My Name Is Kelly Sebes — This Is Why I Joined Aha!
I love a good mystery. In high school, I became fascinated by one of the oldest — the rise and fall of ancient Rome. I wanted to unlock this rich history, so I signed up for Latin class and began reading stories like Vergil’s Aeneid. Each sentence was a clue that brought me closer to understanding who these people were and what they had hoped to achieve. But these questions were not exclusive to ancient Rome.
I have always sought to understand what drives people to do what they do and how I can help them be better.
I started by studying ancient civilizations and then focused on neuroscience and anthropology when I attended Vanderbilt University. I was fascinated with how people process information. The more I learned, the more questions I had. Why do people make certain choices? And how could I use my own curiosity to help them make better ones? I knew I wanted to explore the answers after graduation.
When I began my career at a software company, my main focus was understanding and helping customers. I spent a lot of one-on-one time training them on our software. As I did, I could see that customers did not just need a person to walk them through the process — they needed the technology to be better too. I was inspired to start contributing more on the product side.
I wanted to help build something that could really give people what they needed.
My first step was improving the quality of the software we delivered. I started working closely with the development team to refine algorithms and make them more customer-friendly. As I grew into a leadership role, I began training the rest of the QA team, encouraging them to test real customer use cases.
But after a few years leading QA, I realized my favorite days were the ones where I uncovered customer problems and collaborated with the team to devise a solution — product management! Product management became a new puzzle for me to solve. So, I joined a fast-moving advertising startup as a product manager and dove right in, working with our scrum master to transition the teams to agile and launching new versions of the platform and apps.
As I grew in my product career, I moved into more senior product roles. I had the opportunity to work in a variety of industries from pharmaceuticals to telecom. I was able to lead launches of new SaaS products and continued to work closely with customers. But I loved working closely with my fellow product managers too — sharing best practices, evaluating tools, and staying up to date on the latest advancements in our field.
As I began thinking about my next career step, I knew that this was something I wanted — helping my fellow product managers be their best.
When I heard about a role on the Aha! Customer Success team, I was intrigued and decided to apply. The interview process moved quickly. I spoke with several members of the team in rapid succession. I loved that they did not keep me waiting between interviews. The Aha! team seemed to really value my time and made sure I had a good experience during the process. I could tell that this company valued people and I knew I wanted to join.
Since joining the Aha! team, I have had the chance to work with product managers at a variety of companies — from SaaS and hardware to insurance and consulting.
I love helping our customers implement our software across their organization, bringing more strategy and alignment to what they do each day. Just recently, I moved over to the product team — back to product management, working directly on new features and improving our application. I am using my curiosity to learn how we can continue to make Aha! even better for customers.
I might not be translating ancient texts, but I am still searching for new clues each day — digging into the way people work and how I can help them do it even better.
That is why I joined Aha! — and why you should too.
