My WordPress Career: Kasia Zukowska

My WordPress Career is an employee spotlight on the StellarWP blog. In each edition, we highlight a different team member’s professional journey. 

While each story is unique, they all demonstrate that there isn’t one single way to arrive at a career in WordPress. Our team members come from different backgrounds, and each person brings a different type of expertise to their role. And we think that’s pretty stellar.

Today, we’re talking to Kasia Zukowska, support manager at LearnDash.

StellarWP: What was your very first job? Tell us what your duties entailed.

Kasia Zukowska: My first official job was as a cashier at Mcdonald’s when I was 19. I quickly climbed the ladder and became a manager.

I used to count their whole safe and take that money to the bank. The way they did it was kind of scary. I would always worry I’d get robbed.

Before that, I had many small entrepreneurial jobs—the very first was a car wash with my cousins at 7 years old. We’d carry our supplies and approach people to wash their cars as they shopped at the supermarket. My sister, cousins, and I would also pick fruits and vegetables from my grandparents’ garden, package them in jars, and sell them to local stores.

What’s your current job at StellarWP? What do your duties include now?

KZ: I’m a support manager at LearnDash and I’ve been at the company for five years.

In my current role, I oversee support department operations, take part in meetings, coordinate with other department managers, analyze customer support data, complete performance evaluations, and assist with training and developing new policies and procedures.

I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty and help wherever I can.

The most rewarding thing at my job is being able to support my team so they can then support our customers. I absolutely love the people I work with and that is a huge part of why I love my job.

When did your career shift toward WordPress?

KZ: In 2012, I changed my college major from management information systems to web design. I’m a creative person, so naturally, I fell in love with design. From there, I looked at ways I could take those skills and turn them into an income stream. 

I started my first business designing and maintaining WordPress websites. Being the perfectionist that I am, I would spend hours and hours learning about WordPress best practices; one of my resources was iThemes Training. 

I wish I knew I didn’t have to know everything about WordPress to be an active part of the community. I suffered from imposter syndrome at the beginning.

Is there anything you learned on your first job that you carried with you to your current role at StellarWP?

KZ: I learned to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. It was nerve-wracking as a kid asking adults if they wanted their car washed.

When I first became a manager at McDonald’s, it was intimidating at times to manage twenty or thirty people when I never had managerial experience before. But I pushed through and focused on action and learning, not dwelling on the things I didn’t know. I would just figure things out.

Entrepreneurship runs through my veins. It’s how I express my creativity. I learned different aspects of running a business (we tended to be scrappy and wear a lot of hats in our early days), and that has allowed me to better understand why we do things the way we do at LearnDash. 

I have a more complete picture and not just a support point of view of things. I feel like knowing other details from other departments helps me make better decisions for the support department and align our department to work together more smoothly. 

How is working in WordPress different from other jobs you’ve had? What do you like best? Are there any parts that are more challenging?

KZ: The biggest difference is there is a huge community behind it. There’s an open source movement where you feel a real sense of belonging. Even competitors come together and interact, which I haven’t seen in other industries. 

The most challenging thing about WordPress is that new users can still find it difficult to use. There has been some good progress to bridge that gap, but I hope that things shift even more toward ease of use so that WordPress doesn’t get left behind or become irrelevant. We have a lot of work to do!

What do you wish you had known when you first started working in the WordPress world?

KZ: I wish I knew I didn’t have to know everything about WordPress to be an active part of the community.

I suffered from imposter syndrome at the beginning and felt like I didn’t belong in the community because I was a newbie. I realized I actually knew a lot more than some who considered themselves “experts”.

Community in those early days could have propelled my business even further, so I missed out on that.

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