Building a Culture of Growth: How Stavvy Employees Shape Their Career Paths

Stavvy’s commitment to mentorship, collaboration and innovation empowers employees to embrace growth and tackle impactful projects.

Written by Brigid Hogan
Published on Jan. 31, 2025
Photo: Stavvy
Photo: Stavvy
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Professional growth is a buzzword at many companies, but Stavvy stands out by transforming it into action. 

Growth at Stavvy isn’t confined to structured training or performance reviews — it lives in dynamic collaborations, innovative problem-solving and empowering employees to carve unique career paths. 

Access to stretch assignments allows employees to grow in ways that align with their personal ambitions and company goals, as evidenced by the stories of these three team members: Josh Tobin, Christine Passmore and Ari Amiri. 

What Stavvy Does

Stavvy is a fintech company that streamlines and digitizes complex legal and financial transactions, focusing on real estate, lending and mortgage services.

 

Josh Tobin’s Cross-Functional Journey

When Tobin joined Stavvy in 2022, he didn’t expect that his role as a solutions engineer would be the first step in a career evolution that would span multiple teams and disciplines. Fast forward to 2024, Tobin is now a product manager II for the integrations team.

“I’ve always wanted to deepen my expertise in product management,” Tobin said. “Stavvy gave me the runway to experiment and grow.”

 

“Stavvy gave me the runway to experiment and grow.”

 

Tobin’s journey from solutions to product management is rooted in exposure to cross-functional teams and stretch projects. Leading two high-impact integrations with nationwide lender customers honed his technical knowledge and stakeholder management skills.

“Stavvy’s culture of informal mentorship has been instrumental,” he noted. “Senior product managers and engineering leaders guided me in everything from strategy to technical execution.”

Beyond these supportive relationships, Tobin has also found value in Stavvy’s more formal learning structures.

“Our team retrospectives and knowledge-sharing sessions also foster a growth mindset,” he explained. “For example, after the launch of a complex integration that initially faced setbacks, the team came together to identify gaps, implemented new processes and improved our overall project efficiency. This not only improved future project outcomes but also reinforced a culture of iterative learning.”

This process did more than just move the project forward, it helped build a psychologically safe environment within Stavvy to take risks and learn how to move forward as a team.

“As a startup, we are always learning from our past mistakes and making sure that we improve our processes across the organization,” Tobin said. “It feels like every day we are working forward and improving, even when mistakes or challenges are made along the way.”

This support system, paired with a proactive approach to learning, sharpened Tobin’s strategic thinking and pushed him closer to his career goal of bridging technical and business needs to drive scalable, user-centric integrations.

 

Christine Passmore’s Path to Program Management

Passmore’s role at Stavvy has been about building from the ground up — literally. As the company’s first senior manager of program management, she established a framework that streamlines cross-functional collaboration and drives strategic initiatives.

“Joining Stavvy gave me the unique opportunity to create a department from scratch,” Passmore said. “I’ve expanded my leadership skills, built governance frameworks and executed complex projects that advance company goals.”

Among her standout achievements: leading the migration of Signia environments to the FedRAMP Moderate Azure Cloud Platform and integrating two acquisitions. These projects sharpened her prioritization, problem-solving and communication skills.

Beyond the technical advancements fostered by her supportive colleagues, Passmore found these efforts contributed to a culture that supports her own ambitions.

“Stavvy’s fast-paced environment fosters curiosity, perseverance and continuous growth, challenging me to adapt, innovate and drive results,” she explained. “These experiences have not only strengthened my expertise but also aligned closely with my long-term goal of leading initiatives that deliver meaningful organizational value.”

Passmore also credits Stavvy’s supportive leadership for her growth. Leaders invest in mentorship, identify career-aligned projects and encourage continuous learning through post-mortems and retrospectives.

“The culture here allows you to learn from every challenge — it’s a launchpad for personal and professional wins,” she added.

 

“The culture here allows you to learn from every challenge — it’s a launchpad for personal and professional wins.”

 

This partnership-rich culture goes beyond the leadership level at Stavvy and extends through the entire organization.

“Stavvy’s culture encourages peer discussions and idea sharing, which fosters continuous learning and innovative thinking. Stavvy’s combination of diverse projects and a supportive culture has been instrumental in helping me grow as a professional,” she explained. “The emphasis on cross-functional collaboration, open communication and the opportunity to work on diverse projects across software development, business operations and customer implementations allows me to continually expand my skill set and adapt to different challenges.”

Looking ahead, Passmore is eager to optimize collaboration across teams and spearhead initiatives that align with Stavvy’s 2025 vision.

 

Screens featuring Stavvy’s logo above banquet tables with balloons and flowers.
Photo: Stavvy

 

Ari Amiri’s Growth in Technical Leadership

Amiri’s career at Stavvy is a masterclass in scaling technical leadership. As a senior staff software engineer, he bridges multiple teams, ensuring best practices guide development efforts.

“I have grown more in the last two years than I can remember at any point in my career, for two key reasons,” Amiri said. “First, the people I work with are very smart and talented. They hold me accountable and challenge my perspective with their own. The other thing that has forced me to stretch my skills is that Stavvy is still a startup. There’s so many opportunities to apply the things I learned at other jobs here. While that sounds easy, bringing a new process, pattern or practice to life is a much bigger lift than participating in one that’s already in use.”

That growth has also been quantifiable in Amiri’s experience.

“In my previous roles, I led small teams,” Amiri said. “At Stavvy, I oversee the work of over 20 engineers. That scale challenged me to grow beyond hands-on coding into a mentor and strategic leader.”

Amiri’s biggest project? Overhauling Stavvy’s incident response process and establishing robust monitoring standards. Tackling these initiatives required not just technical prowess but also collaboration across engineering and devops.

“One thing that sets Stavvy apart is openness to new ideas,” he said. “When I proposed updates to our incident response process, leaders didn’t just listen — they partnered with me to make it better.”

 

“One thing that sets Stavvy apart is openness to new ideas.”

 

Beyond technical growth, Stavvy’s culture of mentorship made an indelible mark on Amiri. From approachable executives to supportive peers, the company’s ethos fosters success.

“Our success is shared success,” he emphasized. “There are so many problems ripe to be solved. As long as I have been able to come to the table with a coherent plan, I have been given the opportunities to solve them.”

Looking ahead, Amiri is preparing to navigate Stavvy’s architectural shift from monolith to distributed services, a challenge that promises even greater opportunities for learning and impact.

The common thread in these journeys is Stavvy’s culture of growth. Empowered employees, open communication and leadership investment combine to create a workplace where careers flourish.

Whether building a program management function from scratch, leading integrations or shaping technical infrastructure, Stavvy employees are not just growing — they’re thriving.

Responses have been edited for length and clarity. Images provided by Stavvy.