Expel culture · 3 MIN READ · SCOUT SCHOLES · MAR 24, 2025 · TAGS: Expletives
TL;DR
- Samantha Ridel, Partner Integrations Manager, sat down with us to chat about her day-to-day role, and her leadership role for our women’s ERG at Expel
- Originally from Canada, she’s an identical twin and organization is her love language
- She has opinions about owls
Samantha (or Sami, or Sam) Ridel is a Partner Integrations Manager at Expel residing in Houston, Texas with her family. She started her career 10+ years ago in sales, and has since transitioned to partnerships within the tech industry. She joined Expel after a layoff in 2022, and hasn’t looked back since.
On joining Expel
After a layoff that left her hunting for a new job, Samantha came across Expel while she was searching for a company that aligned with her values, and actually cared about its humans. She said, “I’ve seen companies where people are treated like a number and that’s not something I wanted. I wanted somewhere we could continue to build products and a culture that aligned with me, and so I found a company that genuinely wants to help its customers and cares about its humans.”
In a candid moment, she also shared an area for improvement as well. “We have a lot of different units that are doing amazing things. Sales is doing incredible things. Marketing is doing incredible things. Engineering is building amazing things for our customers, but we don’t all talk to each other on a regular basis. But when we do, I feel like we can run through brick walls.”
And that, more than anything in this interview, showcased our culture at Expel. We love what we do and the people we do it with, but we’re always looking to improve and be better, and Samantha personified that.
Staying organized is how she manages her day-to-day
“Organization is my love language.” Samantha isn’t messing around with keeping myriad tasks she manages in a single day in a row, and her love of organization bleeds over from her personal life to help her succeed at work. She continued, “I work with a lot of different people, and a lot of external people don’t all communicate via Slack like we do. So sometimes it’s a bunch of phone calls or emails, and then meeting with internal people, integration partners, new partners, or our incident response firms on how we can all best work together.”
In college, Samantha studied business management and entrepreneurship, which ended up fitting nicely into her career path. One of her favorite aspects of partner work is being one of the first in that role at Expel, and being able to have a say in what you’re creating. “I love figuring out what’s going on behind the curtain, and also building things the way I want to and having a say in what’s going on—and being valued for those opinions.”
Co-leading the Women of Expel (WE) employee resource group (ERG)
Samantha is one of two volunteer leaders of Women of Expel (WE), our women’s employee resource group (ERG). When asked why she chose to volunteer, she simply said, “I truly want women to win in all aspects of life.” She continued, sharing that there aren’t significant hills here for women to climb at Expel, as a lot of doors have already been opened from the start, so she feels it’s critical to strive to make an even bigger impact.
“At Expel, they give the ERGs space to just do what we need. We have multiple ERGS—not just for women—and that’s huge in a space where they’re disappearing, and it’s incredible that we’re leaning even further in to be able to support everyone. Being able to have the autonomy to build things without a lot of oversight has been awesome as well, and we’ve been able to plan some really cool content for this and press some boundaries (in a good way) to hopefully get more of the community involved.”
Fun facts and a very important question
Samantha is a self-described oversharer, but said when she does icebreakers she usually tells people she’s from Canada (no accent), and that she’s an identical twin (and no, they never switched places, and can’t read each other’s minds).
And as part of our culture at Expel, we start most all-hands calls with a very important question. A random Expletive will pose a question to the entire org, and we’ll spend the first few minutes in shock (and sometimes horror) as we try and logic our way through wild questions. So naturally, we prompted Samantha with her very own important question to answer. We asked: How many owls would you have to see in one day before it was weird?
Without hesitation, she said “one.” She continued, “If I even hear an owl by my house, I’m wondering where it is because I live in a new development neighborhood and there’s not a lot of trees. I immediately want to know where it is, and I want to see it, so one is plenty.” This also prompted a foray into a discussion on owl legs (if you know, you know, and if not, google it).
