Twilio Fosters Innovation Through Recognition

The Superb Owl Awards are to Twilio what the Grammy’s are to music, the Academy Awards are movies, and the Emmys are to television. To put it simply, there’s no bigger honor at Twilio than to receive this prestigious Superb Owl Award.

The Superb Owl Award recognizes owners and builders who have an outsized impact on Twilio. Since 2012, our Executive Team has celebrated Twilions, who’ve gone above and beyond to deliver outstanding, innovative solutions and programs to customers both internal and external, all while being the embodiment of our Twilio Magic Culture. This is the heart of our company and what we call the Twilio Magic!

“At Twilio, we strive to celebrate the magic our employees create. They are the driving force behind Twilio’s success. Because of their efforts, we want to highlight their accomplishments, recognize and celebrate the moments that matter while building a culture of gratitude. Therefore, recognition programs will be rooted in our values inspiring Twilions to unlock the Twilio Magic, reinforcing that we are a value-based company,” said Marques Morgan, Employee Experience Specialist and Program Manager for the Superb Owl Awards.

Celebrating Superb Owl award recipients

In 2020, Covid-19 changed the world. It was a challenging year, and Twilions had to reimagine how we work together and deliver value to our more than 200,000 customers daily in a virtual environment. They did all of this while simultaneously keeping their loved ones and communities safe, and managing their own emotions during such a hard time.

Twilions came together to support and uplift each other and achieved amazing things in the end. None of this would have been possible without teamwork and collaboration. When you combine the two, the impossible becomes possible. For that reason, the E-Team put a concerted focus on awarding the contributions of diverse and cross-functional teams who made a difference.

During last week’s Company Kickoff, Twilions aligned on the 2021 priorities and took the time to reflect and highlight the previous year’s accomplishments. The 2020 Superb Owl award recipients were announced throughout the two-day event and celebrated company-wide.

Join us in congratulating the 2020 Superb Owl award recipients. 

Compass Team

The Compass team recognized one crucial thing – the power of software to scale and build something truly differentiated for our customers. They took the feedback our customers shared to develop a system that would manually fine-tune our messaging routing systems a dozen times a day and automated it. The results speak for themselves. It has given our customers higher quality and lower prices. Both of which increased our share of traffic and drove increased revenue. Talk about wearing the customer’s shoes!

People Enablement Team

The People Enablement team was at the forefront of our company shutdown – and overnight had to recreate onboarding to be fully remote. As everyone adjusted to this new normal, the People Enablement Team found innovative ways to keep the best talent while engaging employees in a world where they would join Twilio without ever stepping into an office. They executed background checks, obtained signatures from offer letters, onboarded people virtually, and so much more. The team was bold and developed new ways of doing business without a playbook and delivered flawlessly.

Black Twilions Employee Resource Group Leads

In 2020, The Black Twilions Employee Resource Group (ERG)and its members felt the impact of the horrific events affecting people of color in communities across the United States. Our Black Twilions saw more community members brutally murdered and the continued lack of justice for Black Americans like Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Elijah McClain, and more.

In response, and with heavy hearts, a small group of Black Twilions galvanized their community and the rest of Twilio to help operationalize anti-racism at our company and make it a place where black employees can not just work but thrive.

 This ERG led the creation of several new initiatives and achieved the following:

• Launched monthly newsletter, which celebrates the accomplishments of our Black Twilions and allies
• Helped strengthen diversity hiring by partnering with the People Team to host recruiting events
• Helped managers build more diverse and inclusive teams
• Launched All Wins, a new program for recognizing those ERG members and allies who were showing up for this ERG’s members both inside and outside Twilio

Contact Tracing Team

The Contact Tracing team recognized our products could help many scientists, officials, and cities understand the spread of COVID-19 in our communities and reduce that spread. Because of this team, Twilio was able to drive change in how the world understands COVID-19 and its outbreaks while working to decrease the spread. This group truly empowered people and cities to gain insights into where spread occurred, which has caused a change in behaviors. And their impact continues!

 “What I admire most about this team is – they identified the opportunity for our products to help, they drew the owl, made it happen, and scaled it,” said Chee Chew, Chief Product Officer at Twilio.

Signal Virtual Experience Team

The Signal Virtual Experience team always has a goal to deliver the best tech conference of the year. They rose to the challenge in a new world of remote work by utilizing Twilio’s products to build the best virtual conference platform to date. They used Flex, Video, SMS, and so much more. Their creation was not merely a beautiful design but also one that felt uniquely Twilio and delivered on our promise of having the BEST tech conference of 2020.

HIPAA Team

The HIPAA team worked across business segments and locations to speed up delivering a product Twilio had wanted to launch for some time. They delivered an early product launch in Q1 and fulfilled a key milestone for Twilio and a useful service to our customers and their many patients. More than that, they supported our healthcare customers and were at the forefront of COVID and contact tracing. They enabled health system use cases at a time when they were needed more than ever – in service of our customers and their communities during an unprecedented global pandemic. Their foresight, collaboration, and ownership indeed demonstrated the Twilio Magic!

COVID-19 Response Team

The Covid-19 Response team championed a playbook on the fly, which consistently evolved by the day – sometimes even by the hour – as pandemic realities, government orders, and new regulations impacted the 16 countries and 26 locations where we all work.

This group of Twilions agility empowered all employees with the necessities, so they work safely and securely from their homes. They did all this for Twilio while simultaneously keeping their loved ones and communities safe and managing their own emotions during such a hard time.

Sales Engineering Leadership

The Sales Engineering Leadership team led the Joint Customer Task Force to dramatically improve retention outcomes for Segment this year. The team continuously developed new product directions while accelerating roadmaps with rapid testing and access to both customers and prospects. Their dedication and effort dramatically improved our execution and strategic position in the Customer Data Platform market. They meaningfully enhanced the customer experience through direct interactions with customers, which indirectly accelerated product improvements that our customers leveraged in their customer engagement and marketing efforts.

We are proud to recognize this year’s Superb Owl recipients for their steadfast commitment to our customers’ success. To all Twilions, thank you for your dedication and hard work.

We can’t wait to see what our Twilions build in 2021!