Template:User:Brandon Rhea

My Wall &bull; Report Spam &bull; Report Vandalism &bull; Contact Fandom Support --- Hi there. I'm Brandon, and I'm VP of Community at Fandom. My role is to make sure that all of our users are well-supported and that their communities are healthy and growing.

About me
I got my start at Fandom (then-Wikia) as a user before I became a staff member. I started editing in late 2006 and became an admin on Star Wars Fanon, the Star Wars fan fiction wiki. Sometimes people think I founded Wookieepedia, so I always have to let them know “nope, I was writing fan fiction instead!”

In April 2010, Sannse from the Community team asked me if I wanted to work on the Community Support team. She said “I like your tone, would you want to work here?” To this day that’s the only job interview I’ve ever had. I was still in college at the time so I said sure, why not! So for ten hours a week, I answered support emails and adoption requests. I didn’t think it was going to be the start of a career; I had originally planned to go to law school after graduating, but I changed my mind. That led me to stay here and I became a full-time community manager.

I’ve worked with thousands of wikis over the years, and worked with a lot of different teams within the company to get a feel for how Product, Marketing, Sales, and more all work. I managed the Wikia Stars program for a few years, which we just recently brought back as Fandom Stars. I also got to go to a lot of really cool pop culture events, like New York Comic Con, San Diego Comic-Con, Star Wars Celebration, Star Trek Las Vegas, Wizard World, PAX East, and surely more that I’m forgetting. These trips continue to be some of the highlights of working at Fandom.

After seven years in Community, I was asked to manage and build the Featured Video team. That was an interesting learning experience; it was my first time as a manager, and what we were doing (trying to create good videos for the top of pages) was a real challenge. After a little over a year doing that, I came back to Community and led our community communications strategy. In that role I worked closely with the Community Council to bring more community feedback into company decision-making, and the work we did together helped shape a new direction for the company. It was great timing too, since new owners and new leaders for the company were bringing a renewed focus on the community experience.

After Fandom and Curse Media joined forces in 2018, I worked with the leaders from Gamepedia to help integrate our teams. I was initially overseeing the Movies/TV vertical, the Anime vertical, and the Customer Support team. There was a leadership opening in 2020, and after that I became VP of Community which is a role that I’m currently serving in. I love being able to work with my awesome team members, help set the direction for things like the editor-focused product roadmap, and still find time to be able to talk with the community on Discord. Fandom Stars will often find me there, since I try to keep that connection to the community and to my own personal roots as a wiki editor.

My first major fandom was Star Trek, and after that I became a huge Star Wars fan—yes, you can like both! I'm also a fan of DC, Marvel, Game of Thrones, and Harry Potter.