PickTrace is proud to be a team of diverse backgrounds, skill sets, and interests. Each week we highlight members of our team to learn about what makes them, and PickTrace, unique.
Meet Senior Product Manager, Pascal Stewart! Pascal came to PickTrace in 2021 and has been putting smiles on the faces of clients and team members alike ever since. Read on to learn more about this passionate Product manager.
How would you describe your role to a child?
- PickTrace offers multiple products that help employers in the agricultural industry hire, track, and distribute wages to their employees.
- As a Product team, we work to ensure our products deliver customer value and position the greater business for success.
- As a Sr. Prod Manager, I own the Onboarding product and ensure that we’re solving the problems that are most valuable to both current and prospective users.
What’s a favorite memory from working at PickTrace
- My first proper customer visit within the first few weeks of getting hired. We went up to Washington and our client gave me the full tour. Driving around with him was so great. He was such a great person and so excited to advocate for PickTrace – even now getting to see him again when we go back to Washington is awesome. I think our customers are just great – I can’t speak highly enough of them.
- Honestly some of the Fairfield trips – getting to tour the farm on the trailer rides with the whole team. As a tech company constantly involved in the virtual world, it’s cool that the closest thing we do have to a home-base is a farm. To be able to have that setting to see the roots where we came from and have that direct connection to the industry. Having that context and exposure for WHY we’re even doing this.
- Just the level of character of the people that I call colleagues and get to interact with on a regular basis – getting to do trips with a crew that you don’t get to see that often. Every time I do hang out with people in person I’m constantly impressed.
When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
- Probably baseball player was what I held onto until the beginning of high school – when I got immediately humbled by playing against seniors when I was a tiny freshman.
- In high school I really was leaning towards the attorney route – I think that’s when it started – I did a Mock Trial club and started seeing it as a more realistic approach and something I was OK at
- Going to college – I was actually going to be a CPA for a minute – I was originally a math major, then geology, then econ. When I was doing Econ, I thought being a CPA would be a good way to get a job and be able to stay in Santa Barbara. I took those classes for a couple quarters and realized it wasn’t for me.
- Later, a cofounder of a local startup spoke at my school and when I graduated that company posted a role that I eventually took. All the while, I was pursuing the LSAT to become a Lawyer. I was fully down that path – I got into a school, got a scholarship, went through registration, and the week before I left I was getting cold feet and my boss at the startup asked me to stay. I really liked it and stuck around doing a little bit of everything in the growing company. And here we are 12 years later, still in tech building value for customers!
What was your first -ever job?
- Kind of a tie between lifeguarding and tennis instructing/ tennis camp counselor when I was in high school.
- I lived down the street from a racket club and grew up playing tennis and swimming there.
What are your hobbies? / How do you like to spend time when you’re not at work?
- I sold my boat in September, so I haven’t been going out to the islands or diving as much, but I try to surf as much as I can in between dad life.
- I’d say hiking and walks – they just put in a new bike/walking path on the main road to the beach – it’s about 2 miles and we try to do that a couple times a week with Lyla. Keep her entertained and outside
- Lyla’s also in swim lessons right now. My free time and hobbies just turn into taking care of her, which is weirdly awesome. She’s finally big enough that we can put her on the bike, she’s sitting up and isn’t just flopping around.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received – or do you have a mantra you live by?
- As corny and cliche as it sounds – I think the two that resonate the most are “Life is what you make it” and “Happiness is a choice”
- That can be difficult contextually and situationally but to some extent you are in charge of how you are receiving and processing your environment and your existence. At the end of the day it all comes through the last filter – which is you.
- So much of it is ‘what are you going to do to make sure that you position yourself to be happy?’ Making the decisions that position you for success. Kind of like product haha
If you were a fruit or vegetable what would you be and why?
- Avocado, gotta love the jungle vibes of the origin, and you’re highly desired and expensive, people love and want you, even the cartel wants a piece
- My two favorite fruits are avocado and pineapple
