We sat down with Sarfraz Maredia (Regional General Manager overseeing Uber’s operations in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Delaware) for a Q&A to discuss the state of the business, his favorite Uber memories, and the driver-focused changes that we’ve made over the past few months. Read on for an excerpt of the interview, or listen to the audio version in the podcast linked below.

The text of this interview has been lightly edited for length.

Ellen: Hi everyone! I’m Ellen, and I work on the Driver Experience team at Uber. I’m excited to introduce Sarfraz Maredia, who leads Uber’s ridesharing business in the Northeast, including New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.

Sarfraz:  Thanks, Ellen. Before we get started, I want to take this opportunity to say thank you to the driver-partners all across the Northeast. What you do every day is what makes the Uber experience a magical one for millions of riders. Uber isn’t the same without your contributions and the unique stories that the driver community brings to Uber. It’s something that we’re really thankful for and that riders are grateful for every day. I would be remiss if we started this conversation without making that point.

Ellen: Awesome—thank you for that! So tell us, what did you do before Uber, and what brought you to the company?

Sarfraz: It’s less interesting than the amazing stories that drivers bring to the platform every day, but before I came to Uber I did a number of things. I come from a family of small businessmen and women. My grandfather was a dairy farmer in India, and he dropped out of high school to start a business so he could support his family. He ultimately grew it into a successful dairy business, doing everything from raising livestock to actually selling the milk at retail. So, my interest in business and entrepreneurship is just part of my DNA. That’s one of the reasons I was attracted to Uber. When I was traveling for other jobs or even if I was just on a vacation with my family, I noticed that Uber was working on the solution to an important problem in lots of different places. Where there wasn’t good public transit or people didn’t have reliable access to transportation, they were turning to Uber. I saw that in New York City, which is where I was living at the time—my daughter was born here—Uber had become a way of life, even though people still liked to walk and take the subway. There are lots of different options, but Uber is now a part of the fabric of the city and that’s because there are driver-partners living in every zip code, in every borough, in every part of the Northeast, that are serving people in their community and helping them to get around. We also have riders who really enjoy the ability to push a button and get a ride, knowing that they’re going to have somebody that’s friendly and who’s going to get them where they need to go safely. That’s what really got me hooked on Uber.

Before Uber, I was a management consultant working with technology and private equity clients; I also worked in the private equity industry and in public markets as an investor, focused on a number of industries, but always with an interest in technology and high-growth companies. Then I was a corporate development executive leading M&A activity and growth strategy for a healthcare data analytics company. But as I started to use Uber more and more as a rider, I was really impressed by the combination of the technology and how easy it was to connect riders with drivers in the area. It was this combination of technology and the human element that I was really attracted to. That’s what brought me to Uber. Like many other people that work here, I’m really passionate about helping to solve an important problem in cities all over the world and particularly in the Northeast where I’ve spent a lot of time and where my family is based.

Ellen: Now that you’re a few months into working in this region, what are you most excited about for the rest of the year at Uber?

Sarfraz: That’s a tough question to answer. There’s so much interesting stuff happening right now. I’ve spent quite a bit of time meeting drivers in multiple cities, spending time in our Greenlight Hubs, and doing roundtables. I’ve been a part of the 180 Days of Change initiative that we’ve been rolling out—I’m hopeful most of you’ve heard about that by now—but that’s a whole set of initiatives that we’re pursuing that are purely based on feedback from drivers. We’re taking the biggest pain points and the things that we can work on to most improve the driver experience and then working with our product teams to build features to address them. So I would say 180 Days of Change is a big part of what I’m looking forward to. We’ve rolled out the first three chapters as of this taping along with unique features and changes that are focused on improving flexibility, improving earnings (options like in-app tipping), and also making sure the driver experience is as stress-free as possible. There are a number of changes that our teams are working on that are aimed at doing exactly that, and it’s really great to see those come to life.

One other thing that I’m really excited about is being able to drive. I’ve actually driven with Uber in other cities before and it’s something that I learn so much from. If you want to get feedback about how to improve Uber, how to improve the app, how to improve the experience, ask drivers. Drivers have the best insight on this stuff, and that’s what’s driven a lot of the changes that we’ve been making lately. But, there’s asking people and then there’s actually being a driver yourself. When I first took trips as a driver, I learned so many things that never had occurred to me or didn’t come up in conversation. In the past, I drove with Uber in Texas (which is where some of my family lives) and having recently moved back to the Northeast, I’m excited to drive in New York or Philadelphia and a variety of cities to see what that experience is like. I think it’s going to be similar in a lot of ways, but there will also be things that are different from city to city.

In Pittsburgh, for example, you’ve got to deal with a number of bridges on a day-to-day basis that you wouldn’t necessarily be dealing with in Philadelphia. In New York City, you have to deal with primetime traffic in the mornings and in the evenings. Those unique situations really change the driver experience, and we need to be able to optimize for those things. Part of doing that is really understanding what experiences drivers are having (what’s working for them, what isn’t working for them) and that’s one of the things I’m really passionate about.

I think there are a number of other things that drivers are going to read about and hear about that they’ll be excited to see in terms of things that Uber is doing, whether it’s in the community or improving the driving experience.

Ellen: Awesome. That’s super exciting. What was your most memorable Uber ride and why?

Sarfraz: I actually have two. Let’s start with the first one. I followed Uber from the early days, and I had just moved from San Francisco to New York. About six months after that, a good friend of mine (who is a former NBA player) was visiting from out of town. We went to dinner in Harlem at a restaurant called Red Rooster, and by the time we were done with dinner, the restaurant was closing down and it was probably 1:30 in the morning. I can’t remember if the subway just wasn’t running that late, or if there was an issue that night where we couldn’t get it on the way back, but I walked out of the restaurant with my friend and my first thought was, “How am I going to get home?” (it was well known at the time that taxis didn’t go into Harlem very often).

So, you had me—for the vast majority of you who haven’t met me, I’m a 5’10” Indian guy—and my friend who is 6’10” and Nigerian, and I didn’t think we were going to have a lot of luck getting a taxi in Harlem at 1:30 in the morning. Before I could even turn to my friend and say, “Hey, how are we going to get home? Should we walk? Should we think about a gypsy cab?” he pulled out his phone and said, “Let’s just get an Uber.” I felt so silly because I had been following Uber, but I hadn’t taken a ride myself. He requested a ride and a driver arrived to pick us up in less than three minutes—it didn’t matter where we were or what we looked like, but Uber helped get us safely to where we were going. The service was great, the driver was really friendly, and it was just a memorable trip. Ever since then, Uber has been the way I’ve gotten around cities. From my early days as a rider, the great experience and the really interesting people you could meet both really made an impression on me.

One other particularly memorable experience I have is the first trip I took as a driver. Being as familiar with Uber as I was—having been a rider for a long time, but also having been an employee by this point—I thought that nothing was really going to surprise me. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. The thing that surprised me was the people you met and the kinds of things that people would use Uber for. On my first trip, it was actually pretty late in the evening, maybe 10 or 11pm, and I picked up someone in their mid-20s. He was going from his job back to his apartment (which was in a not particularly great part of town). I asked him how frequently he used Uber. He said he didn’t really use Uber in the mornings because, whenever he could, he’d try to take the bus to work, and would usually travel in whichever way was the cheapest. The problem was that there was never a bus or an easy way for him to get from this job—he worked at a restaurant—back home in the evenings. He said that oftentimes he would have to take a taxi, and big chunk of what he made in tips that night he would end up having to pay for his taxi ride home. He told me that the biggest reasons he used Uber were because it’s safe, he got to meet interesting people, and he didn’t have to pay out a significant portion of his tips to get home after work. We often think of people who are using Uber for business travel or to get to and from airports, but I discovered so many other use cases—and that people really rely on it for their day-to-day lives, and that was something that stuck with me.

Ellen: Wow, I love that. Thank you so much for sharing those two stories. Alright, next question. What are the most important decisions you make as a leader of your Uber region?

Sarfraz: Interesting—nobody’s ever asked me that before. When I think about the best way for me to use my time to really improve Uber as an experience for drivers and riders, as a product, as something that helps to complement public transportation in cities all over the country, what I boil it down to is this: I need to help build a culture in which people are really motivated and excited to serve drivers and riders every day. The thing that I love about coming to work at Uber is that everybody I work with—people like you, Ellen, people like Andrew, who’s recording this podcast for us right now—they all get up every day wanting to improve that experience for drivers, for riders, and for people who aren’t even using Uber yet. Making sure that there’s a strong culture of service to drivers and riders is really important to me.

Urban mobility is another thing that we are really passionate about. We want to make sure that cities know we’re willing to partner with them to address the urban mobility challenges in their communities. I spend a good amount of my time working with our Operations team and our Public Affairs team in trying to advance that goal. Because transportation is really an ecosystem—there aren’t people who just use Uber all the time and there aren’t people who just use the subway all the time. Understanding that we’re part of that ecosystem and working with cities to make sure that it gets stronger is something that I think we’re uniquely well-positioned to do. That’s something we’re making a lot of progress on, but I think we could be doing more. It’s a priority for us across the country, and really all over the world.

Ellen: Let’s switch gears for a minute and talk about a specific Uber product. What are your thoughts on uberPOOL?

Sarfraz: Ah, great question. This comes up in probably one out of every four or five conversations I have with drivers, and even though it isn’t available all throughout the Northeast yet, we are really starting to see the promise of uberPOOL in cities throughout the world. One of the reasons for its success is because the cost of reliable transportation—and reliable is the key word there—is pretty high in most places. Transit agencies have learned this, even places that have reliable subway service have learned this. It’s really expensive and often not realistic to be able to provide people with transportation service that is reliable and affordable. The extraordinary thing about Uber is that we have amazing driver-partners who usually live in every major zip code in a given city or area where we operate, so there’s not an issue about being able to reach certain neighborhoods. People who study transportation sometimes talk about “transportation deserts”—places where buses and subways and other forms of transportation aren’t available, or where taxis don’t typically go. Because driver-partners often live and drive in communities all throughout a given area, we don’t have that same issue with Uber. UberPOOL has been a game changer because it’s affordable for people who might not be able to regularly afford uberX or uberSELECT or UberBLACK.

Another thing we found is that there are people who might use uberPOOL for a specific use case, but that might use uberX or UberBLACK for another use case. You might pick up a rider who’s requesting uberPOOL one day and you might think, “This is not going to be a particularly large fare,” but actually, that person (for another driver or for you another day in the future) may be taking an uberX ride or a higher fare ride, or a longer distance ride that turns into a higher fare for you. So having this suite of products that can address different issues and different price points helps to attract riders to Uber. Ultimately, we can help millions of people get around cities in a way where they can choose what they’re trying to solve for. A lot of people don’t have the same need week-to-week or day-to-day. The ability to choose what you need is really important for riders, but it’s also good from the perspective of serving drivers. We want to make sure that we can allow as many riders as possible who are interested in the service that you provide to be able to reach you. And if we aren’t providing the option of uberPOOL, then somebody else will provide a carpool ridesharing option, and then that’s business that drivers on the Uber platform wouldn’t get. We want to make sure that we’re allowing for all of those options, especially in a situation where sharing rides helps cut down on congestion and allows more people to travel affordably. And for us as a company, that’s a worthy goal.

Ellen: Definitely. Alright, so last question. What advice would you give a driver who’s just starting driving with Uber?

Sarfraz: I love this question. And one of the reasons I do is because I feel like I actually have some credibility to answer it. I wouldn’t feel comfortable answering it if I hadn’t driven myself and spent time with well over a thousand drivers talking about their experiences driving with Uber. The best ideas and the best suggestions come from drivers because they know more about the driving experience than anybody else.

On this subject, here’s one suggestion: If you are a new driver or you’re somebody who’s thinking about changing up your driving pattern in order to make more money as we head into this busy fall season, one idea is to take a look at driving during morning rush hour, especially if you’re in a bigger city. We’re seeing more demand between 6am and 9am than we’re seeing in other periods. If you’re out driving Monday through Friday—especially Monday through Thursday between 6am and 9am—there’s a chance that you’re going to be making more money than you normally would during that period or other periods. Ultimately, it’s up to you when you drive, but if you’re looking to make some adjustments, that may be something to think about.

My second suggestion: I always think about drivers I’ve met who are driving on their own terms; their driving experience is built around what their goals are in their life. They’re comfortable in their own skin and they’re providing a really high-quality experience for the riders who are spending time with them. The thing that we often forget is when you’re driving and a rider gets in your car, you have the opportunity to change how their day is going. There are times where riders, as we all know, are on their phone and may not want to make conversation, but there are other times where they’re very interested in what you’re doing or what’s going on in your life. Your attitude and your ability to lift someone’s spirits can truly change the outcome of someone’s day. Understanding that the experience is really in your control is a pretty empowering thing.

My third suggestion is a much more tactical thing. Especially if you’re a newer driver, test out different things. Try driving at different times. If you start out driving between 10am and 3pm and you never try anything else, you probably won’t learn that you could make more money driving during morning rush hour or late afternoon/early evenings after people are getting out of their offices, or Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, or during big events like football games and concerts. If you’re willing to try driving at different times and places, you can optimize how much you earn and what sort of approach works best for you. Think about what your goals are and how you can achieve those goals and fit when you drive around your life. Ultimately, that’s the thing we really want every driver to be able to do with Uber—fit their driving around their life.

I’m reminded of a recent experience with a driver named James in New York City. My wife and I took our daughter to the US Open for the first time ever and she was really excited to go. After we were finally there, she started to get bored 30 or 45 minutes into it and wanted to go home. I had to tell her, “No, we’re going to stay for the whole thing. This is a special thing that you don’t always get to do, so we’re going to stay the whole time.” By the time we left, it was raining and of course, not easy to get home. I requested a ride, and this gentleman named James picked me up. And he was awesome.

Just minutes after getting in the car, my daughter fell asleep and James and I started talking. I asked him how he got into Uber and was curious about his life and any feedback that he had for us. His background and his passion is in pyrotechnics—he literally puts on fireworks shows all over the world. He’s done them in the Middle East and in the US, and it’s what he loves to do. But the nature of the work is that it’s very up and down: there are times of the year that he’s really busy, and there are other times where he might not work for a couple of months. He’s married, he has a young daughter himself, and he said the thing that he really liked about Uber was the flexibility to be with his family and the stability of being able to earn money regularly when he’s not working on fireworks shows. It isn’t every day that you meet somebody who’s a specialist in pyrotechnics and at the same time is able to earn money regularly in their spare time by driving with Uber. I love hearing those kinds of stories, and every one of you has your own unique story like that. Think about what it is that you’re driving for and how you can use the flexibility of Uber in your day-to-day life. It’s inspiring for people like me to hear that and to meet partners like James. So James, if you’re out there, thanks for that ride and it was great to meet you.

You know, these are the stories that always stick with me, and when we’re trying to make a decision about how we can improve the app or a specific feature, what I always come back to is: Will this improve the experience for drivers? Will this make the flexibility that drivers have better? Will it reduce the amount of stress that you can sometimes have when you’re driving? Does it also improve the experience for riders? When the answer to those questions is yes, I know we’re moving in the right direction. And when it’s no, I usually know that it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

Ellen: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Sarfraz for sharing your experiences with us. We’re super excited to have you here as our new leader in the Northeast.

Sarfraz: Thanks for having me. And thanks to all of our partners out there. I can’t say this enough, but what you’re doing every day fundamentally makes your city a better place to live, work, and play. There are millions of people in the Northeast who are reliant on you to be able to move around their cities, so thank you for everything you do—both the things that are seen by others, but also the things that aren’t seen. We really appreciate it.