PioNear Community:
customer advocacy
through ambassadorship
After an acquisition, two separate ambassador programs needed to become one — without losing the culture that made either of them work.
Two communities coming together — each with their own identity.
When Nearpod acquired Flocabulary, both products had established ambassador programs with strong identities, rituals, and communities of educators who were deeply invested in them. These weren’t just product users — they were advocates who had built part of their professional identity around the tools they used. The challenge wasn’t simply to merge two programs. It was to create something new that felt coherent, while still respecting what made each community meaningful. Moving too quickly risked losing that identity. Moving too slowly risked keeping the communities fragmented. The starting point was listening — understanding what people valued, what they didn’t want to lose, and where there was space to build something shared.
The unified PioNear Community — award-nominated and spanning both Nearpod and Flocabulary advocates globally.
A shared identity, introduced through participation.
The PioNear Community was built on a simple idea: celebrate what educators were already doing, and give them more ways to go deeper.
Rather than forcing the communities to merge overnight, I designed an integration that happened through shared rituals. PioNear Appreciation Days became an annual multi-day virtual summit — a moment for the whole community to come together for product updates, peer networking, and feedback sessions. In 2020, when schools went fully virtual, 110 ambassadors ran 230 live trainings during that year alone. The community didn't pause during the crisis. It activated.
I also introduced Flocabulary's educator certification program, mirroring the structure that already existed for Nearpod. Adding tiered certification levels gave ambassadors a clear path to deeper involvement — and something to work toward. The result was 2,500+ completions and a 50% YoY lift in engagement among certified users.
Onboarding was redesigned as a Welcome Webinar series with a month-long activity track and 1:1 mentor matching, so new members didn't arrive to a blank page. They arrived to a community that expected them and helped them find their place fast.
From identity design to day-to-day experience.
The in-product certification program — migrated from an external form into Nearpod itself, with tiered levels to reward continued engagement.
A unified community with stronger participation and growth.
Community identity is built through participation.
This work reinforced that community cohesion doesn’t come from a name change or announcement. It comes from shared experiences — the moments where people contribute, connect, and see themselves as part of something.
The PioNear Community became award-nominated not because of a clever strategy document, but because educators felt genuinely seen and valued inside it. That's the condition everything else depends on.