If you've ever wondered about unique job titles and what the job entails... well, we have your answer!  We reached out to companies across the tech industry to discover some of the most interesting job titles around and learn about each role's high-level responsibilities.

Chief Weather Officer

The mission of the CWO is to establish Tomorrow.io as the leading weather intelligence company by achieving unparalleled accuracy and powering innovative insights to weather-affected businesses and people around the globe. 

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Chief Hello Officer

Ali Woods, our Chief Hello Officer, holds a unique and important role within the iZotope ecosystem. They are the first person to welcome new hires to the team, and a friendly face to visit if you have any questions about anything benefits, events, or iZo related. This CHO role has transformed from being in office to fully remote. Despite the remote nature, Ali still holds her role strong and true, and folks still swing by her “desk” for a quick chat throughout the day or to thank her for the stellar remote events that she runs.

Explore izotope's company page

Retail Store Designer

Lovepop is looking for an awesome individual to join the Retail Store Design team and help create magical experiences in physical spaces. The ideal candidate will be excited to be an integral part of our store expansion mission and push lots of boundaries on design. If you love solving challenges quickly and seeing your ideas actually come to life, please apply!

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Head of Retail Listings

Aptly named for those thriving in the real estate industry, the primary focus of the Head of Retail Listings is to build a systematic approach to cultivating new real estate listings for Mynd and overseeing the sale of those properties. Work cross-functionally to ensure a seamless experience from initial interest to closed sale.

Explore mynd's company page

3D Artist

The 3D Game Artist at Demiurge Studios works across multiple, high-profile projects. In this role, you will create a variety of 3D assets from environments, characters, props, vehicles and more. With a high value on teamwork and communication, we are seeking someone ready to flex their artistic skills!

Explore demiurge studios' company page

Executive Buyer

An extension of a customer’s finance team, Vendr Buyers negotiate all renewals and new purchases, leaving a customer with more time to focus on their mission.

If you’re an AE, AM, or CSM hoping to ditch the quota life, Executive Buying could be your next move.

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Candidate Experience Specialist

The Toast Candidate Experience Team brings our “embrace by a hospitality mindset” value to life by creating memorable recruiting processes, empowering our candidates to succeed throughout their interview journey, and ensuring all candidates have a toasty experience. The team strives to provide an individualized experience to all candidates by partnering closely with recruiters and hiring managers before and during the interview process.

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Technology Evangelist

As a Technology Evangelist is going to help us fulfill our mission by connecting with other partners, customers, and developers, contributing to open source, and sharing knowledge and experience about PathAI and other leading technologies at conferences and meetups, in contributed articles, and on blogs, podcasts, and social media. The goal is to increase awareness in our tech community by a true tech expert

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Director of Product - Beverages!

Our Director of Product - Beverages role will manage Bevi’s entire beverage portfolio – setting strategy, defining the roadmap and regularly executing new beverage launches.

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Office Operations Manager

Did you think after 2020 we'd be seeing a title like this anymore? This role does more than you might think. You would be responsible for Panorama Education’s day-to-day internal office operations for both Boston and San Francisco, as well as manage the support operations for remote team members in over 30 states. You'll also plan company-wide events, provide logistical support for team Lunch & Learns, panels, and heritage month celebrations, and more.

Explore panorama education's company page

It's Pride Month! We take a look across the tech scene to see how companies are supporting and celebrating LGBTQ+ employees in the workplace during Pride Month. There are lots of guest speakers, special events, history lessons, dance parties, and more planned! 

At Benchling, our Bloom ERG is putting together several events to celebrate Pride Month. One of the activities this year is to highlight a few pieces of LGBT+ history each week. They will also host film screening and discussion on the documentary Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen.

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Motional’s Pride, Resources, Inclusion, and Support at Motional (PRISM) Employee Resource Group (ERG) is planning a robust internal celebration for PRIDE month. They’ll be coordinating educational bulletin boards at local offices with information on history, media, and resources for LGBTQIA+ employees and allies, offering lunches from local LGBTQIA+ owned businesses, and hosting an expert speaker on the history of Pride month and LGBTQIA+ allyship. Motional will also be featuring members of its PRISM ERG on its social channels throughout the month.

Explore motional's company page

RepTrak was very active during pride month including a DEI Movie Club featuring discussions of the movie Disclosure. Other events included “Pride Social Hour” for LGBTQIA+ Reptrakkers and allies to chat and get to know each other. These events were used as a follow up to our Diversity and Inclusion LGBTQ+ Storytelling Forum from earlier in the year in which we featured employees who shared their stories related to LGBTQ+ identity and experiences.

Explore reptrak's company page

We hosted virtual drag bingo with Marti Cummings, a NYC based drag artist, television personality, and political activist (this was an employee-only event)

Care you can be proud of: On 6/3, we hosted a discussion with Andrew Miller (LGBTQ Education Trainer, Denver Health) and Dr. Miriam Langer (Adolescent Medicine, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia) about reducing the disparities experienced by members of the LGBTQIA+ community, ensuring that all patients are treated with dignity and respect, and de-mystifying the science around gender-affirming care for trans youth. 

We are selling Pride water bottles and Pride tie-dye kits to support the Human Rights Campaign.

We are hosting "Contour and Cocktails" with performer and recording artist Brandon Alberto. He will be teaching us drag makeup basics for a fierce eye look and talking to us about his adventures as a queer performer in Kinky Boots throughout the United States and the world (this is an employee only event)

Explore cedar's company page

At MassChallenge, we celebrate Pride by sharing the month’s history, what staff can do, and how to get involved at MC. Internally we are hosting a Trans 101 event with Ben Greene, discussion groups, and a chance for folx to share in our Pride @ MC! Teams channel. We also have shared resources on pronouns and ask that staff add them to their email signatures. We also have sent resources on pronouns and why they are important to share, and ask that staff include them in their email signatures and Zoom profiles, during interviews with candidates, and in introductions during team conversations and meetings.

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At ZoomInfo, we love celebrating Pride all year long! We got in the Pride Month spirit early by selling “Stride with Pride” branded T-shirts in May, with proceeds benefiting the Matthew Shepard Foundation. On June 1, we changed the logo on our Okta log-in screens and intranet to our custom Pride logo, and released our employee-sourced Pride Spotify playlist. We’re also hosting several events throughout the month, including a Combined Queer Verbiage presentation and Drag Bingo Night with a costume contest organized by our ZI Pride Employee Resource Group.

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Here at Toast, we are excited to celebrate Pride all month long! We will be hosting engaging virtual events, such as Pride-themed trivia and interactive workshops focused on LGBTQIA+ history. We will also be offering conversations with outside speakers and educational resources for all employees, including a series highlighting influential members of the LGBTQIA+ community throughout the years. Over the course of the month, we will be spotlighting members of Multigrain, our Toast Community for LGBTQIA+ Toasters and their allies, on our social channels.

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We are SO excited to kick off Pride Month to recognize the LGBTQIA+ community and elevate voices and experiences of members within! Our mission for the month (and beyond!!) is represented by three pillars: solidarity, intersectionality, and awareness. This Pride Month we will continue to center on and elevate marginalized identities, specifically BIPOC voices, within the LGBTQIA+ community. Some highlights of our month include:

• Throwing a Pride Hackathon
• Planning a Service Project
• Spotlighting LGBTQIA+ Businesses Movies & Artists
• Hosting the 2nd Annual Drag Storytime
• & more

Explore Panorama Education's company page

Vistaprint is proud to announce its new year-round Platinum-level partnership with StartOut, a non-profit dedicated to empowering, supporting and amplifying LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs. This multifunctional partnership was formed to lift up LGBTQ+ startups and small business owners through a strategic offering of mentorship, education, design and marketing assistance, and scholarship programs for StartOut members. Vistaprint has also committed 20 percent of the proceeds from its June 2021 sales of its newly launched line of Pride products, which includes face masks, clothing, mugs, stickers, and marketing items to help small businesses and community members honor and celebrate pride. Vistaprint will host Global Pride Month Events with guests, educators and speakers including Astala Vista, Víctor Gutiérrez, Jay Hulme and Chelsea Clinton for team members to learn, grow and celebrate with PRIDE throughout the month of June.

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Nasuni is launching pride month via our Diversity Committee. We have suggested LinkedIn learn course and reading materials. In addition, we will celebrate as a community via a zoom dance party.

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Drift kicked off Pride Month by hosting a panel with Gong, Canvas and Go Nimbly about how to better include, support and celebrate LGBTQ+ employees in the workplace. (A recording of the event can be found here!) Internally, our LGBTQ+ ERG, the Rainbots, has created Pride-themed Zoom backgrounds and Slack avatar backgrounds and Pride swag, and they have an event coming up at the end of the month to celebrate Pride. All of these initiatives are in line with the Rainbots goals of increasing visibility and awareness of LGBTQ+ people at Drift (and in tech in general), educating our team and the external community on salient LGBTQ+ topics, and giving back to the local LGBTQ+ community.

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At PFF, Pride reminds us that our allyship is cultivated by our #accountability to our LGBTQ+ employees and to the LGBTQ+ community. We both celebrate and commemorate Pride all month long with educational and fun events for our employees. These include a company wide workshop on LGBTQ+ allyship, and a lunch time Pride Trivia game!

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AspenTech recently launched an LBGTQ chapter of our Diversity, Equality & Inclusion initiative and published an internal website with PRIDE Month resources. Throughout the month of June, we are hosting an internal photo challenge and encouraging employees to submit photos of themselves that feature a color of the Pride Flag. Externally, we are changing our AspenTech leaf logo to incorporate the colors of the LGBTQ flag for PRIDE Month and made a monetary donation to Boston Pride.

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At JRNI we have assembled a PRIDE planning committee. The week of Pride we plan on doing the items below:

• Send out informational slides about pride in the 21st century
• Create a google sheet with LGBTQIA+ resources; like tv, film, articles, podcasts and charities
• We have updated our gender identity options in our HR systems to include more than just male and female
• We are rolling out adding pronouns into email signatures and slack names
• We are holding a Pride/LGBTQIA lunch and learn around issues and experiences
• We have updated our Linkedin Banners and instagram profile picture, as well as our zoom backgrounds

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Vecna Robotics supports the LGBTQ+ community with a paid membership to NOGLSTP – National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals. Employees are able to become members and take part in the education workshops and programs that empower LGBTQ+ individuals in STEM through advocacy, professional development, networking, and peer support.

Explore Vecna Robotics' company page

Externally, we designed several Pride specific templates for our customers to use as well as hosting a guest blog on our website with resources for LBGTQIA small businesses.

Internally, we're hosting a Pride-themed chat with IMPACT (I'm Proud at Constant Contact) as we relaunch our affinity groups post-acquisition and transition. We offer year round safe zone training as well as inclusive leadership to help uncover our unconscious biases and lead more inclusively.

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Recorded Future's LGBTQIA+ employee resource group, Out@RF, partnered with our Insikt Group to conduct our second research report about new anti-LGBTQIA+ laws and protections and online radicalization. We've also planned some fun celebrations including a company wide "Ally" pride photo collage, weekly gay history and pop culture quizzes throughout the month, and daily postings about notable figures and advocates for LGBTQIA+ rights.

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Slack Channel postings – Pride Month/Pride History

• 6/7 – Arcadia Cinema Movie – “A Secret Love”
• 6/16 – Weekly Coping with Covid session – “LGBTQA+ Heath”
• 6/22 – Watch Party – “Stonewall Forever”
• 6/24 – Pride Bingo

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To kick off the month, we are hosting a content club on queer representation in the media. This session will discuss how the music, film, and TV industry shapes the perception of LGBTQ+ members in society and how we as an organization can think critically and challenge these representations.

We also wrote a blog on this: check out here. https://robinpowered.com/blog/robin-recognizes-pride-month

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At Quickbase, supporting LGBTQ+ employees means allowing our employees to come to work as their full, authentic selves. Being aware of the kinds of identities people bring with them to work, and being respectful of those identities, means that many employees feel safe and valued for the work that they do. We recently formalized our LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group here at Quickbase, and have begun to brainstorm how to provide educational, social, and professional development opportunities to our LGBTQ+ employees. We are very excited to kick it all off with Pride month in June! To start, we’re hosting a company-wide virtual Pride 5k and raising donations for the Transgender Law Center, the largest national trans-led organization advocating for a world in which all people are free to define themselves and their futures.

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Here at Virgin Pulse, we celebrate the diversity of our employees all year long. In June we’re especially excited to uplift the LGBTQIA+ community within Virgin Pulse. This month we’re hosting a challenge on our platform about how to be a strong LGBTQIA+ ally. We’re also sending out weekly emails highlighting different aspects of the LGBTQIA+ community (terminology, history, representation, intersectionality, etc.) and spotlighting Virgin Pulse employees and their stories. We’re hosting two internal panels this month as well – Pride Through the Generations, speaking to LGBTQIA+ history and pride in the workplace and Parenting with Pride, which focuses on having children as an LGBTQIA+ parent and raising open-minded and inclusive children. We’re also hosting trivia parties, a Show Your Pride day and sharing custom Pride-themed Zoom backgrounds!

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Reggora supports the LGBTQ+ community during Pride Month

Normally, the month of June is a time for Pride celebrations around the world. But as we know for the past two years the COVID-19 pandemic has upended a lot of live events and prevented people from gathering as a united group. To show our support, we put together ideas for Pride Month 2021 that all our employees could get involved in.

Book Club: Our June book club book was Here For It Or How To Save Your Soul In America by R. Eric Thomas.

Celebrate (Boston) Pride, virtually: Streaming Pride Lights together virtually

The virtual park lighting ceremony is meant to commemorate departed friends, family and coworkers and to increase awareness of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which is still affecting the community today. A signature event of Boston Pride Week, Pride Lights will feature remarks from Mayor Kim Janey, Chief of Health & Human Services Marty Martinez, and a poem reading from Philip Robinson. Virtual performances provided by the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus, with others to be announced.

We also encouraged our employees to be an ally during Pride month by: boosting the voices of LGBTQ+ people around you and in your social circles, retweeting and reposting with attribution, and making space for people to share their stories And asking our Reggora employees to post recommendations for LGBTQ+ voices to be amplified; Adding your pronouns. We know that adding pronouns to Slack, Linkedin, or Zoom is also a quick and easy way for allies of the LGBTQ+ community to have a powerful and positive impact. Using pronouns shows others that you are not going to assume their gender. It also helps educate people about gender inclusivity in the workplace. Public pronouns create an inclusive environment for everyone to own their identity, allowing them to bring their “whole self'' to work and be respected for it; providing a curated list of LGBTQ+-owned businesses to support

The number of LGBTQ-owned enterprises is growing, and their impact is accelerating. The most simple and obvious way to show your support is to shop at LGBTQ+-owned stores, which builds empowerment and gives that business a stronger voice. Another way is to share the LGBTQ+ businesses you know about on social media and spread the word about supporting them. As well as asking our employees to get involved and post in the comments your own favorite LGBTQ+ owned brands so everyone can check them out!

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We were so excited to celebrate Pride Month we kicked it off a few weeks early with a Virtual Bingo night with JuJubee from Ru Pauls Drag Race. We are holding several events throughout the month of June as well. We will have a Virtual Panel on Intersectionality in the LGBTQ+ community, Cogicians are meeting up for a watch party at Cogito office of the the new FX Pride series, and our Pride+ resource group will be running a virtual Talent Show at the end of the month. In addition to these fun events we have been sharing daily fun and educational Pride Month facts and resources via Slack.

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Nexthink is on a mission to delight people at work. Not just some people, but ALL people. We’re proud to be celebrating Pride Month! Nexthinkers around the world are showing their support for the LGBTQIA+ community with custom Nexthink Proud virtual Zoom backgrounds and will be learning more about how to advocate for a transgender inclusive workplace through our Diversity Dialogue “Saying Goodbye to My Son & Hello to My Daughter”, featuring guest speaker Irene Brank.

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IbelongHE is our Employee Resource Group at HealthEdge. For June’s meeting, one of our employees will be making a presentation on the history of Pride - from Stonewall to legislative changes and changes in healthcare regulations for the LGBTQIA community over the years. Since our customers are insurance companies, we wanted to highlight this area. The second half of our meeting, we will have a guest speaker from Harvard speak to us about the definition and importance of allyship.

The conversation will continue all month long on our dedicated IbelongHE Slack channel, where employees can share book, movie, article recommendations and talk about their experiences. We’ll share information once a week on learning opportunities such as pronoun usage, bias training, and virtual Pride events our teams may like to enjoy.

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At Namely, one of our ERGs, PrideIN, is hosting several activities.

“Topic Tuesdays”

Throughout the month, PrideIN will be having “Topic Tuesdays” via Slack. Every Tuesday, the ERG will be discussing current events that are near and dear to the LGBTQIA+ community.

Virtual Movie Night

This year, we’ll be showing Rafiki—a 2018 Kenyan drama film directed by Wanuri Kahiu. Rafiki is a story of romance that grows between two young women, Kena and Ziki, amidst family and political pressures around LGBTQIA+ rights in Kenya.

Virtual Fitness Classes

To get employees up and moving, Namely is conducting two virtual fitness classes to celebrate Pride Month. The first class is a total body sweat floor class for all levels called “Sweat with Pride”. “Sweat with Pride” will benefit Lost N Found Youth Inc.—an Atlanta, Georgia-based nonprofit that exists to end homelessness for LGBTQIA+ and all sexual minority youth. LNFY strives to provide stability and safety to young adults through a 24/7 hotline, daily drop-In center, transitional and emergency housing, street outreach, and partnerships with other providers in the area.

Zumba

Namely will also be hosting a virtual Zumba class, held by PrideIN and one of the ERG’s allies, HACER—the Hispanic Alliance for Career Employee Resources.  

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To celebrate Pride month, 3Play Media has invited two local drag artists, Just JP and Jayden Jamison to perform, and then do an q&a to share more about their experiences in drag culture with us!

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LogMeIn is celebrating PRIDE month with several events and activities including: a session with a licensed professional counselor to answer questions around how to support children and family members who might be questioning, exploring, or struggling with their gender identity; a LGBTQIA+ trivia night; a sharing session of our favorite drag queens; and a discussion of the film The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson. In addition to this, LogMeIn has made a donation to The Trevor Project, and our PRIDE@LogMeIn Employee Resource Group has curated a library of resources for our LGBTQIA+ employees and allies.

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In recognition of Pride, we’re focusing on both celebrating our LGBTQ+ employees and helping our associates learn more about the history and importance of Pride month. This has included a program where associates can submit entries on “what Pride means to you” and photos of them celebrating Pride – this month, and always. Entries will be included as part of a compilation write-up and video and featured on our internal employee Hub. We’re also sharing educational resources on “Why we celebrate Pride in the United States,” “Pride flag history and meaning” and “Pride events near you.” Huge thank you to our WERQPLACE resource group!

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Ordergroove is celebrating Pride Month with a book club on James Baldwin's novel Giovanni's Room. Ordergroove's Diversity Council is teaming up with our LGBTQIA+ affinity group, OG Pride, to co-host the discussion on themes of sexuality and masculinity.

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To celebrate Pride Month this year, we organized a global committee and planned a few different initiatives around the globe to demonstrate our commitment and support to not only our own LGBTQ+ moose and allies, but to our communities as well!

1. We provided our moose with a template that automatically adds a Pride flag and the message “Rapid7 is an equal opportunity employer” to their email signatures all year long!

2. We launched an #Insight-Pride slack channel for bi-weekly donut intros to other LGBTQ+ moose and allies so we can meet one another, chat, and enjoy an Insight Coffee together

3. We've planned Pride Picnics; these are lunches in our global offices for our LGBTQ+ moose and allies to enjoy a meal together on Rapid7

4. We organized a book club for our global moose reading and discussing The Stonewall Reader over Zoom

5. We are sponsoring and hosting a booth at the annual Austin Pride Parade & Festival

6. We're featuring our LGBTQ+ and ally moose in spotlights on our social

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We polled our job-seeking audience and asked:

Which perks and benefits are most important to YOU?

We thought it would be interesting to conduct a poll and gather some data around which benefits our audience finds to be the most valuable.

Here are the results, showing the percentage of submissions that included each perk as being important to them.  

1. Vacation & Paid Time Off (included in 97% of submissions)
2. Medical / Dental / Vision Insurance (92%)
3. Work From Home Option (87%)
4. 401k / Retirement Plan (85%)
5. Performance Bonus (62%)
6. Professional Development (55%)
7. Stock Options (50%)
8. Maternity & Paternity Leave (38%)
9. Diversity Programs (34%)
10. Tuition Assistance (11%)
11. Wellness Programs (10%)
12. Free Lunch / Snacks (8%)
13. Childcare (7%)
14. Gym Membership (5%)

Some company names are obvious, and others not so much. Take a look below to learn the stories and history behind the names of some of the fastest-growing tech companies.

Reggora's name is a combination of the words “real estate” and “agora”. The word “agora” derives from the ancient Greek term ageirein, meaning “to gather together”. The agora was a crucial component of all Greek villages and towns across the Mediterranean. This ties into Reggora's mission of being a centralized resource for the industry.

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Zach and Sam Dunn were comic book fans growing up. Robin was a great sidekick to start with. When thinking about a name, their mom came to mind, whose name is also Robin. That is how Robin's name was born.

Explore Robin's company page

ianacare. IANA = I Am Not Alone. At the core, family caregiving can be a deeply isolating experience. Our platform provides the tools & community for practical and emotional support - so no one does it alone.

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Our first company name was going to be “Treibglas” – it was a book https://www.amazon.de/-/en/dp/3404240294 written in the year that our co-founder, Andre Christ, was born. Jörg Beyer, our other co-founder, had proposed it because it has a free domain and we joked that our software is at the border of reality. Andre and Jorg quickly found out that the name is not international, not attractive enough and also they wanted to have Company Name = Product Name. So we took the name of the product (LeanIX) and renamed the company.

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Everything about our company and products are aimed at being transparent. From open perils coverage, to open access of our team, to how we share our contracts online, we are providing consumers and agents open and transparent insurance.

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Starburst gets its name from the asterisk symbol, or 'star.' The asterisk symbol is the beginning of an analytics query. Unfortunately, Starburst the candy (which we love), had already taken the solo name, so we initially added Data. These days we just go by Starburst :-)

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One of the first projects that Nexthink’s founders worked on together was naming the company. Listing out 10 different names they had brainstormed, all related to artificial intelligence (AI), forwarding thinking and anticipating what can come next. With this list of ideas, the founders then checked all the web domains for the names they had brainstormed and Nexthink.com was the only one available, making the decision of the name very simple.

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The name Motional connects two words: motion and emotional. ‘Motion’ speaks to the literal movement of our vehicles, and references our figurative, but constant forward motion - making driverless technology safer, more reliable, and more accessible. ‘Emotional’ evokes our people-first approach - the focus on safety and reliability that ultimately delivers peace of mind.

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Tufin means cookie in the old Hebrew Language. Our CEO’s wife came up with the name, while our other co-founder’s wife came up with the design. If you pay attention to the graphics you will notice that our “t” and “f” are the same along with our “u” and “n”, which is why we spell tufin with a lowercase t!

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Our CTO & Founder, Thomas Hazel, came up with the name ChaosSearch. "Chaos" refers to the state of your data in the cloud and "Search" because our platform makes your data searchable. No more data chaos with ChaosSearch.

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Constant Contact was originally founded as "Roving Software" in 1995 with its main email marketing product being called "Constant Contact". The name grew to be so popular that in 2004 Roving rebranded itself as Constant Contact to capitalize on that recognition. The Constant Contact name itself comes from the company's mission to provide small businesses with the tools and guidance they need to engage their customers online.

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Our Founder & CEO, Ben Jabbawy, started Privy to help small businesses convert website traffic into paying customers. As he ran successful pilots with a few local businesses, the name "Privy" was born. The idea was that business owners would get Privy to the fact that they could do better marketing without hiring expensive agencies, all on their own. Sure, it's also a name for an outhouse, but we love it anyway.

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At Poppulo, People are at the center of everything we do internally and externally so we built them into our company name:Poppulo means people in Latin. Our people, our values, our culture and our customers make Poppulo a very special place to work. Our product enables customers to unlock the potential of their people through engaging internal communications.

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Mabl's mission is to leverage AI and ML technology so we can serve as a partner for QA teams, software testers, and high-velocity software development teams. As we debated what to call ourselves, we focused on creating something that would be disarming and feel approachable to a wide range of users. "Mabl" was perfect as it's reminiscent of someone's name while also feeling contemporary and appropriate for the enterprise tech industry. It centers technical innovation and user-friendliness, which perfectly summarizes our goals as a company.

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Piaggio Fast Forward builds on the name of our 135-year-old parent company: the Milan-based Piaggio Group. After only five years, to the parent company's century plus of ship, train, aircraft, motor scooter and motorcycle designs, it fast forwarded into the future in the form of gita™: the follow-me mobile carrier that it launched at the end of 2019. In Italian, gita means a short journey and Piaggio Fast Forward represents the Piaggio Group's excursion into the field of robotics.

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Benchling's founders were aspiring life science researchers and noticed that while scientists are tackling some of humanity's most complex problems, they're equipped with outdated software. Our founders felt that scientists working "at the bench" (industry parlance for the workbenches where experiments are conducted) deserved a tool that was as helpful as an assistant. Thus, the concept of the "Benchling" – a friendly creature ("-ling" like "duckling") that helps scientists at the bench – was born.

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Mark (last name of our Founder, Greg Mark) and "forged" for high-strength parts - like metal and carbon fiber. At the time, everyone was "printing" in plastic, and we wanted a name that signified the 20x strength increase in our parts. Forging - as in metal forging - fit perfectly.

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For those of you who have ever played the video game, Super Mario, there is a magic 1up mushroom that gives players an extended life. At 1upHealth we believe that we can extend human lives in the real world, through helping our customers and patients unlock and take control of their healthcare data. We are bringing that magic 1up mushroom from Super Mario to reality!

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When Andrew and his co-founder, Ed, started the company -- they were looking for a short name that could have .com thrown on the end. They were in serious bootstrapping mode and couldn't afford to buy someone's domain.

They then started looking at words in different languages and one of them suggested "clavija" -- a Spanish word that translates to peg -- like what you would use while rock climbing to keep from falling.

They loved this idea -- because they wanted to build a product that was helping users do something really difficult -- like climb a mountain and be something they couldn't live without. But...there were two problems. 1. No one could spell it (so bad for search) and 2. It "sounded scary." So, with a few letters changed, Clavija became Klaviyo.

Klaviyo in general has a great story -- it's best known as an email and SMS marketing platform, but really the idea is that we believe entrepreneurs and businesses should own their own marketing (not be reliant on big marketplaces and ad networks) and the company has raised $350M (valued at $4B).

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Business-critical application performance will always be dependent on the networks that deliver them. We designed a solution that grants IT and network operations teams the network visibility they need to 'clear the path' for app delivery out to end users, wherever they're located, at any time. Simply put, Apps+Networks=AppNeta.

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The first name of the company was Orinoco which is the longest river in central america. We chose this as it relates to another river inspired company Amazon which we admire for their relentless focus on customer experience, speed wins mentality and innovative creative culture. We took this same approach by taking a different approach to an old industry(insurance) and becoming a Pay-vidor which is a mix between a payor and a provider. We later changed our name to Devoted since it is the best adjective to describe why we do what we do which is our "devotion" to creating a health plan that we trust to be good enough for our own families. This is carried forward in everything we do.

Explore devoted health's company page 

When the Company first launched, it was based in Midtown, New York. Our founders, Alan, Tas, and Chad, traveled daily into the city on New York's Rapid Transit system's "Rapid7" train (you might notice our logo looks a bit like a bullet-train). With much of the planning and development for the Company discussed on that commute, it seemed only right to name the Company Rapid7. Today, the name embodies our commitment to rapidly responding to our customers' needs, their evolving IT environments, and the emerging threats they face, so we can help them keep moving forward. 

Explore Rapid7's company page 

Lawyers talk about the “four corners of an agreement” as the bounds of a written contract. We’re linking those squares of paper together in our AI-powered contract lifecycle management software, which is how we came up with the name LinkSquares. -- Vishal Sunak, CEO and co-founder of LinkSquares  

Explore linksquares's company page

We were originally known as DiscoverOrg before we acquired ZoomInfo in 2019. We decided to take the ZoomInfo name since nearly three times more people were familiar with ZoomInfo than DiscoverOrg, according to a survey of hundreds of our customers.

While it’s very rare for an acquiring company to take the name of the acquired company, using the company name with better brand recognition made the most sense as we entered a much larger total addressable market.

As for DiscoverOrg, our Founder and CEO Henry Schuck came up with the name in 2007 after he saw that “discover” was one of the top 10 most powerful words to use in a company name. At the time, we were a leading provider of org charts. Although people messed it up often, calling us discovery.org and discover.org, we felt that the brand equity was strong.

Explore zoominfo's company page

WorkStep comes from our mission to help both workers and employers figure out what the right next step is, hence "WorkStep."  We do so by bringing more transparency to the job search, hiring, and decision-making process and have continued to grow our offering from when we first launched since the career journey is always evolving and there's always a next step. Our logo has a "step staircase" in place of the "E" because we believe this kind of support helps workers level up and/or advance themselves throughout their careers.

Explore WORKSTEPs company page

Reveneer began as ‘Cloud Sales on Rails’ and rebranded in 2016. Our name Reveneer is a blend of ‘revenue engineers’ - delivering revenue and results for customers through our precise, engineered inside sales process.

Explore REVENEER's company page

On March 31st, we hosted an event in partnership with HqO titled The Return to the Office.

The event featured speakers with different perspectives:

* Jay Schaufeld - Head of People, HqO
* Brendan O'Neil - Program Manager, Campaigns, Robin
* Katherine Shoss - SVP and Director of Marketing, Bullfinch
* Cindy Klein Roche - Global Head of Brand Marketing, ezCater
* Allan Luciw - Sr. Property Manager, National Development

Here is the full event video:

Here are some of the topics that we cover:

• New Office Terminology - differences between fully in-person, hybrid, remote-first, digital-first, & flexible.
• Investments that building owners and property management companies have made to properties as a result of the pandemic.
• What is causing the shift in momentum to in-person work?
• What does a "safe" office look like?   
• Best practices for bringing food into the office and safely consumed.
• How to handle communications with employees.
• Maintaining the culture of the company when some people are in-person and some are remote.
• Crystal ball predictions for in-office work and experiences.

Tools for Returning to the Office:

As part of our discussion, we touched upon different tools and tech that are helping companies with the return to the office. Here are some links to check out:

• HqO - the end-to-end operating system powering tenant experience.
• Owl Labs - Meeting Owl is helpful for keeping an inclusive meeting environment for remote employees.
• Robin - helps companies create a great workplace experience for their people. You can download two resources: Returning to the Office After COVID-19: Playbook and Customizable Template and a Flexible Work Policy Survey.

Return to the Office Survey Results:

We conducted a survey to gain some initial data from companies. 

73% of the survey participants are involved in making decisions about their company's return to the office strategy.

Here are the results:

The top category was cut off, but it reads: Limiting the number of employees in the office.

As a disclaimer, the purpose of this event is to stimulate a discussion on these ideas and is not meant to imply any authority on the subject. Everyone should adhere to their locally mandated regulations with respect to returning the workplace.

Keith Cline is the Founder of VentureFizz. You can follow him on Twitter: @kcline6.

In recognition of International Women's Day and this year's #ChooseToChallenge theme, we reached out to companies asking the following question: 

What can companies do to help remove and challenge any gender biases that may exist in an organization?

Here are their responses. 

Rapid7

"When a company promotes a culture where great ideas come from all levels, genders and races and all voices are welcome and respected around the table, everyone wins."

     -Christina Luconi, Chief People Officer, Rapid7

Privy

It all comes down to having equitable processes in place and creating psychologically safe outlets for our employees to challenge us as an organization. We use 15Five to maintain a consistent feedback loop and hold our team accountable, while also placing trust in our employees by way of flexible hours-- which is especially impactful for parents at Privy. In addition, all of our job descriptions go through a gender decoder to ensure balanced language, and we have established career ladders to ensure equal pay for equal work. At the company level, we are 44% female and 56% male, with a 50-50 balance on the leadership level!

 

Piaggio Fast Forward

Piaggio Fast Forward has multiple DEI programs in place for our employees; including a mentorship program, regular pay equity audits, DEI training, and a standardized interviewing framework that is focused on "culture add". These programs support an equitable and inclusive workplace, that promote the growth, retention, and recruiting of women and BIPOC in the workplace.

 

Cogito

One of Cogitos core operating principles is to seek diverse perspectives. There are several initiatives and programs that we are doing to both promote gender equality and remove bias which embody our own core principles. We have created a Cogito Women Resource group (ERG) which is sponsoring this month an event for International Women’s Day 2021 (IWD). We conducted a compensation audit focused on gender and race equality and corrected any parity that was identified. We are partnering with organizations like She Geeks out and National Center for Women & Technology (NCWIT). We have an ongoing several weeks rotation program that non-senior leadership women participate in the senior leadership meetings by providing a diverse perspective. We provide several different training resources, such as giving equitable feedback during the performance review process. We are continuously looking for additional ways to promote gender equality and remove biases.

 

 

Neurala

"We must confront ourselves and our core values. The disproportionate professional impact that the pandemic has had on women, especially women of color, has yet to be determined. We must all take a close look at our organizations and force ourselves to make immediate adjustments to empathize with and be supportive of women in business, as we slowly return to our new normal."

     - Heather Ames, Co-Founder and COO

 

Examity

"In order to improve gender dynamics, we must look from within to ensure employees emanate behaviors consistent with Examity’s messaging of equality in the workplace. One way Examity strives to accomplish this is by altering our hiring practices to increase gender diversity. We have done this is by maintaining a diverse interview panel, proactively sourcing from a gender-diverse pipeline, imposing fair equal pay practices, and promoting flexible schedules and a positive work-life balance."

     - Kathleen Glebus, Vice President, HR, Examity

 

ERT

"Provide continuous education around Unconscious Bias to all levels of employees. What does it look like, what does it sound like and how can we help each other to avoid letting these biases get in the way of our decision making? Everyone needs to be able to look around the room and ask "Who's missing from this conversation?" and take action to bring them into the room."

     - Chelsea Dougherty, Talent Development Consultant, ERT

 

DraftKings

"At DraftKings, we believe that role modeling is an extremely important step to challenge any gender bias: seeing is believing. As an example, last month we proudly appointed our long-time risk and compliance leader, Jennifer Aguiar, as the new Chief Compliance Officer, an executive level position reporting directly to our CEO, and this past fall, we made two significant additions to the Company’s Board of Directors through the appointment of Jocelyn Moore and Valerie Mosley, joining Marni M. Walden as female directors.

Role models do not just appear, they are supported and developed along their path to leadership, which is why DraftKings works with The Leadership Consortium through Harvard Business for Executive readiness, and Sylvia Ann Hewlet, author of The Sponsorship Effect, for formal sponsorship of underrepresented talent. These investments help to create opportunities for current employees to organically develop as subject matter experts and Senior leaders, to become the next generation of role models in our industry.

We understand the significance of diverse career role models and mentors for our employees and actively create spaces and opportunities for employees to engage in direct lines of communication as a way to drive value for everyone at DraftKings."

     - Vanessa Spatafora, Director of Inclusion, Equity, and Belonging, DraftKings

 

Toast

ToastHER is our community dedicated to female-identifying Toasters and allies. ToastHER is on a mission to empower each other in the workplace. They run a number of events, programs, and workshops tailored to helping our community develop the personal and professional skills needed to thrive.

 

Framework

Framework is intentional in our recruiting and screening processes to mitigate gender bias in all hiring decisions and to ensure pay equity across our teams. That, combined with our generous parental leave policy (52 weeks paid) and flexible approach to work location and schedule for all employees, has resulted in 14 out of our 17 leadership positions being held by women.

 

Nexthink

Words matter. That’s why at Nexthink, we run job descriptions for our open roles through a gender decoder to help uncover language that might subtly bias applicants. Our aim is to be as inclusive as possible and using tools like a gender decoder helps us match our words with our intent.

 

The Predictive Index

"Organizations can reduce the barrier to opportunity for women through training and exposure to technology, senior level management and positions. With a goal of developing the best teams possible, companies should recognize the economic, technical and societal contributions women have achieved and make it a priority to incorporate the characteristics that have created those achievements into their company mission. If standard practice, those qualities become the norm and are valued across the organization. Creating a safe, transparent culture allows organizations to identify and remove biases where they may exist, ensuring a better workplace for everyone.

We are looking for examples of initiatives, training programs, tools, etc. that are being leveraged by your company hoping that others might adopt the same best practices to avoid gender biases. At The Predictive Index, we know that diverse teams are more innovative and productive. We understand that expanding our pipeline was a ciritical piece to ensuring we are creating diverse teams. We created a PIoneer Academy, which provides candidates relatively new to the tech industry the ability to grow into a skilled role at the company. Through a mix of employee mentorship and on-the-job training, the Pioneer Academy aims to challenge gender biases, while encouraging culture fit and diversity of perspective."

     - Jackie Dubie, SVP of Talent Optimization, The Predictive Index

 

Wellframe

Wellframe is hosting an #IamRemarkable training facilitated by our very own VP of Marketing, Alyssa Alsheimer. The training empowers women and other underrepresented groups to celebrate their achievements in the workplace and beyond by challenging cultural and gender modesty norms and imposter syndrome in the workplace.

EverQuote

Companies can require that half of all interview panels be non-male and require very specific (nongendred) language as to why a person was or was not a "fit" within organizaitons

 

ZoomInfo

"At ZoomInfo, our Women’s Initiative Network employee resource group recently launched a series of interactive panel discussions called Women Who WIN. The series gives the entire organization the chance to hear how superstar women employees shaped their careers. The first two events in the series focused on traditionally male-dominated fields — Sales and Engineering — and challenged gender biases within these disciplines by showcasing women at ZoomInfo who have taken on leadership roles."  

     - Alyssa Lahar, Chief Human Resources Officer, Zoominfo

 

Arcadia

Arcadia's commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion has a specific emphasis on inclusivity. During Arcadia's celebration of International Women's Day (which is prominently featured during Arcadia's month of honoring women's history) the goal of inclusivity has a specific focus to empower black and brown women in STEM programs. Arcadia's People Operations and Social Justice League have active campaigns to raise awareness, fund programs and build sustainable career paths in the sponsorship of two critical groups: Girls Who Code and Black Girls Code.

 

Tufin

What can companies do to help remove and challenge any gender biases that may exist in an organization?

"Constant focus with the hiring team and HR to ensure that diversity is being sourced and interviewed. It’s a requirement from the top. Hiring is hard, and it takes time. It’s too easy to fall back on taking CVs as they come; we must look to attract and source for diversity in our ranks."

     - Pamela Cyr, Senior Vice President of Business and Corporate Development, Tufin

What can companies do to help remove and challenge any gender biases that may exist in an organization?

"Companies can help women by getting out into the schools and communities to teach young women about cybersecurity and inspire them to explore that as a career path. Companies can also create internship programs for high school graduates that can fit into junior roles so they can start their training early on."

     - Michal Lewy-Harush, CIO, Tufin

 

Recorded Future

Removing gender biases starts with action and education from the very beginning of the employment lifecycle. This approach and mindset are embedded into our organization from the start. To support this, companies can ensure job descriptions are gender-neutral and structured in a way to attract all talent of all backgrounds -- there are several free tools online to help with this. We also invite candidates to share their pronouns ahead of interviews with the team.

 

Acquia

What can companies do to help remove and challenge any gender biases that may exist in an organization?

"Companies should give women opportunities to present their ideas directly to executive leadership. If managers present ideas on behalf of their teams, it may not be clear to the C-suite that the ideas originated with others. That sort of visibility and direct recognition can be important for career progression and for helping dismantle assumptions about who drives innovation."

We are looking for examples of initiatives, training programs, tools, etc. that are being leveraged by your company hoping that others might adopt the same best practices to avoid gender biases.

"Acquia requires diversity training of all employees to help recognize and avoid biases, including gender bias. We also support Employee Resource Groups--voluntary employee identity- or experience-based groups that help build community and culture within Acquia. The Women of Acquia group provides a safe place to compare experiences and share ideas.

    - Lynne Capozzi, Chief Marketing Officer, Acquia

 

Liberty Mutual

At Liberty Mutual, we understand that fostering an inclusive and equitable workplace where everyone can grow and build a career means embracing all dimensions of diversity. Liberty is committed to the advancement of women and the engagement of men as allies. We provide resources to help expand gender awareness and strengthen gender collaboration skills. We also offer initiatives and benefits that support the advancement of women and strengthening men’s ally skills.

 

PatientPing

The goal of the PatientPing Women's Employee Resource group is to provide community, personal and career resources, information around gender issues, and advise leadership on these issues and on behalf of its membership. To achieve these goals, the Women's ERG has initiated an external speaker series, PatientPing peer groups, and larger group discussions to enable the women at PatientPing and continue to support PatientPing's growth and diversity.

 

Brightcove

We have built a culture around three core values, all of which guide us in delivering at the highest level on behalf of our employees and customers: Execution, Innovation, and One Team. We are committed to diversity at all levels of our organization, from our employees to our Board of Directors, where a majority of members are from underrepresented groups. Our longest running and largest employee-led resource group is the Women of Brightcove, centered around amplifying each others' voices, fostering inclusivity, and helping each other achieve our goals.

 

Markforged

First, companies and all individuals need to admit that there are gender biases in the first place and they most likely have them (conscious or not). At Markforged, we have a Slack channel called WAM+, which stands for Women+ at Markforged, where both men and women come together to engage openly in candid conversations about the challenges women go through in both the workplace and in the wider world.

 

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Late in 2017, snow hit hard one afternoon while we were working.  Rather than drive immediately home, Rapid7's CEO Corey Thomas and I trudged our way to a bar down the street to wait out the traffic. We sat down, and started game planning our people focused areas for the upcoming year.  Diversity, equity and inclusion was gaining a lot of attention  as an area in need of action in the business community, much as the topic of company culture had earlier in the decade. And while it was an area of importance that resonated deeply with both of us, we wanted to ensure that our approach felt thoughtful and authentic to Rapid7, and not like we were jumping on the bandwagon because other companies were leaning in.  Historically, our industry is largely white male dominated, and yet somehow, embracing and celebrating diversity organically. The question remained, was it enough? It didn’t take us long to determine, no, not nearly enough.

So we set out to do  what we do well as a company.  We brainstormed, considered what made the most sense for our company, its people and our customers, and set some fairly audacious goals. Then we got to work.

At the beginning of 2018, we set a challenging goal for our company - in two years, we wanted 50% of our workforce to be women and people of color. In order to achieve this, we had to look inward and honestly evaluate our company culture, our hiring practices, and our management styles. We provided education to our employees and offered unconscious bias training. We partnered with organizations outside of Rapid7 that we could both learn from and support through volunteering and donations. We took an already inclusive company culture and upleveled it by leading with vulnerability and empathy.

By the end of 2020, we achieved 49.7% of our 50% goal. One could consider that progress a rounding error, and yet we don’t. We are immensely proud of our progress to date, but we know we have so much more to do.

Being at the forefront of this mission, I’ve learned a number of things I’ll vulnerably share here. My hope is that anyone reading shares their insights as well.  This is one of the most challenging areas I’ve ever tackled at work...and also one of the most meaningful.  For companies looking to advance their own DE&I efforts, here’s what I’ve learned.

• MAKE IT AUTHENTIC TO YOUR COMPANY. It seems as if every company is scrambling to create a thoughtful DE&I strategy right now.  Amazing, but ensure it is true to your company culture, and supporting the culture you wish to evolve to.
• DON’T TRY TO BOIL THE OCEAN. There is so much work that needs to be done to achieve true diversity, equity and inclusion in the world. But that doesn’t mean your company has to attempt to fix everything at once. Pick a handful of thoughtful, meaningful goals and focus on achieving those.  As you make progress, build from that foundation.  By staying focused and keeping goals easily understood and relatively simple, any company can make inexpensive and fast impact.
• TAKE A GOOD HARD LOOK IN THE MIRROR AS YOU IDENTIFY YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS.  You can measure diversity in terms of where your company currently stands, but true inclusion can be more subjective.As you set your priorities, there must be a strong correlation between the company’s overall business goals and your DE&I goals. Though an emotionally charged topic, by thinking from the lens of your leadership team and asking yourself, “Who are we?  What can we accomplish together to meet these goals?  What do we need to change?”  can add the dose of realistic perspective which will bolster your efforts.
• DE&I IS EVERYONE’S JOB.  Not every company has the luxury of adding a Chief Diversity Officer to their ranks.  And yet, I’d argue as you are getting started, you don’t need one.  What you do need is someone accountable and influential enough who can lead the charge, partnered with leadership who holds every manager and employee in the company to embody diversity and inclusion into their everyday behavior. It’s not enough to talk about it. It needs to be measured.  Manager and leadership behavior needs to map their stated intention.  Appropriate actions need to be taken when people act in ways that counter your efforts.
• EMBRACE FLEXIBILITY.  There is no “one size fits all” approach. Whether you are applying detailed metrics or a less regimented means to track progress, select a method of tracking which allows you to periodically assess, and tweak as appropriate.  Engagement surveys, for example, can offer great insights, but have to be crafted in a way that ensures true sentiment and representation is occurring.

I’ve often thought my journey through DE&I required the need for a flak jacket. Sometimes, doing the right thing requires grit, resilience, and the willingness to manage through moments that won’t be readily embraced by all.  However, if you truly believe in the work’s importance, you wear that jacket proudly.  Rapid7 has certainly made some progress, but we are just getting started.  Read our 2020 DE&I report here.

Christina Luconi is Chief People Officer for Rapid7. Follow her on Twitter: @peopleinnovator.

Last year, working from home became the norm. Everyone had to figure out how to configure their space to the new way of working. 

We thought it would be fun to see these new creative workspaces by holding a Work From Home Setup Contest. We have 3 categories: 1) Best Tech, 2) Best Decorative Space, and 3) Best Use of What You've Got.

Today, voting opens up for Best Decorative Space - think beautiful and organized. We had to narrow the entries down to a reasonable number as we had many submissions and so many amazing WFH setups to consider!

Check out all the entries in the slideshow below and vote in the form. If you think more than one WFH setup is worthy, you can vote for multiple entries on a single form! Voting will remain open until Friday, February 26th.

We'll announce the winner on Monday, March 1st and the winner will be awarded a $100 gift certificate to Wayfair! 

You can already vote for the Best Tech category and stay tuned as voting for Best Use of What You've Got opens up tomorrow!

To my core, I think of myself as a start-up junkie.  I’ve had the good fortune to have been part of six, including the running of my own.  On January 4, 2021, I will be celebrating TEN YEARS at Rapid7.  It’s been an incredible ride, having joined when we were just 75 people in three little offices.  Today, we are over 1,800,  public and global. Our current business is long past the start-up phase, but I’m still just as passionate as I was the day I joined. What’s continuing to keep me motivated? The fact that I feel that 2020 might be one of my favorite years at Rapid7 should provide some insight.

Way back in January of 2020, we brought 1,600 Rapid7 employees from all over the globe to Boston for a kickoff aimed at immersing all of us in a deeper understanding and execution of exceptional customer experience. Leading up to this kickoff, I had just spent several months working with some of my favorite leaders in the company creating a new delivery structure, spending many an early morning in meetings working through the intricacies and nuances so we were prepared for  the main event.

I’ve played a fairly big role in each of our kickoffs over the last decade, with each year upping the ante of what we attempt to pull off.  There are no words for the production value of this last one.  We brought together our love of music as a backdrop to immerse ourselves in better understanding - and ultimately executing for - our customers.  We had a live band on stage.  We assembled a diverse panel of experts sharing their insights.  We listened intently as we heard keynotes from notable speakers. We wove in a multitude of opportunities to learn from and engage with one another.  Oh, and getting to interview Leslie Odom Jr.(of Hamilton fame) on stage and introduce Lil Jon at our night event was pretty epic as well.

I left that kickoff on a high, ready to tackle the year.  I remember thinking at the time, how incredibly fortunate we were, to be able to have that shared time together, getting us aligned for the year ahead. Little did I realize at the time how incredibly important that feeling was.

Zoom ahead two months to March 2020. I remember the series of conversations with Corey (Thomas, our CEO) starting Monday, March 9th.  When early news of the “Corona virus” broke out, we quickly evolved from “you can travel applying your best judgment” to “pack up your laptops...we are sending everyone home for a few weeks” within a span of three days. By the time we sent our entire company to work from home that Thursday, we honestly thought we’d be back together by early April.

As for all of us, the early days were a tough transition. The majority of our people were not equipped to work from home. Of course, we were privileged enough to have access to computers and internet to work from, but the luxuries of home office setups were not had by many.  Add on top of that trying to parent, or be on Zoom calls when some were sharing a small apartment with roommates competing for quiet space. Like most humans sharing this experience, our people grumbled about the inconveniences.  That quickly shifted to health concerns as COVID swept through the world, and financial concerns as everyone had people in their lives facing layoffs and other monetary hardships.

So we did what we had been preparing for the nine plus years leading up to the pandemic.  We leaned hard on our culture.

I’ve been in a people role my entire career. I had an epiphany in my first job out of school that to scale a growing company, you had to both understand and embody your culture and its value if you are to have any long term success or healthy scalability. I’m not good at so many things, but of that one core element of business, I was adamant.  So with each start up I’ve been a part of, that’s the piece I’ve tackled first.  Once you have that nailed, you can build everything else around that solid foundation.  And yet, that assumption that I’ve built my career on was truly put to the test for the first time in thirty years during this pandemic.

Rapid7’s culture is focused on five core values. They are so much a part of who we are, perhaps sometimes we take them for granted.  However, they became omnipresent when we were all focused to work from home.

IMPACT TOGETHER.  We call ourselves “moose” and the duality of its name being both singular and plural has become synonymous with teamwork. With the playing field leveled with everyone at home and behind a camera, we found new ways to partner and deliver for our customers - and each other.  We found new ways to leverage our technology, and found creative ways to connect as teams and as a company. For a tribe that was largely centered around face to face collaboration, we found new ways to connect, whether it was through more frequent Town Hall meetings, Friday night virtual concerts, or daily announcements to keep everyone on the same page.

BRING YOU. The essential meaning of this value is about everyone feeling like we are able to bring our authentic selves to work so we can deliver our best impact. In the early days of the pandemic, we all apologized for the disruptions made by our children, dogs barking, spotty internet and the like. Very quickly, however, we embraced those challenges, and realized that every single one of us was struggling with something.  So we began to invite those “challenges” into the conversation.  Humanity took over, and barriers were broken down. We found that all those different elements of our personal lives that never usually felt appropriate for “work” soon bonded people together. Prior to March, we were pretty comfortable with our notion of ability to “bring you” to work.  Since then, I’d say we took that value to a completely new level.

CHALLENGE CONVENTION. This speaks to our innovative nature. We might be a bigger company now, but we still operate with the soul of a start up. Who acquires its  biggest company to date in the middle of a pandemic?  That’s right.  We did. Who gets out in front by creating a “Little Moose Academy” for parents of young children at home? We did.  Who finds creative ways to continue developing people and keep career evolution happening even though we can’t be together?  We did.  Starting the Monday after we were sent home to work and needing to onboard 34 people, I marvel at the ingenuity and creativity being driven by our holistic team. We have risen to the occasion in ways that cheer each other on to accomplish just about anything...and our bottom line is reaping the rewards.

BE AN ADVOCATE. The core of this value is about doing what is in the best interest of our customers - both externally and internally. Keeping that mindset in forefront of our work, we worked backwards from the outcome we wanted to achieve, and then altering our approach in this “new world” to ensure we were providing the best possible experience to deliver to that outcome.

NEVER DONE. This one is all about continuous learning and having insatiable curiosity. Over the last nine months, it’s also come to reflect the stamina and resilience we’ve all needed to embrace to aid us in powering through trying times. Without question, 2020 has been exceptionally challenging on a number of fronts, but it is remarkable to see how rather than complaining, so many of our people will focus on the positives about what they’ve learned, how they’ve grown, and how they’ve given back. The notion that we were able to transform our #rapid7givesback program to a virtual one across the globe during this time and our people were willing to give their time and energy to support primarily STEM and D&I programs is astonishing.

For most people, 2020 will come crashing to an end and be remembered as an epic dumpster fire of a year because of the chaos it created for the entire world. Of course, I am deeply saddened by the health, financial and other challenges this year has caused. And yet, I am the girl who finds the opportunity in the chaos.  I will remember 2020 as the year that allowed me to prove a theory created decades ago right, and see that culture - when it is organic, authentic and real - can sustain and navigate a company through literally any challenge.

Christina Luconi is Chief People Officer for Rapid7. Follow her on Twitter: @peopleinnovator.  Photo courtesy of Rapid7.

As the holidays are quickly approaching, we decided to connect with several companies to see what they are doing year-round to give back and support their communities. 

Veracode has partnered with Charity Miles, the app that turns all the miles you might walk, run or bike into dollars for charity. Veracode is committing $1 for every mile an employee accumulates until December 1st to Resilient Coders for #GivingTuesday. Resilient Coders trains youth in underserved communities in areas such as software engineering, website development, and app design. The organization works to achieve social justice through economic empowerment, and the opportunity for meritocracy in tech by providing better access to high-growth careers. So far, Veracoders have earned $9,400 toward this goal!

Explore veracode's company page

Chewy’s philanthropic mission to help fulfill the urgent needs of shelter and rescue organizations ensures that pets have basic necessities, like meals and supplies, despite challenging circumstances. Chewy’s donations have provided pet food, healthcare supplies, and other essential products to animal welfare organizations and pet parents throughout the country in partnership with GreaterGood.org and other animal welfare organizations.

Chewy is celebrating this year’s Giving Tuesday by providing an easy way for pet parents to give back by making a purchase on Chewy.com on December 1, 2020. To learn more about this campaign, click here.

Explore CHEWY's company page

For years, we've focused the month of October as "Rapid7GivesBack," participating in supporting organizations in each of our regions across the globe, primarily targeting STEM and DEI focused organizations. This year, we launched it virtually in October, and announced we'd be focusing these efforts year round going forward. We are now able to keep each other updated on the work through slack, capturing on our microsite, and highlighting volunteering efforts each month to build awareness.

Explore Rapid7's company page

We recently participated in our parent company's global "Dept Cares Day." Every year, we invite employees to donate some of their time to give back to their communities. We pick a date and teams from around the world volunteer at various initiatives in their hometowns and home countries. This year is obviously challenging with the pandemic, so we decided to come together for a beach cleanup at Salisbury Beach so that we could gather safely while still volunteering our time. A small group of Rocket folks fueled up on our favorite donuts from Changing Tides in Newburyport and got to work collecting trash on the beach and throughout the parking lot. We also encouraged other employees that could not join us in person to clean up around their own neighborhoods or communities.

Explore Rocket Insights' company page

HealthcareSource has been involved in a handful of ways of giving back, some of these initiatives include:

• Team members hand sewed masks and distributed them to local healthcare providers, first responders, schools and other locations in need throughout our communities. We had enough fabric to create over 850+ masks! Team members also created kits for local post-acute providers to use while residents and staffs needed to quarantine on location. The kits included crosswords and word searches, plants, coffee gift cards and more.
• Thank you, healthcare workers video montage
• Blood “Drive-to-Donate”. Given the increased need for blood, and lack of donations across the country, HealthcareSource employees volunteered to donate.
• HealthcareSource employees participated in the Virtual Walk to End Alzheimer's on Sunday, September 27th! The team raised more than $3,500 for the Alzheimer’s Association!
• For the last 2 years HealthcareSource has participated in the Wonderfund! Employees purchase holiday gifts for children in need who are part of the Mass DCF program. We are kicking off this program again this year!

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Giving back is integral to Vecna Robotics and is embedded throughout our community interactions during the year. In fact, employees can take up to 4 hours a week in PTO to spend on community service. In the last 6 months, through company-wide participation, Vecna Robotics has donated clothes to Second Chances, books to More Than Words, food/household items to the Middlesex Human Service Agency, Outfit and PJ Packs to Cradles to Crayons, and toys for Toys for Tots.

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Every other month, TRUX selects three employees to spotlight. Each spotlighted employee is able to donate $100 to a charity of their choice. Including our employees in charitable giving is a great way for us to celebrate our team and give back to the community!

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Last week, ZoomInfo kicked off its 2020 Winter Donation Drive, during which its 1,600-plus employees will spend the next month competing to raise the most money for their local charities, including Newton's Cradles to Crayons. They'll look to outdo their efforts from 2019, when they raised more than $240,000 in cash and in-kind donations for youth- and family-focused organizations. “It has never been more important for us to step up and help our communities,” said Henry Schuck, Founder and CEO of ZoomInfo. “We can make a significant impact by helping to brighten the holiday season for those families in our communities who have endured a really challenging year.”

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We’re collecting donations to put together both Housewarming baskets (materials needed when you move into an apartment such as cleaning and laundry products) and Blessing Bags (facemasks, hand sanitizer, gloves) for people supported by the Friends of Boston’s Homeless organization.

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As daycares, public parks, and camps were off-limits this summer due to the pandemic, Hometap teamed up with Heading Home, a non-profit organization on a mission to end homelessness in the Greater Boston area. Together our team got creative, crafting 18 activity kits filled with art supplies, crafts, cooking supplies, and more to help underprivileged families learn and have fun at home. 

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In September, PrismHR held our first-ever Charity Auction for Education with items donated by employees with big talent and big hearts. Our Culture & Engagement Team created a special bidding site to display the items up for bid which included handmade knit hats and jewelry, family photo shoots, craft beer sampler packs, sports memorabilia, custom comic and cross-stitch art, and plenty of tasty treats. Nearly $2,800 raised for The National Center for Learning Disabilities, an organization that works to improve the lives of 1 in 5 children and adults nationwide with learning and attention issues.

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At Mimecast, building resilient communities is core to who we are, and giving back is at the heart of the Mimecast Way. Our employees deliver cyber resilience every day to the organizations that we are privileged to call customers. As part of our commitment to global resilience, we've built our Resilience Together program to bring meaningful and sustained support to the global communities where we live and work.

We are also proud to support our veterans through our partnership with Home Base, a Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital Program.

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iboss hosted their first Virtual Volunteering Event on World Kindness Day to benefit youth experiencing homelessness. iboss employees and their families were given the opportunity to create Bare Necessities Bundles through an online activity to provide essential items such as socks, deodorant, and other hygiene items for junior high and high school students in need. The kits also included a personalized letter of positivity to help bring confidence and comfort, empowering them to succeed. With the help from Building Impact, all Bare Necessities Bundles will be distributed by local organizations to the youth they serve. Kits will benefit: Catie’s Closet, Covenant House, and Stand Up for Kids. 

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Through Imprivata’s Volunteer Program, our employees have had the opportunity to learn about and volunteer with organizations focused on providing opportunities for youth. For the past three years, Imprivata has provided mentors for BUILD Boston, an organization that offers entrepreneurship classes to high schools students in under-resourced communities. Our BUILD group has been working on a virtual design challenge that solves a problem directly related to the impact of COVID-19 on a specific community using the design thinking process

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We have two iZoCares days a year where we organize around giving back by making changes internally and externally. The hackathon is a chance to challenge what's possible with a focus on anti-racism in our organization, community, and industry. The areas we've started working include: donation matching (Equal Justice Initiative, Southern Poverty Law Center, NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, among others), Equity Learning Lab (education and internal change efforts), STEAM opportunities for youth and equity in audio education.

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SuitUp is an organization that increases college and career awareness and preparedness for students in underserved communities through innovative business competitions. We recently had the pleasure of volunteering with this fantastic organization. After spending a week with these smart, determined, and creative students working to create a new product for Nike, we were beyond impressed. We can't wait to work with them again!

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Supporting our global communities is something we take pride in at Recorded Future, and 2020 has given us the opportunity to give back in several ways. This year, we have raised funds to provide lunches for first responders from a local food truck, given t-shirts and snacks to homeless shelters, and donated to charities supporting LGBTQIA+ groups. In lieu of a holiday gift this year, Futurists have the opportunity to make a donation to one of four global charities, and we will also be providing Thanksgiving dinners to low-income families in need in the Boston area.

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Toast’s mission to empower the restaurant community to delight guests, do what they love, and thrive was really put to the test this year. On March 17, 2020, we launched Rally for Restaurants, a grassroots initiative to give restaurants a fighting chance during the COVID-19 health crisis. Since then, we’ve written letters to congress, actively lobbied to help secure funding for the industry, and partnered with groups ranging from The Independent Restaurant Coalition - co-founded by Chef Tom Colicchio - to Pepsi to José Andrés' World Central Kitchen to help advocate for restaurateurs and the community during this unprecedented time. We’ve launched products 12-18 months ahead of schedule to support the restaurant community better adapt to the pandemic, such as flat-fee delivery services and contactless payments. What’s next for us is to continue doing everything we can to help the restaurant industry recover and come back stronger leading up to the availability of a COVID-19 vaccine.

In addition to Rally for Restaurants and our community response to the COVID-19 health crisis, we’re committed to our purpose of enriching the food experience for all. Through this, Toast’s corporate philanthropy efforts drive impact across the cause pillars: food, community, and environment. Key results included providing 50,000 meals to at-risk children through No Kid Hungry and rescuing nearly half a million pounds of food in partnership with Project Bread.

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Cantina's "Innovation with Impact" program is accepting applications from organizations who are focused on helping to drive and support positive change. The selected partner will receive Cantina's pro bono services (design research, experience design, product design, or software engineering) for up to 8 weeks. This could be everything from designing a new mobile app to rethinking a service experience or as simple as helping create a project strategy.

Organizations with social mission projects in climate, sustainability, land conservation, food and food waste, justice and equality, poverty, homelessness, healthcare, education, and arts and music are some of the areas our team would love to solve with you. Other projects and impact areas outside of this list are also encouraged to apply. 

To learn more about the program and apply, please click here: https://cantina.co/csr/.

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Once again this year, as an ongoing charitable effort, Bullhorn has teamed up with amazing charities, both domestic and abroad, for their Holiday Heroes campaign. The holidays can be festive for most people, but they can also be challenging for others. At Bullhorn, we care about the community and try to make the holidays extra special for those children and their families who might need some extra support during this time of year. The Holiday Heroes Drive is part of our global Bullhorn Cares program, our employee volunteer and service initiative. It allows employees worldwide opportunities to find causes that are important to them and connect with their local communities. Volunteerism and service are integral components of our company’s fabric. Serving our communities globally is part of the Bullhorn culture, and our employees donate to organizations that give back to underserved and underprivileged children and families as well as to families of children with devastating medical conditions. All employee donations will be matched by Bullhorn.

This past July, Bullhorn took a stand against racism and launched an employee campaign called “Taking Action”. Here at Bullhorn, in an effort to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in our organization and in the technology industry, in hopes of making an immediate impact, we launched a donation campaign for the NAACP. In 30 days, our employees contributed a total of $12,500 which Bullhorn matched, donating a total of $25,000 to the NAACP.

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Duck Creek Technologies’ global corporate social responsibility program, Duck Creek Gives Back, consists of a corporate matching program, global volunteer opportunities and a global team to support local and digital events. Locally, our Ducks contributed to their communities by participating in blood drives, food pantry work, food drives, clothing drives, COVID-19 mask making, and virtual mapping of remote areas for emergency service assistance. Duck Creek Gives Back has also provided donations to support disasters around the world through our global partnership with the Red Cross.

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Yesware has offered full access to free seats for black owned small businesses in our community. We also supported local restaurants by purchasing gift cards for our employees.

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At EDB, we do a yearly gift drive during the holidays for the Department of Children and Families. We also contribute to organizations leading the fight for racial and social justice through donations to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Black Lives Matter and Amnesty International. We believe it's important to listen to the concerns and ideas of our team, and to contribute positively to our communities based on their input and our company core values.

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We just announced our Picking With PurposeTM Program in which we’ve partnered our robotic automation solutions with food rescue organizations City Harvest and The Greater Boston Food Bank to pick, pack, and distribute food to families in need in time for Thanksgiving. Berkshire Grey donated about 40,000 pounds of food, used one of our robotic automation systems to pick and pack that food into meal boxes for families in need, and our team members volunteered to run the system.  City Harvest and The Greater Boston Food Bank are distributing the 4,000 meal boxes we produced.  This is just the beginning.  We are building a sponsorship program to make Picking With PurposeTM an ongoing initiative. 

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Tufin has done some additional perks during the past several months. Our CEO Ruvi Kitov gave all our employees extra PTO days to use as he knows everyone is working very hard during these challenging times. We have recently invested in a Wellness App called Wellable that our employees can take advantage of and have done several virtual Happy Hour events. Some of those have been a Rock N Roll Bingo, Halloween Trivia Contest and a Cocktail making class.  We also plan on doing a lot more with the community in the next several weeks, as helping others is what Tufin is all about.

Clora sent gifts to a family in need. The family consists of a mom, dad, 4-year-old girl, and 7-year-old boy. Although it's a smaller size family, dad has a chronic health illness and mom is undergoing cancer treatment so they have a lot of needs.

Charity: Project Just Because

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