Daily Schedules From Top Workers

Mystic Valley Elder Services Meghan Brookes Options Counselor/ Elder Care Advisor 2 ½ yearsPre-Work: Wake-up around 7:00 a.m. and out the door for to work by 7:25 a.m.Work Morning: Get into work around 7:45 a.m. “I usually check messages and see what adventures await me for the day,’’ Brookes said. “I fill up my water bottle, drop off my lunch, and check the board of new referrals to see who has been assigned to me from the previous day.’’Brookes is the options counselor, which means she’s assigned those who are interested in Mystic Valley’s services and visits their homes. In the morning she also checks The Boston Globe obituaries (with the caveat that she’s not morbid, but works with elder people.)“I’ll do any paperwork for visits from the day before,’’ she said about her morning routine. “Any visit I make, I write up notes and follow-up with other agencies. I don’t like to call consumers too early.’’ Some days she’ll schedule a home visit before lunch. Lunchtime: “I usually have a yogurt, fruit, cheese, and crackers for lunch,’’ Brookes said. “I eat at the office.’’Post-Lunch Work: The afternoon involves writing up more notes from her morning visit and she ends her day with another 1-2 visits. As an Elder Care Advisor, she visits her consumers once every six months and as an Options Counselor she visits new consumers to evaluate their needs and find them the specific resources they desire. Brookes has about 95 or so consumers through her two positions.Evening: She schedules meetings so they end around the same time as her work day, which is 5:15 p.m. She heads home, makes dinner, volunteers at her church, or gets together with friends and relaxes

New England Organ Bank Daniel Miller-Dempsey Family Services Coordinator 14 YearsWork Day (18-Hour Shifts): “Most of my days I’m on-call, so I take 11-12 eighteen hour shifts (6 p.m. to midnight) per month,’’ Miller-Dempsey said. Unless he has to go in for meetings, he takes calls from home, which could come any time over the course of his shift.Miller-Dempsey never knows what the day’s plan will be, but at 8 a.m. he gets a snapshot view of particular hospitals. He could get called anywhere across New England. “I work with physicians, nurses, social workers, chaplains,’’ he said. “So I might go to a hospital and get an idea of what the family situation is, and we may make a plan to follow-up.’’ Once he’s called, which is generally to an intensive care unit, he organizes a ‘collaborative huddle’ with everyone who has worked with the patient. It can take planning since he doesn’t want to discuss organ donation if a family has hope their loved one will survive.“I want to offer the family the best info so they can determine whether [their] loved one wants to be a donor,’’ he said. Some patients are already registered and others Miller-Dempsey has to council. “Some families have fears and myths that come along with donations. I’m there to dispel myths. It’s a cool a job and ultimately most families say ‘yes’ despite awful circumstances.’’“In 2000, I was able to give my father a portion of my liver and my sister gave a kidney,’’ Miller-Dempsey said. “It changed my family so much.’’ It was after that experience that he switched jobs from working for his dad’s company to being a family services coordinator at New England Organ Bank.When he is not on call: He makes dinner, hangs out with his kids, reads, or watches Dr. Who or The Good Wife.

RunKeeper Elyse Bogacz UI Designer 15 MonthsPre-Work: Bogacz wakes up around 6:30 a.m., makes herself hot water with lemon and walks to the train. She takes Amtrak to Boston from Providence. She reads and sometimes gets off at Back Bay to do yoga before work. Once in Boston, she stops at the Clover Truck and gets a sandwich and a coffee while walking to the office.Work Morning: Usually in by 9:40 a.m., Bogacz’s French Bulldog, DJ, sits in the office with her each day. “I check in with the team to see if there’s anything they need from me,’’ she said. “I’ll fire off a few short things right away.’’ Mornings usually involve copywriting or crafting language for an app, illustrations, photo editing, and pulling artwork together.She then has meetings, called stand-ups, where she checks in with the team. “I’m guilty of putting more on my plate than what’s on my teams,’’ she said.Lunchtime: If it is Monday, she heads to Government Center to the Bon Me food truck. On other days she goes to Cocobeet to get a juice and a sandwich.Post-Lunch Work: Bogacz will work on new web page and send emails. Sometimes she has “retro-talks’’ about a campaign that just ended to see what went well and what could be improved. “If I’m in the middle of a big project, I wallpaper the office and print everything out,’’ she said. “A lot of the designers do that.’’ She also takes DJ on walks through the North End.Evening: She leaves around 5:00 p.m., heading to South Station to take the train home. If she didn’t get yoga in that morning, she does kickboxing back in Providence. Dinner’s around 7:30 p.m. Bogacz and her boyfriend then watch Undercover Boss and take DJ for another walk.

Fruit Center Marketplace Michael Dwyer Marketing Director 13 yearsPre-Work: “I wake-up at 4:45 a.m., go to the gym, go back home, eat breakfast, get the kids ready, take my daughters to school, and head straight to work.’’Work Morning: Dwyer gets to work a little before 8:00 a.m. and checks email to decide what he needs to do immediately. He then gets to his to-dos, which is a “running list of things.’’The job varies from day-to-day, but as the marketing director he’s regularly caught “writing monthly email, designing ads, updating websites, and putting together events and programs at the store or off-site.’’Lunchtime: He usually eats lunch around 1:00p.m. His office is located at the marketplace’s Milton location where Fruit Center employees get a salad, soup, or sandwich for a dollar each. “It is a nice perk since a salad can be over $10.’’Post-Lunch Work: For some, post-lunch work can be a meager attempt to stay awake, but for Dwyer, it’s when the creative juices get flowing. “It is a good time to do design work because as the marketing director, I also act as graphic designer,’’ he said. “I have so much coffee in the morning, I’m good through the afternoon.’’ While he doesn’t have a background in graphic design, he’s taught himself over the 13 years he’s worked there. He leaves work around 4:00 p.m. Evening: With kids, evenings are rarely ever the same. “They can vary quite a bit,’’ he said. “My children are involved in activities.’’ Dwyer does all the cooking at home too, so he typically makes dinner and then, if there’s time, tries to get in some reading.

Gradient Kurt Herman Principal Scientist 12 YearsPre-Work: “I get up around 5:00 a.m. each day and take the dog out for a walk,’’ Herman said, “About two to three times a week I go to the gym, then I take the train in from Concord.’’ He starts his workday on the train reading through emails and journal articles. He walks from Porter to Harvard Square where his office is.Work Morning: He gets in around 7:45 a.m., but as a consultant, there’s no typical day. “What’s typical is that I spend two-thirds of my time working on projects [addressing] various environmental issues,’’ he said. “I’m working on three to five projects that are active at any given time, so there may be a project with a report going out that requires my attention or I may have a call with a client.’’Lunchtime: He eats out about two times a week, but if he brings his lunch he eats in the office and takes a break in the afternoon.Post-Lunch Work: Afternoons are similar to Herman’s morning, continuing his project work. “I also have management and business development responsibilities, one-third of my time dedicated to those,’’ he said. “I have one project right now which deals with environmental forensics assessment of historic contamination and it involves a lot of historical research.’’ He also travels two to three times a month.Evening: Herman leaves the office around 5:00 p.m., goes home to spend time with his kids, eats dinner, relaxes, and gets ready for the next day.

InsightSquared Sarah Wachter Product Manger One yearPre-Work: “I usually wake up around 7:00 or 7:30 a.m. I put on clothes, leave the house, and take the bus to work. I stop and get coffee on the way in.’’Work Morning: Wachter arrives around 8:30 a.m. and checks email. “I usually get in before the engineering team and that means I can look at what they have delivered the previous day,’’ she said. “I look over what they’ve done [to make sure] everything makes sense and looks good.’’ She has a stand-up at 9:45 a.m. with her team. She has meetings with various stakeholders, like engineers or client services, about what requests they have gotten from clients.Lunchtime: “We get free lunch everyday,’’ she said. “Every week there’s a new list of restaurants and we have two choices everyday. We get lunch between 12:00 and 12:15 p.m., go down and pick it up, talk and catch up.’’ Wachter said it is a nice chance to hang out and talk to people.Post-Lunch Work: “Afternoons are really varied,’’ she said. “I’ll try to block off time for myself to digest the stuff I’ve learned and figure out what we need to be changing.’’ She said no two days are ever the same.Evening: Wachter leaves around 6:00 p.m. and after work she might do yoga with someone from work (there’s an email chain where people post cool activities they’re planning on doing) and she rock climbs a lot. She also said since it’s national novel writing month, so she’s trying to tackle one.