaluator side

At TaskUs I judged LLM output at high volume and wrote the calibration standards that kept a 60-plus person global team consistent.

Toolkit

What I bring to the table.

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, readouts and narratives leadership actually reads.

Analytics

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

Platforms

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

About

The good-neighborhood theory of community.

I build online communities the way you’d run a good neighborhood. Get to know the people, fix what’s actually broken, and back it up with real numbers instead of a hunch.

“Communities compound. Someone answering another’s question is a small shape, but repeated at scale it becomes what keeps people returning and, more importantly, progressing toward what they’re trying to accomplish.”

That principle runs through everything on this page. The AuditBoard deflection rate, the Pinterest launch, the Atlassian experiments. Each one is the same move: build a loop where people helping each other is the engine, then measure whether the engine is actually turning.

I think in systems and levers, back my calls with evidence, and stay calm when the ground is ambiguous. Colleagues’ reviews have called out the leadership and the coaching; the numbers cover the rest.

Away from work I’m a founder twice over. Loyaltea Aromatics is a fragrance brand I built from zero, product to Shopify to customer experience. I’m a member of the Hispanic Business Alliance at my local chamber of commerce.

And yes, the ftw in janiceftw stands for exactly what you think it does.

Contact

Let’s build the loop.

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

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

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