Finding Balance With Lindsay Hutton
How Passion, Adventure, and a Commitment To Local Activism Shaped Moonfarmer’s Director of Operations
After interviewing Lindsay Hutton for this blog post, I would argue that she is the most well-balanced person at Moonfarmer. I mean that in every sense of the word. As a die-hard rock climber, she’s quite literally adept at physical balance. As a semi-professional baker, she understands the importance of a perfectly balanced recipe. With her myriad of passions and hobbies, she even seems to have achieved a healthy work-life balance.
It’s no wonder to me that Lindsay is so good at her job. As Director of Operations at Moonfarmer, she balances a variety of tasks ranging from balancing our accounts to balancing each individual employee’s needs. Without Lindsay’s diligent, thoughtful, and consistent efforts, the rest of the Moonfarmer team would quickly spin out of orbit.
I wanted to learn more about Lindsay’s secrets, so I sat her down for a quick Q&A. We talked about her role at Moonfarmer, the time she lived in a van and travelled the country as a dirtbag climber, and the importance of working at a hyper-local level to instill change.
Hey Lindsay! Can you explain your current role at Moonfarmer?
I am the Director Of Operations. I usually explain what that means by breaking down the roles at Moonfarmer into three categories. There’s the production team, the business development team, and then everything else that has to do with running the company falls under my jurisdiction. That means HR, accounting and finance, general operations — basically all of the behind-the-scenes administrative stuff to make sure that the business is running smoothly and the team has what they need.
You’re the glue that holds everything together!
You know the story of the elves that come in in the middle of the night to help the Shoemaker? Nobody knows what’s going on, but they’re the ones that kind of are behind the scenes, making sure everything is running smoothly…
That’s you!
Haha yeah.
This is not your first position at Moonfarmer. You worked on this team back when we were still called Evolving Media Network and then you left for a little while! Can you talk about that journey?
Back in 2011, I moved to New York and I got a job as a project manager here. It was a pretty small team at the time. I think I was employee number 10 and I was only the second project manager. It was my first foray into anything related to web development and also really any serious project management. So it was kind of like getting thrown in the deep end and learning how to swim very quickly.
So I learned very quickly everything I could about web development and the kinds of projects we were making here. Then after almost two years as a Project Manager here, the project manager who was above me left the company. So I became the Senior Project Manager on the team. We hired another one to join me and I was kind of leading the production team for a few years.
I imagine that past experience has been helpful in forming your work as Director of Operations?
It definitely helps me to really understand the people that I’m working with on this team and the things that I need to be able to do to support them. Other than paying the bills and managing the HR paperwork when we hire somebody new, my job as Director of Operations is about supporting the team to make sure that everybody has what they need to get their job done. Having that perspective of being on the other side helps me understand what it is that everybody on the team actually needs to be happy at their job.
But there wasn’t a direct transition between roles — you spent some time away from the company. What made you leave the first time?
In 2015 my husband and I were saving up to buy a house. I should mention that we’re both passionate about rock climbing. We always used to joke around that one day we would quit our jobs and run away to live in a van and be dirtbag climbers. As we were saving, we realized that buying a house and putting down roots would make it harder and harder to make that leap and take on that adventure.
So instead of buying a house, we bought a van and converted it into a camper. Then we both quit our jobs and hit the road! We lived out of our van with our dog for a year, driving around the country, rock climbing, hiking, biking, just exploring, and basically spending as much time outdoors as we could, chasing the good weather. We went up to Canada for a little bit, but really spent most of our time out in the western states. Then after about a year we came back to the east coast.
What an adventure! What made you come back from that life?
When we left on the trip, we were sort of open to the possibility of finding a home somewhere else. We thought if we fell in love with some town somewhere, we might just stay. But after a year, we both really wanted to come back to New York. We missed it a lot, so we came back to the Hudson Valley — Kingston, specifically.
But you didn’t come right back to Moonfarmer, right?
This is when I got into the nonprofit sector, which was pretty interesting. I worked for a local nonprofit called Citizens For Local Power that works on building a sustainable energy economy in the Hudson Valley. I worked with local municipalities, other community organizations, and individuals on supporting the transition to renewable energy at a local level. I was actually their first hired employee. They were an all-volunteer team before that. I worked as their coordinator for two years. I’m actually still with the organization as their board treasurer.
When I first met you you were still working for them!
That’s right, we used to table at HVTech events! That was a lot of fun.
During that time I also got connected to the Director of Citizens For Local Power, Jen Metzger. She decided that she was going to run for State Senate, so when she started her campaign, she asked me to join her. My title was “Technology Manager,” but I was basically the Operations Manager, doing all of the behind-the-scenes administrative work. Basically everything that wasn’t direct field work and constituency work for the campaign.
I love that your career path encompases such a wide variety of experiences. I’m curious how each has informed the others.
Well my time as a dirtbag climber definitely gave me a better perspective on the importance of work-life balance. That’s been especially useful since the pandemic hit. We’ve been working remotely for about a year and a half now. And not to say that I was overworked before or anything like that, but when you’re working from home it’s very easy to let the workday spread in both directions. I think the time I spent on the road, not having any other responsibilities really made me appreciate the free time that I have. It gave me a better perspective to set some good boundaries for myself while I’m here.
And what about your time doing nonprofit work? Is there anything that you learned from that world that you’ve carried with you?
Primarily, I’d say doing that work gave me the opportunity to work with a lot of different people that I probably wouldn’t interact with in my current role. I mean, especially now that I’m more behind-the-scenes in operations, I don’t have a whole lot of interaction with the clients or anybody outside of the company. It was a really cool opportunity to work with other volunteer groups and other individuals in the community who were volunteering.
I also think working at Citizens For Local Power and on Jen Metzger’s campaign definitely drilled in the importance of working at a hyper-local level to instill change. And I think that that’s one of the reasons why I came back to Moonfarmer. Even as the company has grown and we take on bigger clients in other states, it’s always been a company that is focused on the things that it can do to contribute to the community right here.
Moonfarmer is a creative digital studio specializing in home grown software, websites, applications, and art. To learn more about what we do, visit our website: www.moonfarmer.com or say hello at hello@moonfarmer.com.
For more content like this, check out these other Q&As on the Moonfarmer blog:
- Dan Stone’s Love of Learning with Dan Stone, Co-Founder & Chief Creative Technologist
- Business Growth And The Merits Of Being An Outsider with Zack Stone, Director of Business Development
- How Robot Ants Can Inspire More Inclusive Design with Noelle Morris, UX Designer
- The Art of DIY Technology Customization with Ryan Monaghan, Front End Developer
- Coding Isn’t Just For Geniuses with Justin Kenney, Project Manager
- Curiosity, Communication, And Optimization with Brandon Walsh, Full Stack Developer
