Our next guest on MENtors that Make a Difference is Tom Foster, the Director of Sales at The Receptionist, the company behind your swift check-in experiences. Started in 2013, The Receptionist paved the way as the first-ever visitor management company. They are now in over 4k+ locations and 36 countries worldwide.

Today we talk about Tom's career journey and how business culture helped guide him to where he is today. We also talk about the significant impact women have had on The Receptionist and how they have impacted the tech industry as a whole. Finally, to further explore this impact, we discuss the qualities male allies can attain to help their female counterparts grow their careers.

You can learn more about The Receptionist here: https://thereceptionist.com/

Thank you for listening; we hope Tom's story helps inspire others to seek or grow their tech career.

Enjoy this podcast replay:

Join Jennifer Didier and Danica Bunnett as they discuss the operations of Bluon. Danica will share how her childhood experiences have helped to find her passion and use it to build Bluon to it's current status in the marketplace.

Danica Bunnett Bio:

As Bluon’s Chief Operating Officer, Danica manages the day-to-day operations of Bluon, a rapidly growing technology company in the HVAC space that has grown from 30 people to 130 in just over a year. As is typical in a company of Bluon’s size, Danica directly oversees several critical teams while working hand in glove with managers on several others. Danica is a true hands-on manager and player coach, who utilizes her unique skill set to manage a diverse group of technicians, professionals and software engineers with equal skill, grace and authority. Danica has been with Bluon from the virtual beginning and has been instrumental in its growth as well as its one-of-a-kind culture. In many ways, Bluon is a direct reflection of Danica and her unworldly work ethic, unmatched enthusiasm, seemingly always positive attitude and direct style of communication. She is a graduate of Stanford University with a Bachelors in Product Design Mechanical Engineering. She was also the co-president of Stanford Women in Design (SWID) and believes in bridging Silicon Valley's high-tech innovation with the HVAC world.

Career Update:

Danica pulls from her background in human-centered design and engineering to help grow and scale Bluon. She brings a fresh perspective and unmatched enthusiasm to improve the execution and operational capabilities across the business. Danica is a graduate of Stanford University with a Bachelor’s in Product Design. As a Lake Tahoe native with deep connection to the outdoors, Danica has always had a strong interest in sustainable technologies and improving the world through innovation.

Danica has recently join Chief Member. You can connect with her on LinkedIN.

Jennifer Didier sits down with co-founder of Kumospace Brett Martin. Listen to their conversation about the changes that are available in the digital workspace. (Virtual Office)

Brett Martin Bio:

I am an entrepreneur, angel investor, pragmatist, and optimist. Having spent most of my career in the startup trenches, I now focus on supporting other entrepreneurs as Managing Partner of a small seed-stage venture fund: Charge Ventures. Charge is a NYC-based pre-seed/seed stage venture fund. We invest 200-500k at the earliest stages of company formation and then help founders take things from 0 to 1. When not working directly with startups, I spread the startup gospel as an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. My teaching focuses on product strategy and entrepreneurial finance but also have a few war stories to tell, having co-founded Switch, a mobile job discovery application, and Sonar, a location-based social network. I began my career on Wall Street as an equity research associate. In my spare time, I've been fortunate enough to write for Harvard Business review, launch a little website called Vice, found a rock band, and sail thousands of miles on a 30ft sailboat.

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