Celebrating 5 Years at Cardinal with Erika Anderson

At Cardinal, our culture is built on the people who show up every day ready to grow, collaborate, and make a lasting impact. Our team members are the driving force behind our success, bringing passion, innovation, and a commitment to challenging the status quo across everything we do.

Today, we’re proud to celebrate Erika Anderson and her five-year anniversary with Cardinal, recognizing her dedication, growth, and the meaningful contributions she’s made to our team along the way.

Learn more about Erika’s journey below!

What is your role?

People Analytics and Data Specialist on the People & Culture Team

Describe your Cardinal Journey (roles you previously worked in before your current position)

Instructional Designer – I started at Cardinal on the L&D team within P&C creating training courses and materials for TMs; I even got to play a sizable part in the birth of Ascend!

Communications Specialist – I moved into a role to work on P&C’s communication strategy including designing the current version of Compass! I also worked on the behind the scenes production of events like REDtalks and PitStop.

Comms & Data Specialist – I then wanted to use more of my technical and engineering background and moved into a data-focused role within P&C focusing on backend analytics of Ascend, Comms engagement, and strategy success measurement. 

People Analytics and Data Specialist – I am now P&C’s go-to person for people analytics, process optimization, and automation development. I get to help find gaps in our people and operational processes that impact Cardinal’s bottom line and develop the plans to help optimize and automate them, freeing up time for more strategic planning for our teams. 

How did you decide to join the Cardinal team?

I originally was coming out of an assistant instructor job at MIT and loved teaching people new things and helping them learn, so the instructional designer role was appealing. The cross section of design and functionality has always interested me and I wanted to learn more about how people learn and grow from a corporate industry perspective rather than from an academic perspective. I also did not know much about property management when I first joined Cardinal (other than having rented apartments for myself), so it was an exciting opportunity to challenge myself and learn more about a new industry!

What do you find most exciting about your job? Most challenging?

Most Exciting Part: Cardinal has millions, if not billions, of data points across our systems, and I view it as an entire world waiting to be explored. While it might look like just numbers and code on the surface, you’d be surprised at what you can find with a little exploration and analysis. It’s about finding opportunities for team member career growth, identifying communities that excel in a process so we can learn from them, using ticket data to provide better support, or finding how to reduce the time spent to finish a task from 3 hours down to 30 minutes. My favorite part of my job is investigating those hidden gems to directly improve the Team Member experience.

Challenge: With a ‘world’ this vast, the sheer volume of information means you have to be incredibly disciplined to ensure you’re focused on the insights that will move the needle most for our people and present those insights in a way that resonates with different audiences. 

Who has been influential in your life (professionally or personally), and how have they helped guide you?

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have two team leads at Cardinal who played pivotal roles at different stages of my journey. My first Team Lead, Chris Wolf, was instrumental in my early growth. She never shied away from the tough questions and constantly challenged me to ‘level up.’ Most importantly, she recognized my evolving interests and encouraged my pivot from Training into Communications and Data—a move that aligned with my growing skillset. Today, my current TL, Katie Terwilliger, continues that mentorship as a fantastic representation of what leadership looks like at Cardinal. She’s been an invaluable resource as I refine my soft skills—specifically in people and project management and high-level strategic planning. I’m so grateful to both of them for helping me shape the career I have today.

What’s something people may not know about you?  

I played on the Varsity Softball Team at MIT and went to the Division III Women’s College Softball World Series twice.

What advice would you give to someone starting out in the industry?

Learn as much as you can about different facets of the business even if it’s outside your current role. Having a holistic understanding of the business and nuanced challenges that people in different roles face is incredibly valuable and can help you shape your work to have an impact beyond just your current role or department. 

What is your proudest moment working at Cardinal Group?

Looking back over the last five years, I’m most proud of the opportunities I’ve had to contribute to the initiatives that shape our culture and systems. Whether it was supporting the growth of Compass and Ascend, serving on the DEI Council, or helping redefine our People Analytics strategy, it’s been incredibly rewarding to see these projects take on a life of their own. Being named DEI Influencer of the Year in 2024 was a particularly meaningful highlight for me. It’s been an honor to leave my fingerprints on work that helps our Team Members succeed, and I’m grateful to have been a part of the journey.

What has been the most interesting change that you’ve seen in the industry and why?

The rise of AI has been the most transformative change I’ve seen. It’s completely shifted the landscape by absorbing those mundane, repetitive, time-consuming administrative tasks that used to eat up so much of our day. This allows us to focus on human-specific work like long-term strategy, building genuine connections, and focusing on the cultural initiatives that make Cardinal a better place to work. It’s not just about doing things faster; it’s about doing things that are more meaningful.

What is your favorite college town in America and why?

Boston, hands down. Even after moving to Denver, it holds a special place in my heart. After six years living there, the thing that sticks with me most is the people. It’s a global hub where students and professionals from all over the world converge, making it one of the most diverse and ‘cool’ places to live and learn. You never know who you’re going to meet or what you’ll learn from them!