Spend a day in the life of Christian Lewis, an Unqork Client Director.
As a Client Director, Christian Lewis has a unique role at Unqork. He goes from industry to industry, helping clients use Unqork’s no-code platform to solve their most challenging problems. “Unqork was built with the regulatory, compliance, and tech risk landscape in mind,” Christian explains, “which uniquely positions us to support clients in heavily regulated industries.” Every day, Christian helps clients learn how Unqork can help them build better applications. Check out how he spends the rest of his time, directly from Christian himself.
7:10 AM: I get up and start my day by boiling some water for a cup of tea. I quit coffee cold turkey, and now I’m on the loose leaf tea train—green and black tea are my favorites! I try my best to use this time in the morning to get ready for the day. I’ll typically avoid checking my notifications until at least 7:45 or 8:00 AM so that I can focus on the day’s objectives before diving in.
8:00 AM: I hop onto a call with a prospective client to introduce them to Unqork. After brief introductions, I give them an overview of our company and platform before digging into what they want to see from Unqork’s capabilities. First, I’ll demo a pre-built application to show them industry samples, such as a live credit card application. Then, I’ll go into the designer view and show them the configurator experience by building out the first page of a workflow. From there, I’ll start to layer in some business logic—such as a risk score—to hopefully grab their attention. Many clients have an “Oh wow!” moment when they realize just how fast you can build applications with Unqork.
9:00 AM: I start crafting documentation for one of our accelerators / industry campaigns. These documents usually include one-pagers and other marketing materials. Right now, I’m working on an end-user compute (EUC) campaign that is helping digitize manual banking processes. Because banks are heavily regulated yet also have many systems that need to interact with one another to achieve daily business needs, EUCs are built on top of those systems to hopefully automate some of those processes. What tends to happen is that those EUCs also add to the overall technical debt of an organization and then become hard to maintain.
With Unqork, we help automate it end-to-end and give the power back to the organization to integrate with those systems, transform the data, automate flows, and create detailed front- and back-end experiences. For example, the process of trade exception management is often not fully automated at most companies. With Unqork, we can streamline these processes by connecting to legacy systems and configuring business logic to help raise exceptions and action them.
9:30 AM: After reading through some documentation, I configure out some wireframes for a proof of concept (POC) for a client.
10:30 AM: I hop onto a call with one of our system integrator (SI) partners, where we discuss how we can best support our shared client. We come up with a good plan and set up a checkpoint to walk the client through the information.
11:00 AM: Next, I join the deal desk to discuss a proposal for a new opportunity. As soon as the project and pricing gets approval, I set up a time with the client to review the plan.
11:30 AM: Time to make some lunch! I’ve recently been learning how to cook, and it’s a lot of fun to try new recipes per recommendations from my friends. Shrimp creole is my new favorite go-to meal—it’s not quick, but you can do prep work beforehand to make it easier (it definitely beats PB&Js, but they still have a soft spot in my heart). Although I’ve grown a lot as a cook, I want to keep improving: my three cooking goals this year are to make beef bourguignon, get really good with the Instant Pot, and cook ten meals that will impress my friends and family.
Christian’s latest homemade lunch obsession.
12:15 PM: Post-lunch, I work with internal Unqork teams to review a request for proposal (RFP) and coordinate a response. An RFP is a document describing an unfulfilled business need and proposing a solution—responses to RFPs, depending on complexity, can range from 20 to 100 pages. Our goal in responding to these RFPs is to showcase how our platform can be used to solve the need and also showcase our differentiation in the market. I help contextualize RFP questions that are more business-focused, then put necessary details in the response.
1:00 PM: I interview a new candidate for our team. We’ve spent a good chunk of time making the hiring process more inclusive by focusing on an individual’s unique experiences. One way we’ve achieved this is by creating an interview question bank that is not tied to any particular experience, but more around how a prospective hire thinks from a solutioning perspective. Candidates are asked to answer critical questions and we’re trying to focus on questions like: Can they think on their feet? Do they understand what Unqork does and how we try to accomplish client goals, and how we maintain client relationships?
Our team’s interview process involves a half-hour interview; for those that progress, we have a take-home test and a few follow-up sessions to showcase their work and meet the team. The take-home test challenges the applicant to use a couple of features on the Unqork platform to create a demo and then present on its business case. Not only is this a fun project, but it also offers insight into how a prospective hire presents their opinions about the industry, and how they would approach using Unqork.
1:30 PM: In partnership with our Sales Engineering team, we present the final demo of a feature-based application for a client.
2:30 PM: I am invited to a call by our Tech Partnerships team with one of our partners. During this call, we discuss the various ways we can create industry solutions for potential clients.
3:00 PM: Then, I demonstrate one of our new accelerators to an SI partner. During the call, there’s a few new faces so I talk a little bit about our mission, platform, and capabilities!
3:30-4:30 PM: I have two meetings with one client. During the first call, we discuss progress on program implementation with delivery. Next, I meet with a member of the extended team to talk about a new system they’d like to develop using Unqork.
As President of the Unqork Spectrum ERSG, I meet with the Spectrum leadership team to plan our upcoming events, including Pride. This June, we have several exciting events going on.
5:00 PM: As President of the Unqork Spectrum ERSG, I meet with the Spectrum leadership team to plan our upcoming events, including Pride. This June, we have several exciting events going on—one I’m really excited about is a cooking class with the co-founder of Omsom where we’ll learn to make a lemongrass BBQ dish. We also have a discussion on LGBTQ+ mental health, including one centered around coming out in the workplace. Another discussion we’re holding is with Dori Cavanaugh, a specialist in infertility adoption and LBGTQ+ parenting, in collaboration with Caregivers ERSG (the parents and caregivers group at Unqork). We also are speaking to several trailblazers in the financial services industry, like Laela Sturdy. These sessions are exciting moments to get clients involved and bring internal teams together.
5:45 PM: I partner with the delivery team to set up initial calls with a client to scope out their minimum viable product (MVP). These discovery sessions cover what the scope of the project looks like—they help get us started on the right foot. This is where the rubber meets the road, and we plan how Unqork and our partners will come together to deliver a solution for the client.
7:30 PM: I typically try to take a walk in the evenings. Time permitting, I like to walk all the way up to Lincoln Center.
Christian doesn’t just walk to Lincoln Center!
8:00 PM: After a quick walk, I meet up with my friends and lately I force them to teach me new meals to cook. Some days, I play a video game for a bit—I’ve mostly been playing PC games as of late. Every few weeks, I pick out one or two indie games to try something new. Currently, I’m playing a card-based game called Slay the Spire (definitely recommend it, I believe it’s on the Switch now as well). After all that, it’s time to sleep!
To hear more perspectives from other Unqorkers, check out the other entries in our Unqork @ Work series and our Creator Spotlights.
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