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nivi achanta

nivi achanta

party sorceress. community builder. public speaker

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My Community Story

I'm the founder and CEO of Soapbox Project. We make social impact easy for busy people. Our lightweight social justice funnel starts with bite-sized climate action plans, scales up through monthly action hours, and engages people further through a membership community focused on local action, which we officially launched in early 2021.

When launching our Soapbox membership community, I realized three things. First, there was a LOT to learn in this online community building world. Second, foundational community concepts have existed for decades (well, technically millennia), and we’re in this magical time of having the technology tools to connect and organize humans at scale. Third, I have a natural knack for this work.

I’m best at helping you find the most solid ground for your community’s culture and combining this foundation with operational expertise on the technology side. I do this through free guides, courses, 1:1 consulting, and speaking sessions if our values align. The knowledge I offer is best suited for early-stage community builders — whether that means you are new to online community building, your community is still a baby, or you’re in the early steps of transforming your audience into a true community.

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Features: Press, Media, Talks

This is a selection of my favorite stuff to show off — the articles, podcasts, and talks I’m most proud of (sort of ordered by recency). You can view more here.

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Confluencer Con 2021 | Community Stewardship: Cultivating the communities that we need to thrive (Conference Talk)
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Podcast Movement 2020: How to transform your community into your champion (Conference Talk)
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Social Entrepreneurship & Innovation: How to build a community to fight climate change (Podcast)
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Circle Summit 2021 Expert Roundtable: How to Find Your First 100 Founding Members (Conference Talk)

Testimonials

The events you host are magical and I'm so glad to be part of the community. — Sophia Wagner, Mighty Deposits co-founder
The events you host are life-giving. — Rose Hartley, Soapbox Project member
I was blown away by your presentation at Circle's Summit. Big fan of your work — thank you for generously sharing tips. — Susie Kim, audience member
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View all

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Testimonials

Will F, Soapbox Community Member
Will F, Soapbox Community Member
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Will F, Soapbox Community Member

Experience

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Things I built (aka entrepreneurship)
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Founder & CEO | Soapbox Project (September 2020 - Present)
  • Wrote and curated 100+ articles on sustainability distilling complex topics like blockchain's impact on the environment, carbon offsets, food insecurity, etc. into bite-sized 3-min modules
  • Formed 20+ community partnerships with grassroots advocacy organizations like Weld Seattle, Mission Bit San Francisco, The Climate Journal Project, and Climate Changemakers
  • Launched paid membership community with biweekly fireside chats, monthly virtual hangouts, monthly hours of action, online forum, 1:1 member matching, and local hubs
  • Interviewed social justice experts for fireside chats and asynchronous Q&As
  • Mentored 3 team members to collaborate on graphic design, marketing, and growth
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Chapter Founder & President | Net Impact Davis Undergraduate (October 2016 - June 2017)
  • Founded Net Impact Davis, focusing on environmental, social, and cultural entrepreneurship.
  • Assembled three teams (water management, waste management, and education) to tackle sustainability issues in the Davis area
  • Hosted project management workshops with professionals from the UC Davis Graduate School of Management
  • Facilitated pitch fest alongside institutional partners like IIFH so Net Impact Davis students could receive $2,000+ of funding within first 7 months of operation
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Biggest accomplishment: the sustainability + cultural competence seminar designed and implemented by education management team's seminar has been fully funded and running from 2017 till today.
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Things I helped build (aka consulting)
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Stand Inc. (January 2021 - June 2021)
  • Worked with Stand CEO to launch their blog and content strategy
  • Wrote 2 articles a month on social commerce in the pet industry, including leading SEO efforts
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Digital Media Expert | Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (February 2020 - November 2020)
  • Produced four podcasts with the foundation's executive team and co-chairs, including Mark Suzman & Melinda Gates
  • Designed the user interface of a website that later inspired the foundation-wide onboarding portal
  • Enabled the first-ever modern learning experience for all foundation employees on gender equality
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Project Lead | NorCal Wildfire Disaster Response (November 2018 - July 2020)
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The biggest learning from this experience was the power of empathy and community organization. Our volunteer work at East Ave Clinic was humbling beyond words, and it's been the most powerful work I've ever led.
  • Proposed and led a team of 8 consultants and analysts to understand disaster response challenges and successes at a makeshift shelter in Chico
  • Leveraged design thinking to find and validate key focus areas; conducted 14 interviews of shelter “command center” personnel and accrued 36 onsite volunteer hours as a team
  • Presented findings to Accenture West Region Leadership and to CSU Chico’s Consulting Certificate Program
  • Led a cross-industry workshop in 2020 convening tech, government, and nonprofit to solve for people with Access & Functional Needs
  • Presented to CEO Julie Sweet on North America-wide broadcast and featured in Accenture's Corporate Citizenship Report
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Senior Product Manager | Enterprise CRM Client (May 2019 - November 2019)
  • Shipped performance improvement features for internal tools, reporting to the Director of Product Management
  • Managed internal search engine product alongside 8 engineers and 2 designers
  • Supervised 2 business analysts for business and design specs
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Learning Operations Consultant | Large Social Media Company (September 2017-November 2018)
  • Managed 20 programs with 500+ sessions for a large Social Media Client while optimizing operations strategy during a Learning & Development vendor migration
  • Identified 80+ opportunities for process improvements and automation in 12 weeks with a cross-functional team, saving over $50,000 in the first 4 weeks of the project
  • Built executive dashboards for a large Cloud Provider using SQL scripts for high-level, dynamic understanding of Cloud product metrics
  • Identified 8 drivers of low product performance in an executive presentation for organization’s CMO, resulting in increased attention to infrastructure integrity and experimentation
  • Analyzed credit expenditure and revenue impact for cloud platform’s free trial extension from 60 to 365 days, performing a deep dive into credit use and net revenue trend shifts
  • Created experiment uplift analyses for the product team to validate signup flow rollout changes to various regions using SQL and statistical modeling

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VP of Internal Operations | Consult Your Community, Davis

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Teams I was on (aka work experience)
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Youth Entrepreneurship Instructor | The Startup Squad (August 2019 - October 2019)
  • Created 6-week lesson plan from scratch on ideation, design, pricing, marketing, and other kid-friendly concepts for entrepreneurship
  • Taught biweekly lessons to 8 students in an after school program
  • Helped students script and rehearse business idea pitches (with lots of meltdowns)
  • Facilitated end-of-program lemonade stand competition and business leader panel for student pitches
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Director of Operations | The Violet Society (January 2019 - September 2019)
  • Participated in a 10-week entrepreneurship program for women entrepreneurs (January - March 2019)
  • Prepared and facilitated 45-minute interviews with women technology founders working on venture-scale businesses
  • Secured event spaces, hosted meetings, met with advisors, scheduled coffee chats
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Various Roles (Intern, Team Leader, Lead Instructor) | Camp Galileo (2012 - 2017, June - August)
  • As a lead instructor, created collaboration-orientated innovation exercises for 3 rotations of 20 primary school (K-5) campers
  • Implemented improvements to weekly lesson plans according to student responsiveness and staff feedback

*Absorbed by On Deck

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