About Us

Meet our Team
Ostin-Zarse

Ostin Zarse

CEO and Technical Writing Consultant

Ostin has over a decade of experience working in the technical-writing and high-tech industries, including more than five years of consulting with Good Words. His dual studies in Aerospace Engineering and Creative Writing at MIT equipped him with the art of communicating complex topics to diverse audiences. He has since applied this expertise to support many companies and empower users through clear, effective documentation. Ostin has made his home in Freiburg, Germany, where he spends his time swing dancing, wandering the Black Forest, and working on personal documentary projects.
Lauren

Lauren Gniazdowski

Chief Operations Officer

Lauren thrives at the intersection of people and process, something she has done in roles across industries, from media to tech. In her operations role at Good Words, she values equal parts compassion and keeping it real to ensure the well-being of the team and the success of the business. Lauren creates efficient systems and supportive communities that allow Good Words and the people who sustain it to grow.
Our Values
We don’t just write great documentation. We uphold a strong code of shared values in our relationships with our clients, employees, and the communities where we live and work.

We strive to be the most skilled, professional, and competent service provider in our industry. We make a commitment to do the most thorough, precise, and exemplary work in any situation. We have a spirit of developmental editing: We constantly improve our work, skills, and relationships to be the best they can be.

● For Good Words employees: We are great at our jobs no matter what our role is. We hold ourselves to the highest standards for any piece of work we deliver. We proactively share our work with our colleagues, managers, and customers; ask for feedback; follow up; and improve on it.

● For our clients and partners: We expect excellence of ourselves and everyone that we work with. We hold our clients and partners to the highest standards of our contracts, SOWs, and other shared agreements, and we expect high levels of respect, reciprocity, and follow-through to ensure great outcomes for every project.

We are honest about the work we do, how we do it, and how much it costs. We are honest in our feedback to our colleagues, clients, and each other. Our honesty is direct and without malice. We believe everyone does their best work when they have access to true and equal information. We're extremely straightforward and communicate openly, honestly, and proactively, even when it's hard.

● For Good Words employees: We proactively identify and communicate about risks, challenges, and opportunities with our managers and stakeholders. We admit when we’re struggling, need help, or disagree with a decision or policy, and we communicate and collaborate with our colleagues to find mutually beneficial solutions together. We use our honesty to reach understanding and find a productive path forward through any situation.

● For our clients and partners: Good Words proactively identifies and communicates about risks, challenges, or roadblocks that might affect the success of our work together. We use our experience and expertise to identify and propose solutions to problems, empowering us to achieve great outcomes as a team. We ask for and expect regular feedback on what we’re doing well and ways we can improve. We expect and encourage the same honesty from our clients and partners that we expect from our Good Words team members.

We're committed to supporting everyone at the company to achieve success—together. We row in the same direction to help our colleagues and the business grow and thrive, no matter what our role is, what we’re working on, or who we’re serving.

● For Good Words employees: Even though our team members might be working on wildly different projects for clients or the company, everyone is committed to Good Words first. We are consistent and unified in doing things the Good Words Way to help our team members, clients, and the company succeed. We represent Good Words’ values in all our work in the company and outside it.

● For our clients and partners: You get a consistent experience that aligns with Good Words’ values, no matter who you’re working with on our team. We work with clients who are committed to upholding our values in their dealings with us.

Our people are extremely smart, competent, and up for any challenge—but we're also fun, friendly, and a joy to work with.

● For Good Words employees: We have a can-do and optimistic attitude in the face of any project or challenge. Nothing is too technical for us: We will never turn down a project because it’s “too hard.” We educate our clients to help leave their businesses better than we found them.

● For our clients and partners: You can count on us to tackle any challenge with a can-do attitude and a determination to solve the problem. We take on projects that other firms turn down for being “too hard” or “too technical,” and you never have to worry about us collaborating effectively with your engineers and technical team members. We’ll learn from you, and you’ll learn from us.

We believe that great relationships are the key to great outcomes, and that great relationships are built on a foundation of shared expectations, boundaries, and definitions of success.

● For Good Words employees: We over-communicate about our processes, policies, procedures, and expectations for success, so everyone knows what’s required to achieve the best outcomes possible. We work with our managers, colleagues, and clients to develop mutually beneficial agreements that clearly outline our shared standards of excellence and success, and we hold ourselves to those expectations.

● For our clients and partners: We create and enforce fair, balanced, and mutually beneficial contracts and SOWs with all of our clients and partners. We believe that a great contract is the basis for a great professional relationship. We over-communicate about our processes, policies, procedures, and expectations for success, so everyone knows what’s required to achieve the best outcomes possible.

We believe that where a person lives must not limit the opportunities that are available to them, and we believe it’s unethical to deny opportunities for career growth, education, and wealth based on a person’s address. We believe that people work better when they can live and thrive in their own communities, and that those communities benefit when their citizens have access to rewarding and lucrative careers, wherever that may be. We believe that hiring talented people from diverse places makes our work better.

● For Good Words employees: We hire and pay people based on their talent and abilities to do great work. As much as possible, we hire people all over the world, empowering them to live in and contribute to the communities that they choose to live in. We pay as fairly and generously as we can to all our employees, no matter where they live.

● For our clients and partners: Our team is a remote team; our employees serve our customers from all around the world. We’re able to hire the best talent globally without geographical limitations to bring you the best service in our industry. We charge our clients fairly based on the value of the work we do, not the location of our employees. We pass generous benefits on to our employees so they can do the best work possible for our clients.

Arrow-up