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Meet the Owner Community
Meet the staff members responsible for the behind-the-scenes work of the Owner Community.
 Online Community Manager, Leah Carroll
Since joining the Owner Community team in March 2008, Leah Carroll, a pocket-size wonder, dazzles with wit and efficiency.
Like a knight in gleaming mail, Leah effortlessly aids vacation homeowners in their quest for vacation rental success.
Serving as the manager for the Owner Community, Leah writes articles for vacation homeowners, co-produces the How to Rent Vacation Properties by Owner podcast, plans seminars and workshops, and conducts weekly webinars.
During her tenure at HomeAway, she has become the go-to expert in all things checklist-related, and as a diligent note taker, she currently holds the title for Most-Effective Use of a Spiral Notebook.
At seminars and workshops, Leah interacts with and learns from the best source for vacation rental tips and tricks-- vacation homeowners. She enjoys meeting new people and has never-ending patience for long registration lines and owner questions.
Event planning utilizes Leah's under-tapped skill for negotiation. While her everyday demeanor is pleasant enough, you don't want to mess with Leah when she puts on her “mean face.”
With no previous voiceover experience, Leah has quickly become a standout in the webinar performance field. We expect her voice acting career to take off any day now.
Leah graduated with honors from the University of Texas at Austin with a BBA in Marketing. She delights in checking tasks off her to-do list, organizing file folders, trying new recipes, and watching So You Think You Can Dance.
Fun fact: Much like a dromedary camel, Leah requires little to no hydration
 Online Community Strategist, Kerry Miller
Kerry Miller is a recent addition to the Owner Community team, as well as a new transplant to Austin, TX, the global headquarters for HomeAway, Inc.
Since joining us from New York City, Kerry has not only had to learn the ropes of her new position, but she’s also in the process of learning to drive! (Don’t worry, she passed her Texas driving test with flying colors, and so far she’s been able to successfully navigate to and from the office every day, avoiding left turns where possible.)
As the “hippest” member of our team, Kerry has taken on the role of social media guru, reaching out to vacation homeowners via Facebook and Twitter in the hopes of creating a greater network for owners to share ideas. Kerry also enjoys interviewing owners and using their suggestions as a springboard for future Owner Community articles.
Thankfully, Kerry has taken on the role of analytics queen in order to better understand the needs of our community. She especially enjoys delving into the vacation rental history of the owners attending our seminars so that we can better tailor our material for the attendees. (After attending her first round of seminars, she has also developed an enthusiastic appreciation for Christine-isms.)
Not to fear, Kerry has jumped right onto the consistency bandwagon to make sure every dash and semicolon on our site is just where it should be. She just wouldn’t fit in on our team if she wasn’t a little obsessive about something!
Kerry is a graduate of Brown University with a B.A. in Public Policy. After spending her entire life on the East Coast, Kerry is now enjoying the laid-back lifestyle of Austin. Her ongoing quest involves scouring the surrounding Hill Country for the perfect Texas barbecue. She also really enjoys goat cheese.
.jpg) Intern, Christy Carr
Christy is the new summer intern for the Owner Community team, joining us as a May 2009 graduate from Notre Dame University. (Yep, she was there for President Obama’s visit and enjoyed every minute of it.)
Christy has consistently impressed us with her writing and design skills, but most of all, with her positive attitude. Her willingness to take on any task, even the most mundane, is refreshing to say the least.
She is truly high-energy ALL the time, and she’s pretty much caffeine-free. Instead, she gets up at 6am and runs for who-knows-how-long. Ah, to be young again…
When asked to prepare nametags for our seminars, Christy enthusiastically steps up to the challenge and even hand-draws our company logo (making it very difficult for other team members to duplicate her efforts!)
Christy has quickly taken on the role of liaison with seminar attendees, which has allowed her to get to know our owners and advance her customer service skills.
She is also an eager contributor for our monthly newsletter, stepping up to the plate with article ideas in her very first week. Her sense of humor has allowed her to pick up on the “voice” of the Owner Community rather quickly, so look for her smart wit in upcoming articles.
Christy has recently moved back to Central Austin and is enjoying her first summer as a college graduate. She enjoys participating in triathlons, spending time with her family and exploring Austin restaurants. Oh, and she once put a rather large reptile on her head.
 Former Assistant Editor and Product Manager, Kristin Dorsett
Kristin has been promoted to a new position within HomeAway, but we still consider her a part of the Owner Community. Besides, you’ll still see her face on some of our webinars and her knee-slapping sense of humor sprinkled throughout our articles.
With a passion for consistent capitalization and parallel subtitles, Kristin Dorsett serves as a fervent Assistant Editor for the Owner Community. By researching various matters of importance to vacation home owners and working closely with Christine Karpinski, Kristin has become an industry expert.
Kristin's experiences at the How to Rent Vacation Properties by Owner seminars have not only taught her the ins and outs (and sometimes uglies) of event coordinating, but have also impacted her knowledge of what owners care about most. This knowledge has served as a springboard of inspiration for heaps of articles on the OC.
In her Product Manager role, one of Kristin's greatest strengths is her analytical ability, which is certainly appreciated by her less-analytical coworkers. Her analyses are not just used for fancy reports, but enable us to track what is most important to our owners, therefore providing us with direction as to how we can better serve you.
Kristin is not only our analytics queen, but also our resident movie idiot-savant. Come up with an obscure actor or sub-plot, and she'll be able to name that movie in a heartbeat. This probably helps her to come up with those laugh-out-loud top 10 lists featured in our monthly newsletter.
Christine certainly leans on Kristin for her in-depth knowledge of our programs and technologies. Kristin has helped to bring Christine's seminar presentations out of the 1800s. We always forgive her hang-ups on lining up words and her overall aversion to cheesy Clip-Art because we know she is a true perfectionist at heart.
Kristin is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with a BS in Advertising with a concentration in Public Relations and a BA in English. She lives in Southwest Austin with her husband, Kevin, and two Siberian Huskies, Macy and Delia.
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