Introducing Emily Mancini

Emily Mancini is a lifelong learner. She is a passionate advocate for seamless user experiences- specializing in information architecture and user experience (UX master certified by Nielsen Norman Group). Emily is a recipient of the Microsoft MVP award for Office Apps and Services and a member of the Microsoft 365 Patterns and Practices team. She thrives on building accessible structures to help people find what they are looking for and better understand their surroundings.

Before joining Sympraxis, Emily fell in love with SharePoint Online while managing the Office 365 strategy at a fast-growing global biotech. There she implemented and led the Steering Committee, formed to prioritize projects by business need while maintaining close alignment with the company culture. She developed productivity training to drive user adoption during the company’s 10x growth over 5 years.

Emily has a deep understanding of what business owners need to implement intuitive and scalable solutions. Emily’s experience as a communications manager, leadership development facilitator, and teacher provides a well-rounded background for interpreting and translating user needs across industries. She infuses each project with effective change management and compassion for pain points. Emily believes a human-centered process will yield the best results.

Please recommend one ESPC22 Session (you can’t pick your own 😊 )

I am looking forward to Cathy Dew’s session on Making SharePoint sites look and work best in Microsoft Teams. Most employees are working in Microsoft Teams all day so it is critical to understand how we can best bring the content to where people are already working and how to make it the most impactful in supporting their needs.

Can you briefly discuss a project you are most proud of?

Microsoft Community Content is a set of content written by the Microsoft 365 community for the community. It is an open-source set of articles that live on learn.microsoft.com going beyond the Microsoft documentation to provide guidance on the why behind the solution choices we make in Microsoft 365. Many articles are use cases, guidance on what to use when, or how-to articles to guide your next steps. I am a co-maintainer of this repository with Marc Anderson and we are always looking for new content authors or editors!

Jurassic Park

What is the best career or life advice you have received to date?

Always consider your emotional wake. After you leave an interaction, what are the thoughts and feelings left behind? Are you buoying or drowning people in your interactions?

Have you any tips on receiving a MVP status?

Find the areas where you feel most passionate, so it is sustainable to contribute in those areas. Next think about which mediums best align with your skillset and availability. For example, do you love to travel and present? Speaking engagements might be best. Do you have sporadic availability and prefer to be behind the scenes? Maybe contributing articles to Microsoft Community Content is a better fit.