My name is Josen Punnoose, and I’m an innovation and product development specialist at USPS headquarters in Washington, DC. I help find new revenue opportunities for the Postal Service.
I’m part of an 11-member team. Once we identify an opportunity, we conduct an “idea assessment” where we ask consumers and businesses about the proposal to see what they think of it.
A lot of our projects take weeks or months to come to fruition. The next generation mailbox is one of the products on the market that came out of our group. We’ve been able to find opportunities where you wouldn’t expect them and move quickly to determine if they’re good ideas or not. We have a director and a manager who have trained us to really think strategically.
I’ve been with the Postal Service for about 14 years. I started as a retail associate, then transferred to Sales. Two years ago, I joined Product Innovation.
I started my postal career because of my dad. I had just gotten a master’s degree in business administration, and I was sitting around, waiting for an opportunity. My dad had a lot of friends who worked for USPS. He told me, “It’s a federal job, there’s job security and you can move up.” He was right.
The cool thing about the Postal Service is the breadth of this organization. There’s operations, sales, finance, engineering, sustainability and product innovation. It is so broad.
Together, we offer a service that touches every single individual in this country. There are a wide variety of opportunities here, and what we do actually matters to a whole lot of people.
“On the Job,” a series on individual employees and their contributions to the Postal Service, appears regularly in Link.