Client Success Manager Zofia Mita gave us a rundown of launch day at Ash Wellness with our partner, Fulton County Board of Health. The partnership provides access to free at-home HIV/STI testing services through a new virtual portal, as part of the county's StopHIVATL campaign.

[7:40am] Wake up, brew coffee, brush my teeth, comb my hair, and throw on my usual face. It’s Launch Day for our partner, Fulton County Board of Health in Atlanta. 

[8:20] Hop on the train. Ash Wellness moved a few months ago. Lucky for me it’s right off the PATH! Today is our first launch day in the new office. I work from home a few days every week, but it’s so helpful to troubleshoot in-person on launch days. 

[8:53am] “Hello, everyone!” I see VP of Engineering Nick Sempere next to CEO David Stein. I beat some of the engineers into the office. We have a few hours before the virtual portal goes live. I check my email and set up an all-day Zoom room since a few team members are sprinkled across the U.S. This way we can pop in easily if anyone has urgent questions or needs. 

[9:40am] Final look at our resources page. Eva Marsh, our Client Success Associate, curated a bunch of wonderful materials about living with HIV. Fulton County representatives will reach out to anyone with a positive HIV test result within 48 hours, but we want to make sure people have useful information up front.  

[10:30am] Join the engineers, led by VP Nick Sempere, for their daily Tech Standup. Fulton went with an Ash Wellness portal (some of our clients prefer to use their own in-house portal). Our engineers confirm: we’re good to go! 

[11:00am] Make sure the portal buttons send an email. Everything has already been triple-checked, I’m just neurotic.

[11:30am] Touch base with the Fulton County PR and social media teams. We are in the process of embargo-ing a press release, so I want to make sure we are on the same page for any social media. 

[11:57am] Go on a walk with Chief of Staff Jack Hildick-Smith to grab coffee. It’s good to take a fifteen minute break and refocus. “Look at all the Pride flags out in midtown!” 

[12:35] Check in with Fulton. Everything ok on their end? 

[1:05pm] Some of the engineers pick up lunch. Sweetgreen is our highly contested standby. 

[1:30pm] Check in with Hershel Perlmutter, Operations Lead. Kits are on the shelf and ready to go. Fulfillment is also working on stock for a bulk order we will ship to the Fulton County Health Center for local distribution. 

[2:00pm] Launch time! Portal gets flipped into production and Fulton County is free to post the link to their site. 

[2:05pm] We monitor the order sheet. Success! Keep my eyes peeled for any problems. 

[2:10pm] Congratulate and thank my product and ops team for their work in pulling this together. 

[2:15pm] Take a deep breath. 

[2:20pm] Read through the press release. Make sure there are no last minute edits. 

[2:54pm] Scan through the Fulton County social media pages. The launch announcement is up. It looks good.

[3:15pm] Take the elevator downstairs to pick up a package. It’s a Fulton County branded test kit to add to our client wall. 

[4:15pm] Check with Herschel again. Fulfillment centers have confirmed new requests for kits. 

[4:35pm] Product Manager Stephanie Patafio pings me on Slack. She has some ideas on how to make our next launch more mobile friendly. 

[5:15pm] I hang the Fulton County test kit up on our launch wall. We did it! 

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