A man of many talents, Tony Narisi serves as the lead front-end developer for NeuroFlow. Tony’s magic comes from an incredible ability to turn product requests and ideas into beautifully designed features and enhancements that help hundreds of providers seamlessly deliver integrated, measurement-based care.
A bi-weekly product demo led by Tony is often filled with (very heartfelt) ooh’s and aah’s from team members across the country excited about building the leading behavioral solution in the market. We caught up with Tony to chat about his career, favorite parts of Philly, and updates on a very exciting side project!
Q: Coming from a career in education, how did you transition to front-end development?
A: In education, I worked in the operations department and did a lot of data analysis and automation of daily tasks. Tackling those kinds of assignments with the limited toolset provided in that environment led me to an interest in studying software development.
One of my largest projects in education was working with our school’s social worker to develop an algorithm in an Excel spreadsheet that would stratify students’ potential need for intervention. It looked at data points like attendance, grades, and behavioral records over time. A project like that isn’t far removed from some of the work I do here at NeuroFlow.
NeuroFlow’s Tony Narisi with one of his cats, Tonka
Q: How does NeuroFlow support growth and education of its team members?
A: The team here is made up of some really brilliant people, and we love learning from each other. A lot of that learning may be random facts that you pick up from each other at happy hours or around the office, but we also have a more formalized approach through a series of Lunch and Learns, where employees are encouraged to present on a topic about their role that their coworkers wouldn’t be familiar with.
I presented on the migration of our front-end codebase to React. For the non-technical team members, I covered a high-level view of what React does and what benefits it would bring to the product. I also gave a detailed discussion of why I chose React over other frameworks so the more technical team members could understand the direction the front-end department would be heading.
“The team here is made up of some really brilliant people, and we love learning from each other” – Tony Narisi
Q: What are you most excited about for NeuroFlow going forward?
A: With our Series A raise at the end of last year, 2020 is a super exciting time to see our company grow, especially since when I first started you were basically in arms’ reach of every other employee while in the office! The growth can come with its own challenges, but with the iterative approach we have for improving our processes, we’ve already seen a lot of exciting changes in the engineering department as far as how we approach collaboration and planning. And for me personally, it’s awesome to see the front-end codebase mutate over time and to be able to work with our other developers to define what qualities we see as valuable in our code, then put processes in place to make sure the code meets our standards.
Q: It’s safe to say you’ve been all over the Mid-Atlantic. What makes Philly stand out?
A: I’m a pretty slow-paced person, so even though I love the benefits of living in a city, especially the great food and easy access to events, other cities tend to overwhelm me. In Philly, I feel like I get the benefits of city life while still having the things that let me slow down and relax, especially a backyard where I can sit and read. The Philly music scene is awesome too – the venues here get some great acts and there are awesome local groups playing all the time. Also, access to the Schuylkill River Trail is a huge benefit; I love to bike and I can’t imagine living anywhere without easy trail access after experiencing it here.
Q: Any fun side projects you’re working on?
A: I love to write and for the past three years, I’ve been working on a novel. I’m hoping to have it fully ready by this fall, and then go through the – extremely intimidating – process of trying to get it published! The book definitely ties into my passion for mental health. My hope is that it can get published and have a positive impact on the way people view those who are suffering from mental health disorders.
Interested in joining Tony and others on the NeuroFlow team? Check out our career opportunities!
