Meet the People Behind Labguru - Mckay Cavanaugh, Customer Success Manager

Tell us about your background.

It may sound cheesy but I have always loved learning and school. For me, doing research is the pinnacle of learning. Discovering new ideas, making mistakes, growing, being independent are all things that led me down the path to being a scientist.

I studied biology and chemistry at University of Akron, Ohio, where I also grew to love math and engineering. Afterwards, I started my PhD in Biomedical Engineering to combine my passion for physiology with engineering topics like math and physics. I specialized in tissue engineering with a focus on the nervous system. After three years at Akron, our Lab moved to Northeastern University in Boston.

While finishing my PhD, I worked for a student group that provided free support to grad students to help improve their science and technical communication skills. I gave webinars on scientific communication, facilitated writing workshops, and gave one-on-one consultations – this is where my love for helping people do science started! 

Why did you choose to work at Labguru?

I started as a customer! We used Labguru during my PhD and I genuinely loved it. I loved the range of capabilities it offered, and the way it let our lab achieve more. Thanks to Labguru, we were more organized, more efficient, and had better documentation.

When I finished my PhD and started applying for jobs, I was looking for a company that I believed in, loved the product, and would be proud to be part of – Labguru was the obvious choice!

I also wanted a role that utilized my scientific knowledge but focused more on human interaction. The more I got to know about the company, the more I discovered the diverse group of passionate people that I now get to call my team.

What is your role at Labguru?

I’m a Customer Success Manager on the US team. Our team is very collaborative and we’re all razor-focused on helping our users get the most out of our platform.

We help our users through our support chat, office hours, and one-on-one meetings. We also work with them to set objectives, optimize Labguru usage, and adapt to new features. Our aim is to boost their potential and make their lives easier.

I work closely with our product and dev teams to integrate customer feedback into the future direction of our product. Additionally, we host webinars and create helpful materials to train users and spread awareness about new features. I also give demos and training sessions to different groups. All in all, it’s an exciting role that never gets boring!

What is your favorite thing about your work?

I absolutely love the people I get to work with every day - my team are knowledgeable, kind, funny, and incredibly dedicated. I also love working with users from a variety of different companies, countries, and scientific backgrounds. I get to build relationships, understand their work, and help them use Labguru to do incredible, world-changing research. I also love troubleshooting problems users face and get a lot of satisfaction from providing solutions that really help.

Tell me about a challenge you faced recently at work.

I was onboarding a new customer who had a very complex workflow with many components, interdependencies and steps. We worked together to understand the workflow and how it could best be translated into labguru (protocols, inventories, tasks, automation etc.) to create a mirror of their process within their account. We went through several iterations to develop the best workflow for them and then finally implemented it. It was a huge project to translate workflows from a paper source into electronic format, so I found it hugely rewarding to see our efforts pay off.

Who are you outside of work? What do you like to do?

I really enjoy spending time with my family. I also love cooking, gardening, yoga, and spending time outside. I live near a national park so I spend most nice weekends riding my bike or walking on the trails. 

Want to learn more about Labguru?