Colleague of the Week: Chris Lee

Putting our best face forward

Chris Lee never thought his face would launch a thousand ships. But the Eventbrite listings that Chris and his team work on have launched well over a thousand Braver Angels events.

Not many people in Braver Angels have seen Chris’ face, because the Eventbrite team works behind the scenes. They take the input that event organizers have entered into one computer system (the Event Request Form, or ERF) and then they check, edit, and nudge it into the shape that the Eventbrite system needs. The resulting event descriptions on the Eventbrite website are the first “face” of the Braver Angels organization that many event goers see. 

Chris came to Braver Angels in 2021 after experiencing what he describes as the goodness in diversity around the world. “I grew up in Arizona, listening to Country-Western music, sure that’s where I would stay,” he says. “But… I ended up attending UC Berkeley, living in Japan, and traveling the world for work before ending up in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have seen so much diversity – the goodness in it. Experiencing how differences have come to be a major way to tear us apart left me disheartened.”

He signed up for the Eventbrite team not long after joining Braver Angels. “I like using my skills to help folks in Braver Angels get their events going,” he says. “My background is in mechanical engineering but I have ended up working in product management, applications engineering, and product marketing for capital equipment hardware and software makers.”

Over the years, the number of volunteers on Chris’ team has gone up and down, but it’s always been a fairly small team, and Chris has always been there. Most of the time, the team never sees each other – in person. They consult with each other online and share the work as it comes in, using a simple shared spreadsheet to distribute the workload.

Chris’ role isn’t only about working on events. The job often involves working with event organizers and sometimes developers. When things aren’t completely clear, or untypical situations come up, you’ll find Chris answering questions and troubleshooting with organizers in the Eventbrite group’s email chatter.

“Chris once helped me out of a sticky situation where I had created two listings for the same event,” recalls Julianne O’Neil, a Pennsylvania Braver Angels organizer. “I was worried how I was going to fix the registration impacts, but Chris straightened it all out. And he kept a cool head the whole time.”

So, Chris, keep on keeping on. We need you – and more like you.