Kirk Yokomizo

Director of Operations

Kirk currently runs the Lithium Operations department which is made up of Customer Success Management, Application Engineering, Production Operations, and IT Departments at Lithium. He and his team are ultimately responsible for maintaining the overall satisfaction/support for every Lithium client. Customer Success Management on-boards and launches each new community with planning, analysis, and thorough training. The Lithium launch process is aimed to ensure community success, and laying the proper groundwork for community growth and participation. The Production Operations and IT teams ensure Lithium communities are available, current, stable, and secure, 24x7. With over 130 community sites, that's hundreds of millions of page views every month.

Kirk has over 10 years experience in communities, and 5+ years in on-demand production management. He has built teams and infrastructure which have grown from supporting a deployment of few, to a deployment of over 130 communities. Kirk has been the team lead for all Operations groups over the course of seven years at Lithium, from the roles of Customer Success Management and Application Engineering, back through Production Operations and IT. Kirk studied computer science at the University of California Los Angeles.

A. I got my start in online communities in the bulletin board days, and then into newsgroups and IRC. I've been an active member on a handful of car and audio communities where I've met a bunch of good friends and technical experts. I've done my fair share of gadget and even car purchasing on some of them!

A. I share my photos on Flickr, and do food sanity checks on Chow and Yelp. Then of course there are all of the Lithium hosted communities here at work. Making sure they are running 24x7 makes me a behind the scenes participant of many communities.