Work Diaries: Stephanie Carvajal’s worklife, focused on developing relationships with Spanish-speaking artists

We’re peeling back the curtains with our series, Work Diaries, where you can experience the inner workings of YouTube. How do decisions get made? What goes into a product, feature or policy? We’re asking YouTube employees to give us the low-down during a five-day period.

Featured today: Stephanie Carvajal is a Strategic Partner Manager who manages relationships with Spanish-speaking artists in Latin America and the U.S.

Monday (OOO)

8:45 a.m.: It’s a different kind of Monday, because I took the day off to go camping over the weekend at Ft. Jefferson National Park — about 70 miles east of Key West. It’s been an incredibly relaxing weekend. When we get home, I’m still not ready for my cell phone distractions, so I check a couple text messages and go to sleep. Makes me realize how great it was to be off-the-grid for three days.

Today’s highlight: We had several hours to snorkel before we had to head to the ferry. Today was the day with the most visibility since being here. There were plenty of fish — snapper, tarpon, colorful parrot fish, and sea urchin.

Tuesday

8:00 a.m.: Back to reality, which means our four fur babies are up and hungry, so I better get up, too! My mom drives the city bus, which means she’s already halfway through her work day. I’m working from home with our dogs. We have a maltese, two yorkies and a chihuahua, all with unique personalities.

9:30 a.m.: I kick off my day by checking my Google calendar to see what I have scheduled. I also get started on my to-do list. I’m old-school in that sense and love using paper and pen for my list. The best part is scratching a task off. As a Strategic Partner Manager, I not only check-in with partners I work with to ensure they’re best leveraging YouTube, but I also work cross-functionally, internally advocating on their behalf for any internal opportunities I see surfacing with different music teams.

I check my social media, chats and texts to see if any partners have contacted me. Working with Latin artists and their teams, I get contacted in many ways, though I always bring it back to email for official business. I check my calendar to remind myself of music releases for the week. I then follow up and send out emails to my music partners to schedule calls to go over upcoming release plans, channel content strategies, or to go over business plans.

1:00 p.m.: We have our America’s Monthly Meeting in which the Creator and Artist Development partnerships team gets together for leadership updates, learnings, partner success stories, and business objective check-ins. Among other updates, our director shares what she’s doing to be more educated in the matter of racial justice. She also mentions the start of Latinx Heritage Month, since several of us on the team are involved with our Familia@YouTube employee resource group. We’re in the middle of planning a virtual summit, a presentation at the company-wide meeting (YouTube Fridays), and a virtual Block Party.

The purpose of the summit is to bring together Latinx and Hispanic YouTubers from across the company to create a space to explore intersectionality and the power of authenticity.”

2:30 p.m.: I meet with my Latin America regional manager to discuss potential artist nominations for the virtual Brandcast being planned for Spanish-speaking Latin America. There are several opportunities to involve our artists performances and panel discussions with our top sales clients.

3:00 p.m.: As part of the Familia@YouTube Summit planning committee, I’m helping with the talks that will be delivered by volunteering members. The purpose of the summit is to bring together Latinx and Hispanic YouTubers from across the company to create a space to explore intersectionality and the power of authenticity. I met with a colleague to go over her talk, to provide some feedback and answer any questions.

4:00 p.m.: Latin America Music Team Meeting with my counterparts (other Artist and Label SPMs working with Latin partners), where we discuss progress on contract negotiations, programs and initiatives, and any marketing campaigns we have going on.

6:30 p.m.: I meet with my manager and update him on the artists from Spanish-speaking Latin America that my colleague and I ended up selecting to be a part of the upcoming Foundry class. (Foundry began in 2016 to help artists develop tools to grow their presence on YouTube, and Dua Lipa was part of that first class.)

Today’s highlight: I wrap up my day and go out on an evening walk with my dogs before sunset. I come home and make chicken saffron rice, better known in Spanish as ‘arroz con pollo.’

Wednesday

11:00 a.m.: I’ve been collaborating with League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) as a Google 20% Project. (This means I get to dedicate about 20% of our time to a project or role outside of our main job.) I sync with my colleague to check-in on progress. We’re helping LULAC leverage Google’s tools to optimize their everyday work.

4:30 p.m.: YouTube Music Playlists are featuring some of the artists I work with as part of Hispanic Heritage Month Programming, so I need to ask them to share some one-liners to be used for social media promotion.

Today’s highlight: I’m asked to moderate Robert and Luz Kyncl’s Wellbeing panel for next week’s Familia@ Summit and I happily agree! Robert Kyncl is our Chief Business officer.

My work from home setup — My work-from-home setup

Thursday

3:00 p.m.: I reminisce on the many in-person industry events that we can’t attend due to the pandemic. I’ve been fortunate enough to lead workshops at YouTube PopUp Spaces in Mexico City, Miami, and Argentina. I was supposed to be leading my second NextUp Camp for Artists for Latin America — a week-long development camp for up-and-coming artists — but that had to be put on hold. Also thinking of the main Latin music industry events, such as the Latin Billboards and Latin Grammy’s, during which we attend panels and host artist meetings.

The Spaces team and cross-functional teams have gotten creative on trainings we can provide to our partners. We’ve already done several live-streaming trainings for artists, a Master Class for Foundry artists, so we start planning the next virtual training around Super Chat and Super Stickers.

Today’s highlight: I get confirmed as one of Google’s attendee’s to the 2020 Grace Hopper Celebration Virtual.

Friday

10:00 a.m.: It’s Focus Fridays, so I do some housekeeping tasks to close off the week, such as logging calls in our internal systems and send out pending follow-up emails to partners. I also have an internal training I need to get through.

2:30 p.m.: I have a call with Carbon Fiber Music regarding Farruko’s upcoming releases and content plans for the channel.

3:00 p.m.: Music team meets with Mexico’s Marketing team to discuss Brandcast plans for Spanish-speaking Latin America and potential artists to involve.

4:00 p.m.: I send an email to our Americas Creator and Artist Development team, sharing which artists were featured on YouTube Music’s Playlist Covers this week to create internal awareness. I send everyone off with great music to listen to during the weekend.

6:00 p.m.: I get hungry and decide to make ground turkey tacos for dinner.

Today’s highlight: I was asked to introduce an artist performance for next week’s virtual Block Party!