Meet The Office Manager Who Makes Magic Happen

Mallory Roberts is no stranger to making moves. Sure, the office manager for Shippo, a shipping software e-commerce business, is gearing up for her first office move for this company.

But prior to Shippo, she orchestrated multiple team relocations in San Francisco as the lead of facilities for rapidly-growing Zenefits. Roberts’ background in psychology, specifically her work with children on the autism spectrum, prepared her for anything. But her current and former careers are very different. Here’s how she grew into her success and continues to build on it.

Make a Change When Its Time

Roberts struggled with a back injury that made it difficult to continuously bend down in her work in the child psychology field. Needing to make a switch, she decided to go back to her customer service roots. She’d worked for Peet’s Coffee and Tea in high school and college, and so she built on that experience for the next phase of her career at a bakery. “I ended up head of customer service, and it’s a small family bakery,” she says. “I was able to make an impact and see what my enthusiasm was doing to motivate others and change the company.”

Stay Calm And...Move to a New Building

Roberts’ work with children helped her build patience, which has come in handy during the move. “I am pretty Zen for the most part but I have been talking about this move as a hair-pulling-out exercise,” she says. “Typically, you have some leeway--a grace period--where you can get into the new space and do a deep clean and set your own stuff up, but our current office’s lease ends the same day that the current occupant lease ends and I have to make magic happen.”

Work Together

With a small staff and a tight window to make things happen for the move, Roberts enlisted the help of her colleagues. “I have a sign-up sheet out for my team and the co-founders were first and second in line to help,” she says. “It’s about doing it together. Co-founders jumping up to help with an office move? You don’t really hear that very often. We have a lot of humility at Shippo. And my co-pilot (my office assistant) and I plan on blowing up air mattresses and sleeping there if we have to.”