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Jaclyn Genovese: full renovations and new builds across North America.

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I began Spaces by Jacflash 8 years ago as a passion project. Over the years, my clientele grew, our jobs got larger and the company organically advanced into what it is today. Spaces by Jacflash now offers decor, full renovations and new builds across North America. 

What motivates and inspires you as a young entrepreneur?

I can truly say that I do what I love. I don’t need motivation, as there is nothing I would rather be doing than what I do everyday. I am 28 weeks pregnant and I still work 80 hours a week between Spaces by Jacflash and my fitness and wellness Studio, THE STUDIO https://www.thestudio.to/ (designed by Spaces by Jacflash) and I could not be happier. When I am not working, I am still working in bed, networking, brainstorming new ideas and designs and doing whatever inspires me. This is what gets me out of bed everyday!

How does your company uphold its uniqueness and individuality?

Spaces by Jacflash is unique because we offer a very intimate design experience. I know how intimidating hiring a designer can be for a lot of people, and I believe that Spaces by Jacflash has created an approachable method and has removed the daunting and stressful element of renovations for our clients, so that they can truly enjoy the process and their new homes!

Kindly mention some of the notable recognitions and accreditations received by your

Spaces by Jacflash has completed a wide range of projects from residential design to commercial pop-ups with companies such as Remy Martin, Puma and more. We have worked with celebrity clients such as Youtube’s Jus Reign and Ask Kimberly, NBA’s Patrick Patterson, NHL’s Darnell Nurse, TFC’s Jonathan Osario and radio host Blake Carter. Spaces by Jacflash has been featured in publications including The Globe & Mail, Toronto Life and City Life Mag. Jaclyn won Interior Designer of the Year at the Notable Awards. 

The pandemic turned the tables for every sector of the economy, tell us something about your market and its scope for growth.

The pandemic has affected us in a positive way. As people are spending more time at home and have been hosting small dinner parties instead of going out to eat, they are seeing the value of truly investing in their homes. 


Where do you see your organisation in the years to come?

I take every day one day at a time. I am lucky enough to be able to be particular about what clients and projects I choose to work with, which creates a sense of comfort, encouragement and excitement between me, my team and clients at work everyday. I am not one to create substantial goals in the far future for myself, because I have no idea what will make me happy and where I will be in 5-10 years. I have found that when you just do what makes you happy each and everyday, the Universe will send you people and opportunities that you could never even imagine for yourself. 


Entrepreneurship is an art, what is your take on that?

Entrepreneurship requires both knowledge, skills and creativity. Very few people can visualize the seemingly unrealistic ideas and business goals that you have conceived. Being an entrepreneur means that you must take risks and believe wholeheartedly in your unique concepts, the same way that an artist does. An entrepreneur’s concepts or visions are no question an art.

Giles Pruett: An Educational Leader

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Arcadia School, Dubai was founded by its inspirational Chairman Mohan Valrani. After chairing the Board of Governors at the Indian High School in Dubai, the only Indian curriculum school to gain an ‘outstanding’ government rating, and after 40 years of business management in Dubai, Mohan came up with the Arcadia vision to ‘nurture lifelong learning’ within a school context and they haven’t looked back from that point. Arcadia is more than just a school, it is an educational experience that brings learning to life, challenges the thinking, and shapes creative and confident students into lifelong learners.

To bring this to life has taken collective wisdom to create some unique attributes, including integrated enrichment, an extended school day, a well-being and happiness program, Apple Distinguished digital status, and an entrepreneurial learning program, all wrapped around a high-quality English National Curriculum delivery. The final point is perhaps the most distinctive. The primary school Junior MBA was designed by the school CEO Navin Valrani, who holds an MBA from London Business School, and who also delivers some of the teachings. This has its own standalone curriculum which is delivered to years 3-6 and then dovetails with the CEL (Centre for Entrepreneurial Leadership), a co-constructed curriculum to develop entrepreneurial instinct in the secondary school. And now, it comes down to the Executive Principal Giles Pruett to make sure that the institute achieves its mission.

Evolving as an Educational Leader

Giles’ journey into education was through sport and from a relatively young age. After delivering his first short-tennis lesson at the age of 14 in his local club, Giles was drawn to coaching as a device which gave him as much pleasure as competing. Through his formative years as a tennis professional and coach, whilst juggling GCSEs and A levels, the qualifications gained through the National Coaching Foundation programme in the UK were invaluable and helped him prepare for his Bachelor of Education in Sports Science and Humanities which was completed in the 1990s. The journey into education was then a natural segue. His first post was as a Director of Sport and Geography teacher at a fantastic independent school in the city of Bath, England and there he was well supported to start his career development and to transition into leadership.

As an educational leader, when you join a new large organisation, there is a tendency to go too fast and too soon without truly understanding the nature of the organisation itself. Within his current role as the Executive Principal at Arcadia, Giles tried to avoid this through the implementation of some quick and effective wins, that were non-invasive and then longer-term strategies that have now had some significant impact on children’s learning. Quick wins included the strengthening of middle leadership to distribute responsibilities more evenly, improving the communication processes to ensure the right information was getting to the right people, reorientating the assessment schedules and cycles of reporting and spreading the student cohort across two campuses during Covid for greater protection of the students.

The most unique longer-term project was looking at the extra-curricular programme and further merging it into the full academic day. Most schools offer ASAs (after-school activities), but they start after the day finishes early and children don’t always have the chance to take part, due to

buses departing, lack of offering and clashes with other clubs. Arcadia already had a built-in enrichment programme, but they needed to scale this up into secondary school, by frontloading the lessons and adding in areas such as STREAM (Science, Technology, Robotics, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics), entrepreneurial leadership, life-long learning skills; including coding, ceramics, cooking, oracy, games and performing arts. This integration of enrichment has meant every child accesses the co-curriculum, lessons are protected, parents get an extended day with no extra cost and the quality of performance has dramatically improved in areas such as sport, music and drama.

Facing the Pandemic Challenge

While Covid sure stood out as the biggest challenge for any headteacher across the globe, Giles had an additional set of challenges in the form of a new school, a brand-new campus, declining enrolments, supplementary academic planning, staff not being able to join and the looming impact of a global pandemic that was not understood. The single biggest learning, in this case, was ‘you can’t control what you can’t control’. This was unchartered territory for everybody and they, like everyone else, had not had a chance to prep or look at scenarios, so they simply felt their way through the journey step by step as if blindfolded.

Fortunately, due to the work of the UAE government agencies and the stage of growth of the school, Arcadia didn’t suffer as badly as other educational organisations around the world. They were able to stay open fully for two years, implement some very positive safety measures for their community and keep a relatively similar academic programme. “We were lucky to be in the UAE, as the government handled the pandemic processes well and it allowed us to keep our school open fully for two years, a feat that I believe was not matched in this country.Overcoming the collective anxiety and significant day-to-day challenges was challenging, but the message was clear – stay calm, communicate quickly and with transparency and work together. I hope we never have to face this level of global uncertainty again, but we are stronger for it,” shares Giles.

As educators, they did, however, see the psychological impact on the children in their care through a deterioration in socialisation, ability to confidently communicate, greater stress and erosion of wellbeing. This has been their main focus over the last six months and their counselling and pastoral teams have doubled their efforts to make sure that every child has been supported in reconnecting their emotional processes and learning to behave as all children should. They have also noticed an over-reliance on social media as a platform to connect, as for many children this was their only avenue for social connection. Now back in the moment, they have focused hard on unpacking that process and giving the students the tools to reconnect face-to-face.

Preparing Students for the VUCA World

There is no contention that the world is becoming a more complex place and levels of uncertainty are at their highest because there is so much information and disinformation at our disposal. Being agile and adaptable are not traits that are clearly represented in curriculum and assessment and therefore it is the responsibility of the school to support parents in ensuring that their children are upskilled and supported to grow with these vital tools at their disposal. Giles believes that schools can teach important skills within core lessons, but it is through the broader programme that they are really inculcated and transformed. “Real-life learning experiences,

critical and creative thinking development, oracy, and challenging activities such as Olympiads and Model United Nations all have a part to play in building resilient young adults who can adapt. These are all blended into the Arcadia co-curriculum, but are also cemented by quality pastoral care, counselling and career management,” suggests Giles.

Technology as an Educational Tool

From a learning perspective, the speed of collecting feedback, the process of collaboration, checking for understanding and accessing resources has been vastly improved by the development of technology, feels Giles. Arcadia has also started the journey into the utilisation of AI through integrated systems that allow students to solve problems and be assessed remotely as a second pair of eyes, which has also been a real support for teachers. Arcadia achieved Apple Distinguished status for the second time in 2022 and the training of teachers to a high standard is implicit in this process and means they have confidence in their team to deliver high-quality technological guidance to every child. Learning platforms such as SeeSaw and Nearpod also add real value to live and remote lessons and communication to families becomes much easier when sharing information.

Probable Impact of Current Technology Trends

AI is currently at the forefront of educational thinking for many educators. What impact will this have on our learning? How will children use it for assessments? How will we protect learning integrity? These are just some of the questions that will need consideration over the coming years. Giles hopes it will have a transformative impact on assessment capture as his concern is we are still capturing summative information of high-stakes tests almost fully through written exams. As technology has progressed and collective cognition is changing, full-written papers surely can’t be the future. On the converse side of uncertainty, he gets the sense that the well-being agenda of young people can only have a positive impact on personal development. Every child does truly matter and we must do our utmost to ensure their emotional wellbeing is being considered. “At Arcadia, our team of experts are constantly checking in on child personal development and using a series of toolkits at their disposal we want to ensure nobody is left behind,” he says.

Becoming the School of Choice

Being a relative newcomer to the Dubai premium school market, Arcadia wants to be the school of choice shortly for every family. The competition is strong with some established players who have history on their side, but they are constantly looking to genuinely focus on each child by creating a learning programme that is fit for the now and the future, whilst maintaining strong traditions such as a house system, pastoral wrap-around care and enrichment facility of sports, performing arts and many others. Giles believes they have created a team of innovative and agile school leaders who are at the top of their game and hope to see them leading practice across the Middle East and in Dubai alongside the role they play in Arcadia.

“I always tend to default to Aristotle in this case, who stated – Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all. I have always been a believer in genuine holistic education where simply teaching classes of knowledge and content is not enough. We all strive to grow young adults who are kind, altruistic, collaborative, aspirational and empathetic and this

cannot be done through information exchange alone. We must give our children a chance to be better people to ensure the world can function and nations can co-exist in peace and harmony,” concludes Giles.

Quote: “My Clifton Strengths tells me that I am a disciplined, competitive, achiever, who thinks strategically and activates others, however, over the years of leading schools I feel that persona has mellowed a little to a collaborative planner who inspires others to do the best they can. “

Melinda Fouts: Helping Business Leaders Achieve their Peak Performance

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“A coach is someone that sees beyond your limits and guides you to greatness!” – Michael Jordan, Former Professional Basketball Player, and Businessman.

The people who inspire us to go beyond our limits and excel in what we do go by many names. Coach, teacher, mentor, parents, call them whatever you want. The underlying characteristic being they help us draw ourselves out of our shells and be the great success we are meant to be. For many business executives, Melinda Fouts is the one who has been helping them identify what’s holding them back from being at the top of their game. Her key areas of expertise include but are not limited to small business consulting, enhancing emotional intelligence, and self-awareness, unlocking the fullest potential, brainstorming, identifying limitations, challenges, and obstacles, and optimizing performance.

Discovering her Passion

Melinda’s professional journey began as a psychotherapist 25 years ago in private practice. Her Ph.D. is in Jungian Studies. The emphasis is to gain greater self-awareness. 23 years ago, she brought neurofeedback into her private practice also known as EEG Biofeedback. This was a game changer in her work as she learned about how the brain works and delved into neuroscience. Learning about this was a game-changer in her career and is instrumental to her work as an executive coach. Here is how it all began.

About 8 years ago, she was experiencing working with a global CIO who came to Melinda because her colleague told her that her team was afraid of her because she was harsh and she didn’t see herself as harsh. During their work together, Melinda uncovered what triggered her to pounce on her team. We all have blind spots, and this was one of hers. When they finished their time together, she said, “You need to be an executive coach. I’ve worked with many coaches and even though they were good, they weren’t as good as you. None of them discovered this about me.”

The incident pushed Melinda towards learning more about how she could help executives. Today, she is an International Executive Coach, Columnist & Featured Contributor for Forbes Coaching Counsel, and the Founder of Success Starts With You. Over time, she developed 13 signature leadership development training. One of the most important training is emotional intelligence training. After administering the EQi – 2.0 assessment, individuals learn what their strengths are and what needs development. There are 15 competencies on this assessment. This is useful as we all overuse our strengths which then become a weakness. With this awareness, Melinda works with her client towards developing new areas to bring more balance in how they manage and lead.

The Biggest Obstacle enroute Self-healing

The biggest obstacle, per Melinda, is ourselves, and the mind chatter that undermines us. So many people have a negative tape playing that they are unaware of and/or do not get to the root of it. For example, she had one CEO tell her he never hears the tape playing at work. Melinda mentioned he met with the board and gave a presentation and asked him did anyone comment on it. He told her a colleague came up to him afterward and complimented him on it. She asked him, “what did you say in your mind?” “I could have done it better.” She told him that’s the tape playing. The root of his tape that

undermines him is “I’m not good enough.” Most people have either the I’m not good enough playing or I’m not worthy of it.

Melinda’s unique approach to executive coaching requires her to ask the tough questions that challenge her clients to uncover areas of the unknown within themselves. This allows them to unleash talent leadership skills and optimize their results. “I believe enhanced emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and a better understanding of the obstacles that may lay ahead will lead to career advancement, improve leadership skills, and organizational and personal success,” says Melinda.

Enlighten us about your take on technology. As a modern-day entrepreneur, how are you leveraging the power of technology to your organization’s and client’s benefit?

Keeping up with the VUCA world in a Holistic Way

Melinda opines that it is imperative to lead a holistic lifestyle to have a balance in one’s day to day. When we consider holistic, it means taking care of oneself mentally, physically, and emotionally. “This is so important to me, that I send my two grandchildren a blessing to be healthy mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Right now, mental health issues are rising and many who I coach tell me, they wish they had more time for themselves to exercise or more time with family,” she asserts.

Many young people are still concerned about FOMO, the fear of missing out and their social calendars drive them to distraction from themselves. Even exercise can become obsessive and just a check off the list rather than getting in touch with the body and listening to it and feeling it. If one is more in touch, there would be fewer injuries when exercising. Listening to one’s body can be a step towards leading a more holistic lifestyle.

Melinda highly recommends some form of mindfulness practice as it gives one more clarity, increases one’s ability to focus, keeps one calm and more resilient, and enhances creativity. Many executives lack impulse control, and mindfulness practice can help them be less reactive.

Focusing on the goals is to know why the organization exists and who they exist for. One company where Melinda is the in-house coach is solid in this where everyone in the organization knows the why and who all the way down to the warehouse employees. When things get moving too fast and changes are occurring, knowing the why and who is the foundation to guide one in decision-making.

Being Recognized for her Work

Melinda earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of New Mexico, her MA in Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, her Ph.D. in Psychology from Saybrook University, and her Executive Coaching Certification from the College of Executive Coaching.

For her outstanding leadership, dedication, and excellence within multiple industries, Melinda was recently selected as the Top Global Executive Coach of the Year for 2023 by the International Association of Top Professionals (IAOTP). In 2021, she received the award for Empowered Woman of the Year. In 2021, she was part of IAOTP’s publication of the Top 50 Fearless Leaders.

In 2019, her book, Cognitive Enlightenment, came out and she will be featured by the publisher at the London Bookfair in April 2023.

A passionate entrepreneur, Melinda has this to say to the young generation of entrepreneurs:

“Find your passion and do it and be true to yourself. Keep a growth mindset as self-actualization throughout life is important and look for the opportunities, they don’t always fall into your lap. When you have an internal struggle, refer back to why you are doing what you are doing and who you are doing it for. Finally, if you take a moment and get in touch with your heart, the answer is always to choose love.”

Good Today, Better Tomorrow

Melinda’s global reach in coaching includes clients in Dubai, Moscow, Ireland, the UK, Spain, France, Afghanistan, and Panama to name a few. Technology has helped her reach out to people around the globe. She has clients all over the world and without the technology to have a virtual meeting, she would be less effective.

Making this world a better place is what drives Melinda to do what she does. Her mission statement is: “If I can help one person have more inner peace, we are one step closer to world peace. If you are struggling with yourself, you are suffering.”

There are many ways to approach making this world a better place, and hers’ is to bring greater self-awareness, and coach toward more inner peace. It is a process that takes awareness and discipline. She rounds her emotions off by quoting her favorite poet, Rumi. This short poem sums up the work she does and is a good reminder there are other perspectives and to be open-minded. It also emphasizes that we are all connected.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn’t make any sense.”

Anouk Vastert: Customer Centricity Transformation Leader driving Outside-in culture change

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A motivator, planner, and connector, Anouk Vastert, Global Customer Experience Advisor at SAP, believes in the importance of bringing people together for better results. An advocate of cross-functional cooperation, Anouk is averse to silos which she feels are the biggest roadblocks in companies hampering the delivery of a good and consistent customer experience and a great employee experience.

She believes in Driving business results through product-, employee- and customer experience improvements. She loves to empower people and teams by first creating a Vision together and setting clear goals. These tactical goals and assets, which she calls Experience Principles, are created with everyone’s input, can be used by everyone, and are a clue towards a successful transformation.

Customer-Centric DNA

Born into a family of Hotel-Restaurant entrepreneurs, Anouk found customer-centricity in her DNA. Luckily, the first job she got was with Coca-Cola where she was nurtured as an Outside-In professional. It allowed her to learn professional Sales and Marketing skills and a customer-centric way of working and building professional customer partnerships. “I learned the service business by heart from my father and often remember his famous quote – the customer is King but only when he/she behaves as a King,” shares Anouk.

At Coca-Cola as a Key Account manager, she was always looking for improvements. Anouk noticed the Order Entry Services department operated separately and was situated on a different floor in the building. That hampered a good way of working towards their largest customers. So here was her Lesson One: if you make a good plan to improve, big chance leadership says ‘Very good idea, go do it! Here Anouk learned that you can do anything, there are no limits; just make a plan, propose, discuss, and GO.

Later when there was a problem with the Supply Chain at the factory in the south of the Netherlands, she went to work there as a Supply Chain Development manager. Her Lesson Two: If you stay a specialist, you might rise faster on the career ladder; I loved going wider from Sales to Supply Chain, learning much more about the overall business which makes you richer and very effective as a manager and cross-functional professional.

After 8 years with Coca-Cola, Anouk moved on to Royal Philips, a leader in Consumer Lifestyle products, Lighting, and HealthCare where she was responsible for the Marketing, Sales, and Digital Transformation of Global Consumer Care. Together with her team, she built and executed Customer Experience in the B2C part of Philips. A few years later, B2B Healthcare asked her to do the same there. That brought her to Atlanta for 2.5 years, building a Global Customer Experience or Customer Centricity Transformation program together with the USA team. Markets and customers were extremely happy with this focus and it brought great results for the company increasing NPS; resulting in increased order book and revenues.

Speaking at a few conferences in 2019 brought her to SAP, another beautiful large strong global company that was at that time hiring people straight from business roles instead of a technology background. For Anouk, it was a great opportunity to work with all kinds of companies instead of just transforming one.

Kickstarting Transformation at SAP

SAP is the Market leader in Enterprise application software helping companies to run at their best. 77% of world transaction revenue touches an SAP system. SAP will continue to be the engine for business, bringing powerful, proven innovations that serve companies both now and into the future. They are helping enterprises around the world transform their business models to accelerate growth, put sustainability at the center of their operations, build resilient and agile supply chains, and increase productivity. Whether companies are transitioning amid market uncertainty or are intent on getting ahead of the competition and being ready for fast-changing demands, SAP helps address top priorities: achieve business transformation at speed, gain easy-to-use innovations, and work with a trusted partner.

When Anouk started with SAP in 2020 as Global Customer Experience (CX) Advisor, she noticed SAP was talking about Customer Experience as if it was only a Digital or IT activity related to their CX Solution Portfolio. This is only partly true. Most companies worldwide talk about Customer Experience as an overall direction or transformation of the organization. And that is wonderful cause SAP can help them to get there. “Together we first create the Customer-Centric Vision and their Experience Principles. Then we do Customer Journey Mapping with a cross-functional team to find their top 10 pain points. This can be in Marketing, Sales, Supply Chain, Finance, or Employee experience. Then we support our customers driving the change in People, Process, Data, and Tools: in the end, bringing in the right technology to support that direction,” says Anouk explaining the process.

Anouk heads a team of 25 Global Customer Experience Advisors that are consultants for customers worldwide. They all come from Business roles at companies in different industries like Walmart, Caterpillar, Philips, Nespresso, ABB, Swarovski, PVH/Calvin Klein. Due to their experience, the conversations they have with Customers are in their business language instead of technology language and are outside-in instead of inside-out.

Customer Centricity as a Way of Business

The notion of having Customer Experience (CX) as an integral part of business strategy has been around for the past 2 decades. However, with the rise in discussions about Customer Experience, there has also been a rise in misunderstanding about CX, how a company can be successful through CX management, and the benefits that a company can expect from CX done right. To dispel the misunderstandings, and make customer-centricity more effective for business, there is a large Customer Experience organization in the world called CPXA. That is where Experience professionals meet, connect and share their work. The CXPA provides a great Exam for everyone who wants to become a Customer Experience Transformation professional: the CCXP. Anouk, a CCXP herself, feels that it is very important that many more CX professionals get this title as there are still so many more companies that need to go in this direction for long-term value.

As the world continuously wants to run better; be more sustainable, efficient, and customer-focused, there are not many things hampering the progress of customer centricity. Things that might stand in the way of moving faster are the original strong technology culture and short-term sales focus at the industry side, and the lack of customer focus at the company’s side. Anouk still gets surprised about the amount of (mostly B2B) companies that can deliver a difficult experience to their customers. There is likely an inside-out, old-fashioned mindset and the company is clearly not investing enough in making it easy to do business with. So, there is still a lot of work to do!

For a few years, Anouk has been a Judge at the International Customer Experience Awards organized by Awards International. “This is beautiful as it brings ALL companies in the world together with their best Customer Experience or Employee Experience projects and results. A great way of seeing what’s going on in the world and where can you learn from it. This year I have been asked to join the Steering Committee of the ICXA,” she shares.

Creating an Inclusive Workplace

SAP aspires to be the most inclusive company and therefore there are many initiatives across the world. They recently launched an initiative called ‘SAP Allyship for Inclusion’; to create an environment where each of us feels included, all of us have a central role to play as allies. “Allyship is the intentional use of our privilege and voice to support and advocate for those who might not have a seat at the table. The beauty is that each one of us needs an ally and each of us can be an ally, and together we can lift each other,” explains Anouk.

Currently most of her efforts go to taking care of respect for each other. There are many different cultures and it is important that everyone understands each other related to behavior and language differences. Native English speakers can take more care of the non-natives by speaking slower and using less slang or word jokes. “We want everyone “in the teams call” to feel included and understand what is being discussed. Here we touch Employee Experience which is a big pillar of Customer Experience hence extremely important to take care of,” says Anouk.

Handling Difficult Situations

Challenges are a part of a professional’s life. When a company is going through a Customer Experience transformation or an IT implementation, many leaders think this is a rational or technical thing. But the biggest challenges often sit with the people. Most times budgets for change management are way too small or taken out and Change is brought back to just a few communications. Same happened in Philips when Anouk was implementing CRM worldwide or during the CX transformation period. Her lesson at that time: “A Fool with a Tool is still a Fool”. They had to increase investments in people for them to understand and drive the change.

As an example; Customer Journey Mapping is not just a rational exercise finding customer pain points, but an opportunity to bring 40 cross functional people together for better understanding of each other’s challenges and teaming up to improve the customer experiences. This also tackled the second challenge which is the silos in the organization. Bringing people together reduces silo thinking and silo way of working.

“I am really allergic to silos and a red thread through my career has been connecting people from different departments to work together cause I truly believe in 1 + 1 = 5.

Especially in Customer Centric or Customer experience transformations, change management is extremely important. Create a Vision together and make the implementation practical, tactical and enjoyable. Make sure to free enough funds and FTE’s for this if you want to be successful,” shares Anouk.

Coming up Next

The Customer Experience Advisory team in SAP will continue to build an outside-in, customer-first way of working within SAP, and they support their customers’ transformation to a customer-centric organization where all capabilities are designed outside-in. Anouk and her team have also developed “Firestarter”; an external thought-leadership and innovation

community crowdsourced by a growing network of business members focused on business topics, issues, and outcomes.

Words of Wisdom

Anouk shares the following gem of advice for budding entrepreneurs:

“Customer First: whatever product you create and sell, make sure your Customer is really at the Center of everything you do. Do not just focus on the technology or selling but make sure your (potential) customers can find you easily, reach out easily, get their questions answered fast and easily, and solve their problems with your products fast and in the way THEY WANT it, not the way you want it. Immediately develop (or hire) a true outside-in mindset in your team.”

Living by Her Rules

“Well-behaved women rarely make history” Eleanor Roosevelt.

Anouk lives her life on her terms and loves to discuss the Status Quo or be a little provocative (her perfume is Provocative Woman by Elisabeth Arden) not just for the sake of it but to get people out of their routines, comfort zones, and flip their thoughts 😊

Anouk is based in the Netherlands and has 2 dogs. As she works full time across the Globe they have a Nanny at home for 2-3 days a week and go to daycare. She didn’t start a family on purpose as she liked her life too much with just work, travel, and friends. She is also a part of an all-women band with 23 other spirited women who love to make some music and have fun.

As a volunteer, she is currently on the board of the animal shelter and this July with her niece Nynke (20, daughter of her sister) she’ll be off to Malawi, Africa to work at the Lilongwe Wildlife Sanctuary.

Quote: “I have a very positive, always motivating personality and I love big challenges.”

Graeme M. Keith -Graeme M. Keith III: Carrying a Legacy

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The Keith Corporation (TKC) is a full-service commercial real estate firm, serving clients in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and the United Kingdom. It was founded by Graeme Keith Sr. and Graeme “Greg” Keith Jr. in 1989. Today, Graeme M. Keith III leads several divisions of the company and is also a part of the Executive Leadership team. TKC’s mission is to deliver the highest level of quality, service, commitment, and excellence to its clients. The firm’s vast client portfolio includes multinational Fortune 500 corporations, top-rated hospitals, Department of Defense contractors, industrial giants, and high-growth startups. The firm is a progressive commercial real estate firm and credits employees for its success as it remains focused on the future. 

Staying Relevant through 3 decades

Graeme M. Keith III believes that the longevity of TKC is attributable to adaptation, but also to the firm’s family-oriented culture. They have many employees who have been with them for over 25 years and the median length of employment is 10+ years. Graeme feels extremely fortunate to have, and is very intentional about maintaining, such an incredibly tight-knit and family-oriented culture. That culture leads to fierce loyalty and long-term personal and professional relationships and fulfillment. This also results in a natural progression to mentorship opportunities where the newer employees build relationships with some of the more seasoned employees which ends up creating a powerful cycle and stronger bond. “We believe our people are our single greatest asset and there would be no success without them, so we try to invest heavily in them and create an environment where they are fulfilled personally and professionally,” says Graeme.

Further, he says, regardless of the industry and the company culture, to stay relevant and thrive, you must adapt. There are plenty of companies that had great cultures that ultimately ended up becoming extinct because they didn’t adapt. We are constantly trying to “skate where the puck is going, not where it is” which leads to a lot of lively and creative discussions internally. The simplest example of this is that TKC originally started as a single-tenant, net lease build-to-suit developer focused on the Industrial sector. Soon thereafter, they had opportunities for expansion into retail followed by office, healthcare and, most recently, airplane hangars. 

“While we are always trying to grow and evolve, one of the non-negotiables is always providing excellent customer service to our clients. In order to provide that level of service, we are always trying to stay on the cutting edge of optimization technology, as well as industry best practices. Our key stakeholders not only assess the competitive landscape and see where we are deficient compared to our competitors, but those stakeholders also double down on where we set the standard,” says Graeme. 

A Leader par Excellence

Graeme M. Keith, III graduated from The McCallie School, Wake Forest University and Charleston School of Law and is a licensed attorney in South Carolina. In his 11 years at The Keith Corporation, he has completed well over $500 million in deals. He has started and runs several other companies, including MedChat, LLC, and Flux Capital, LLC and he has a stealth start-up that is democratizing access to the financial sector, helping consumers to be more well-informed. Health and Wellness have always been very important to Graeme and he has competed in several half and full IRONMAN triathlons, XTERRA World Championships and won countless mud runs and adventure races across the United States.

All of the companies Graeme is involved in have a very similar philosophy: he tries to be the weakest link on the team. He explains, “If I am the weakest link, I feel like we’re going to have a very competitive team. I learned this when I was competing in mud runs and adventure races across the country and the same philosophy goes for business as well… This is a Biblical philosophy. In Proverbs 27:17 it says: ‘As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.’ If you want to be faster, train with faster athletes. If you want to be smarter, spend time with smarter people. If you want to be more successful, surround yourself with people who are more successful than yourself.”

Graeme always tries to surround himself with the best: At The Keith Corp., he works alongside an incredible team of dealmakers, project managers, accountants, administrative professionals, etc. At MedChat, he works with an amazing team of developers and engineers, as well as very talented sales, implementation, and customer success teams. This is the same at the other companies he’s involved in. The common theme at all of these organizations is that he tries to ensure he is one of the weakest members of the team.

“One of the greatest misconceptions about leadership is that it’s the Leader who drives the results, but in my opinion, it’s the exact opposite. The Leader may chart the course, but it’s the team who is most responsible for the outcomes. As a Leader, I simply try to find the most talented people and put them in positions where they can succeed,” says Graeme.

Exceeding Client Expectations

What TKC does is not super-unique, but how they do it is a hyper-focused commitment to customer service. Everything they do is client-driven; they always aim to provide the highest level of service and quality to their clients in a straightforward manner. Tthere have been a lot of changes over the last 33 years, but TKC’s commitment to its clients has not changed and will not change as long as there is a Keith at the helm. 

Client service looks different for every client: some want weekly updates and status reports, and others just want the keys when the building is finished. The team at TKC first tries to understand the most important items for its customers and then tailors its program around those hot button items. Those can range from cost-conscious value engineering exercises to aesthetics-driven design to ensuring flat floors for automation technology or building controls and security. 

In addition to tailoring its program to clients, Graeme and his team always try to under-promise and over-deliver by completing the projects on time and at, or under, budget. “If we do not feel like we can do a project in a first-class manner, we will let our clients know. It does not happen often, but we have passed on a handful of projects because we did not feel like we were positioned to perform at the level our clients expect from us,” shares Graeme.

Aside from the customer service piece, TKC also leverages a plethora of different software programs to add value to its clients’ processes. These range from mapping programs to demographics subscriptions to utilizing geofencing technologies to help understand and predict consumer behaviors that are relevant to our clients. 

As a result of its culture, Graeme feels that TKC is fortunate to have many employees who have been with the firm for decades. This makes continuity of service much easier and builds a predictable and scalable business for their clients. “A huge part of our success and relevance is the team that we have. We believe in hiring the best, most qualified people, giving them the tools they need to be successful, providing a great working environment, and giving them the autonomy to perform their job without micromanagement,” asserts Graeme.

Advice for young and aspiring entrepreneurs:

Graeme advises them saying:

1) Keep your head down and focus on your end goal. Despite what you may see on social media, there are no shortcuts to success, and 

2) Thomas Paine said: “Character, unlike money, is much easier kept than recovered.” Your reputation and character should never be put on the line. An easy way to determine this in a bright-line test is to think about someone you admire and look up to. Then think of the behavior in question to accomplish the goal you’re seeking to accomplish – would you be proud or ashamed if the person you admire found out about how you acted to accomplish that goal? Your character and reputation are precious and no amount of success is worth risking them.

Assessing the Future

From a personal standpoint, Graeme has a long list of goals he would like to achieve. They run the gamut from hiking the entire Appalachian Trail to seeing Mavericks or Jaws (big wave surfing spots) from the water to driving 200mph in a car and making someone’s lifelong dream come true. He would like to start ticking off some more of those goals over the next few years.

From a professional standpoint, he loves innovating and creating and believes there will be a handful of new and exciting companies over the coming years. He thinks the web3 movement has the potential of being the most disruptive movement since the creation of the internet and hopes to be involved in that space in a meaningful way. He also believes the blockchain and web3 movements have the potential to play a huge role in the future of commercial real estate. At TKC, he has created a digital leadership task force to evaluate what we think that might look like in the future and consider how it could bring value to their clients as well as their internal shareholders.

While he does not have any immediate plans to enter into any new sectors, the entrepreneurial nature of his company means he is always evaluating new opportunities and business lines. “I believe the largest gaps in our service offerings are currently in the multi-family residential and storage sectors. I do not expect us to make a move into either of those sectors this cycle, but believe there are opportunities there that could make sense for us down the road,” concludes Graeme.

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Alex Sharpe -A Trusted Advisor to Unlock Business

Posted on by theciotimes

Innovation mirrors the progressive way of life that human beings want to live and strive for. Questioning the status quo, finding new ways and making attempts to better the previous version, be it life or a product is human nature. 

Most people do not realize, that we as humans are predisposed to innovate. We innovate by pulling things from different experiences and combining them in new ways. Innovation is not solely the purview of sudden inspiration. In practice, innovation is actually the culmination of experiences and the ability to look at those experiences in different ways. The more we experience and are allowed to be creative, the more we tend to do what is natural, to innovate.

At Sharpe Management Consulting LLC, Alex Sharpe makes sure that the innovative spirit of his team member never wavers. As an innovative leader, he lets his team be while affording them diverse experiences.

Question to Perform Better

Alex believes that it is critical to ask oneself, “why?” during the work process. Is there a particular problem you are trying to solve, or do you have an innovative idea that we need to figure out what to do with it later? How you think about the outcome has a huge impact on your thought process. Viewing things through different lenses is one of his favourite things to do. 

While working with teams, Alex likes to play both the coach encouraging them to expand their thoughts while also being the official rock thrower, playing the devil’s advocate challenging their ideas and pushing them out of their comfort zone. What about this? How about that? How would they do this in Europe? What if we were working in a different sector? What are the top three things we absolutely do not want to do?

Having a very diverse background with lots of interests, Alex is often in the best position to pull examples from diverse disciplines, other sectors, and different cultures. He encourages folks to walk showroom floors at industry shows and conferences. Even if it is not your industry. It is incredible what you will find. “On one occasion, I found, believe it or not, some specialized cables at an accounting show that solved a problem for a customer with a service business eighteen months later. On another occasion, I was able to help a significant hospital group improve its operations by using a process created at an online brokerage for their customer service,” he shares.

It all started with Self-realization

Growing up, Alex was fascinated with what we now call STEM. He had a passion for how things worked and how advances in science and technology made businesses stronger and people’s lives better. He was fascinated with how human productivity is driven by technology and innovation. He also realized, that one of the things he did well was bringing together thoughts and lessons from diverse disciplines to optimize the whole.

Analyzing his potential, economic conditions and interests, he decided to be an engineer because he liked to build things. He also figured that he needed to eventually get a business degree and develop his skills in operations, economics, and the like to truly make a difference. Alex says, “Mentally I crafted a strategy to get the engineering degree first with the business degree later. To sum it up, the more I learn, the more I realize things are related. Nothing really stands alone.”

Building a Company with a Difference

People often ask Alex “What is your secret sauce?” It seems to him the business model behind any services business is pretty straightforward. It comes down to execution. It is kind of like great chefs. They all have access to the same ingredients and the same tools. Why do some have successful restaurants and others do not. Simple, execution. And his tremendous track record of being in business for over 20 years and delivering to clients in almost 30 countries across the globe is proof of his expertise. 

Two principals have been the foundation of every business that Alex has run and every team he has ever led. First, the client is the hero of the story. Second, technology affords an opportunity. But it is the people and process that unlock that value. The business model and Governance are the most important to value creation.

Too many times, Alex has seen people and businesses forget they exist because their customers find value in what they offer. The moment an organization forgets that simple premise, everyone loses. He imparts a sense in his team that if they give their clients what they need, they grow and no longer need them for that task ever again. In reality, they want clients to know they act in their best interest, so they bring us on the next journey with them and also recommend them to their friends. 

As per Alex, “I suspect people will always embrace what adds value and prefer to work with other genuine people. Our job is to be a guide, a coach, and an advisor, more like being Obi-Wan or Yoda to Luke Skywalker than being a subject matter expert. Hard skills can be taught. Soft skills cannot. Soft skills can be developed through awareness, but in my experience, soft skills rely heavily on how individuals are wired. The soft skills transform you into a trusted advisor.”

As regards the second foundational principle, advances in technology incrementally change the way we work and live but unlocking its value takes an ecosystem of people and processes. Most important is the Governance that ensures your activities are aligned with the desired outcome and ensures the effective use of resources. That nexus is required to unlock the value. Governance must evolve as the technology and the organization grows. In the early stages, you want a Governance program that is more like guardrails to help ensure you do not drive off the road. As things mature, you want something more prescriptive, like what you might see from an industry body or a regulator.

A Message for the Young Entrepreneurs

Alex has dealt with lots of entrepreneurs. Some have done well, others have not. To paraphrase Reid Hoffman, co-founder of Twitter, “Being an entrepreneur is jumping off a cliff, knowing you will grow wings.” That pretty much says it. The most important thing to know, per Alex, is if you are wired to be an entrepreneur and, if so, what stage suits you best. Folks often forget that last part. The earliest stages require the most depth in your field. As you move further to the right, the business aspects and the ability to manage your growth become the most important.

Entrepreneurs know their craft. They often struggle with the rest. He asks them to be sure to know their business model and surround themselves with people who share their values. “More importantly, be sure they have skills you do not. The biggest mistake I see from entrepreneurs is, that they often hire weaker versions of themselves. Surround yourself with people who will challenge and compliment you,” advises Alex.

He explains, “I remember a failed start-up that was doing innovative things with network gear. Everyone, including the finance team, had a networking background. No! You want your finance people to understand finance. You want your sales team to know how to sell. Knowing your business, your customers, and your industry is critical. These folks need to know their discipline first. They can learn yours while on the job.”

Also, Alex advises them to never forget to fail fast and always be sharpening their saw. “Business plans are great. Go-to-Market (GTM) strategies are necessary. Neither survives first contact with the customer. Learn and evolve. Keep in mind, that the act of planning is more important than the plan itself. The plan becomes a communication tool for the team and a baseline, so you know what to change. Be sure to explore, learn, fold those learnings into the business and move on,” concludes Alex.

Flybits : was born in a university research lab in 2008

Posted on by theciotimes

Flybits was born in a university research lab in 2008, by Professor Hossein Rahnama. He recognized that humans make decisions using different inputs and sources of information. It was a time when people were being bombarded with information while devices were getting smaller. An opportunity existed, to apply context to data and deliver relevant recommendations. It’s only with context that our physical and digital worlds can seamlessly connect, to bring experiences that are more impactful than we’ve ever seen before.

What are your aims, visions and ideals?

At Flybits, we believe that bad data sells and better data serves. We recently launched an open letter to Canada’s top national newspaper, the Globe and Mail. In it, we discuss the true promise of the Data Age. When data is protected, organized, secured, and delivered through the right channels, its power can work for us: relieving stress, fostering connections, and improving lives. We feel there is a huge opportunity for trustworthy, accountable financial institutions to be the standard-bearers of better data use.

View our open letter here

The data economy requires a new paradigm where data is treated as an asset class. And there is a major opportunity (and need) for banks to bring trust into the mix, and reimagine their business models.

Please view our video

Tell us about the services you offer to your customers?

Flybits empowers banks to engage an audience of one, at scale. Through our leading customer experience platform, banks can incorporate a human touch on their digital channels, and service customers through a dynamic feed of data-driven insights, personalized recommendations, and advice. While banks leverage our live-feed, we also prepackage all the relevant points of interaction — that help customers buy a home, save, manage debt, or onboard to a new product. Marketers activate these turnkey services to both help customers and drive real results. We enable the world’s top financial institutions to advance beyond transactions and be with their customers in the moments that matter.

Mention some of your contributions to the technological sector of the economy.

Flybits has built their product with financial institutions in mind. Ensuring that the solution we offer can address the problems in which they face. Namely, Flybits is an end-to-end and a fast time-to-market solution that was built with privacy and scalability in mind. What’s more, we bring financial institutions the power of context to address the demand of highly personalized, “always on” customer experiences. Flybits holds a patent portfolio with 11 patent filings under 3 families, combining the strength of semantic computing with data intelligence, machine learning and software engineering design patterns. And with a focus on customer centricity and intuitiveness, Flybits customers have a significant competitive advantage as they transform their digital channels with predictive, contextual intelligence.

Flybits has successfully helped FIs deliver hyper-personalized and predictive customer experiences to achieve business objectives. For example, a major bank in North America that leverages Flybits’ technology saw a 43% increase in user engagement in their mobile channel after implementing Flybits. Another major bank in Latin America achieved a 164% increase in offer redemption after personalizing customer experiences using Flybits.

  • Enlighten us about the notable recognitions and accreditations you have received as a company Flybits successes continue to be recognized at home and abroad.
  • The Globe and Mail named us amongst the Top 100 Growing Companies in Canada for our exceptional growth over the last three years.
  • Barclays has recognized us as a Highly Commended company. The criteria for this honor is based on a combination of disruption, impact, scale, and diversity of a product.
  • The University Waterloo awarded our HR team with their Generation Award, which highlights the continuous focus and impact we have made in developing the next generation of talent.
  • The Great Place to Work Certification, a direct result of our employees and their pride in working for Flybits.

In 2019 alone, were also recognized by:

  • Deloitte – as one of Canada’s fastest-growing technology companies as a 2019 Technology Fast 50™ award winner by Deloitte.
  • Frost & Sullivan awarded Flybits for best practices in Technology Innovation in global customer experience technology for the financial services market.
  • Recognized in The Fintech Power 50, an annual guide to the most influential, innovative, and powerful figures in the Fintech industry.
  • LinkedIn included Flybits on its 2019 Top Startups list in Canada, recognizing the organization as one of the hottest high-growth global companies to work for in the country.
  • CIX, Canada’s largest curated startup investment conference, named Flybits to its annual list of Top 10 Growth companies — a list that recognizes innovative, mature startups with high potential to scale.
  • How has the pandemic affected the tech market in Canada? Is your company changing with the market?

The pandemic brought with it a great amount of uncertainty. Flybits, along with our customer base, was impacted dramatically, not only from a revenue growth standpoint but also on an organizational level where we had to quickly mobilize our entire employee-base to a new working environment, while working closely with our customers who faced significant challenges.

When the pandemic hit, most banks around the world entered a crisis mode of accelerating and building digital capabilities to catch up to where they should have been. Inspired to be a catalyst for change and empowered by our entrepreneurial spirit, we have collectively emerged stronger from what was a very difficult year. We have been able to advance our product with a framework that makes it easy for our customers to integrate data, we built template experiences for our customers to go-to-market faster, and created audience optimization – an intelligence layer that helps banks better target their customers.

Modern technology has changed human thinking and its existence. With the rapid advancement towards globalization, what do you think the post-pandemic market will look like for tech companies?

The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation for many organizations with an emphasis on advancing customer experiences to be more in tune with personal needs and requirements. For tech companies, this will translate to collaborating with external partners to build robust customer ecosystems that can provide relevant and contextualized experiences.

Elizabeth Cowper -A Driven Leader Transforming Workplace Inclusion

Posted on by theciotimes

While most of us are happy discussing how space tourism can be made feasible over say next 10 years, a few of us are still struggling to close the gender pay gap here on earth which, by estimates would take around 100 years by the current rate. Reasons? Aplenty. As per a recent survey, 77% of men believed that their partner should be the one making the career sacrifice for the sake of their family. 

It’s not just about men, many women also feel that it is their moral duty to choose family over their career. This comes from the conditioning they have had since childhood. Subconscious biases persist and often gender roles are used as a pretext for curbing women’s career development.

When women do get into the workforce, their decision to start a family is often seen and perceived as a decision to let go of their careers. Neither they nor their team, often comprising men is sure of how to handle the transition that starts with their pregnancy. Should they come to the office? Should they be called up when they are taking a day off for a routine checkup? Who would handle their tasks when they finally take maternity leave? These and more questions bother not just working women but their peers at work. Thankfully, a working mother took notice of it and with experience came up with promising solutions.

Meet Elizabeth Cowper

Founder of the Ludo, Elizabeth Cowper has been through – and continues to face – many of the challenges any working mother experiences. She loves being a mother and was equally passionate about her career as a VP of HR. She’s proud of both the Wo (working) and Mo (mother) parts of her life.

Her previous role as VP HR and Global Head of Wellbeing helped Elizabeth see things from both the employer and the employee sides. She has seen maternity leave and returning to work managed brilliantly. She has also seen it be a complete disaster. “If we get it right from both sides the return to work can be a far easier transition for both. I believe us WoMos deserve support and a resource for the challenging moments,” she says.

Determined to help both ends of the spectrum, Elizabeth went on to establish Ludo, a company on a mission to engage female talent in the workforce. Ludo is all about tech for inclusion, working to close the gender pay gap, and educating, informing, and supporting HR. 

What Ludo Does

Ludo provides tech for inclusion and the basis for its B2B SaaS works similarly to other benefit contents platforms.

It has amazing content from expert partners and what sets Ludo apart in the market is its HR and Line Manager learning hub. It supports HR and Line Managers on how to deliver a culture of inclusion and drive the right behaviors. “It is important to support everyone in the business. We focus on the inclusion of women as the gender pay gap is still horrific and women are a long way off gender parity, and we do this through driving inclusion for all,” explains Elizabeth.

A Career shaped by Passion

Before starting Ludo, Elizabeth had a career of 25 years in HR. She is also a mother of 3. 2 daughters and a son. She has always worked full-time and has been committed to her career alongside being a good mum to her kids. 

The last role she had in her corporate career was Global Head of Wellbeing and part of the Global DEI committee alongside her role as VP of HR.  

The three components of this role bought together Elizabeth’s HR career and she found her true passion and purpose, to drive a culture of inclusion. She was described once as the ‘culture adjuster’. 

“I see the benefit of each and every employee being able to work as their authentic self, which in turn creates happier employees, a better working environment, and greater productivity which is good for business. This all matters to drive a winning culture, and for people to feel valued with a sense of belonging,” she says.

Elizabeth was listed by HR Most Influential 5 years in a row and as The 10 Most Futuristic Business Women Pioneering Innovation, 2022. Ludo won the “Inclusion Initiative of the Year 2022”, Prestige Awards by Corporate Livewire, “Rising Stars in Corporate Wellbeing 2022”, Greater London Enterprise Awards and Best Enterprising Business, SME Awards, London. 

Donna Dalonzo

Posted on by theciotimes

“The Real Estate Broker”

Donna Dalonzo is the Provincial Director of eXp Realty, Quebec. Her passion is assisting real estate agents to expand their businesses as well as their teams. The brokerage she is part of now is actually providing an exit strategy while keeping a close watch on the future of real estate at all times. She has been in the real estate estate industry for over 23 years. The talented broker has owned and operated 6 Remax franchises for many years as well as being part of the KW Team in Quebec before joining the team at eXp Realty.  

The great thing is that agents who are joining forces with eXp keep their existing branding, and so they should since they worked so hard to build on-point strategies. She is the Provincial Director and as well as Executive agency officer at eXp Realty, Quebec. The company is focused on ensuring that you, the broker, have everything you need to excel. According to Donna, her company offers you free personal websites as well as a free Lead Generation system with a CRM and more. 

She is a coach; a team builder & she proudly promotes the fact that they at eXp can build a Global real estate business by extending their team internationally. She speaks nonchalantly about the time (almost 23 years now) she’s given to her real estate career. It took Donna Dalonzo a while to find her place, she did and now is working with an innovative real estate company such as eXp Realty. 

Donna Dalonzo and her journey towards success  

Donna is the mother of two beautiful children. She’s the true definition of a warrior. She holds the statement true that there is nothing a woman cannot do. Donna started her career in the fashion industry. Initially, she was fascinated by the fashion industry and she loved fashion, but a small part of her always kept looking to women entrepreneurs in business. She shifted towards finance and started working on mortgage brokerage and appraising homes. The journey of her career in real estate started very smoothly as it was completely a natural transition for her. The real estate business has always been a lucrative option in her mind. 

Her start as a franchise owner made her dreams come true, the partnership and popularity made her very busy. It led to bringing on board many amazing agents and very substantial expansion for her offices. The years of Remax & KW are in her past now, she moved forward with an innovative international company which created a roadmap of how to proceed and succeed while building wealth for the agent and not only for the franchise. eXp Realty is her last stop. She created a network and relationships with the realtors and is always happy to share the exciting news about the fastest-growing company in history. eXp Realty Canada has her involvement as a Provincial Director for eXp Quebec and has just awarded Donna the “Best Provincial Broker of Record of the Year for eXp Canada 2021!

Donna loves to travel, working with eXp Realty makes it so easy to work from wherever she is. According to Donna Dalonzo, she is pretty focused on her business and maybe a bit of a workaholic. She has eXp agents on her team in several countries. She really enjoys meeting with agents and assisting them in their business. Donna has extensive experience in the field of real estate as a real estate agent, team leader and broker of record. In one sentence she is not just the director of eXp global, she is an all-rounder of the company. She has a large following on various social media platforms. Her love for her children, traveling, laughter and nature is shown on her social media pages. Like in any business there are challenges when starting out, but since day one in real estate she never gave up on her dream and never looked back.

eXp Realty of Canada

It all started with Glenn, eXp Realty was founded by Glenn Sanford in the year 2009. He had a huge vision for this company. Glenn wanted to revolutionize the real estate industry by creating a virtual brokerage that offered state-of-the-art technology, coaching and so much more to its agents. After meeting Glenn Sanford, Donna Dalonzo joined eXp Realty. This company is a disruptor in the real estate industry. 

It is growing extremely fast.  eXp realty was built as a virtual office where hundreds and even thousands of agents simultaneously can log in and attend live & interactive courses. The way this company was built allows for tremendous corporate savings which are given back to the agents in the form of free technology tools, lead generation systems, personal websites, and stock awards.  eXp also offers a referral system that creates an Exit Strategy for all agents. The set-up is a real Game Changer. 

The achievement that made her top real estate agent

One of the things that excited Donna most when she started working with eXp is the fact that their Core Values were so in tune with hers. She noticed eXp seems to attract people that increase these values. Transparency is so important to Donna that she feels that honest, clear, and open communication is crucial. The merging of a family to a new home gives her immense joy. The passion is driven by helping other agents and leading them towards the path of success. She is a humble, soft-spoken and determined woman. Her personality of never giving up and working hard has helped her reach the steps of success. 

She believes things happen for a reason at a certain time. When Patrick Ashby from Ottawa contacted her about eXp she was intrigued. She realized in her head after some time that this is going to be big. As a result, today’s eXp is the fastest growing real estate company. She met many phenomenal leaders and influential people at that conference in Florida that changed her life, Jason Gesing, Gene Frederick, Steve Gabellini & Glenn Sanford and many more. The number of agents in October 2017 at the time of that conference was 2800,  today eXp has grown to over 69,000 agents. 

In 2019 she launched eXp in Quebec. According to Donna, the numbers are constantly increasing. Now eXp is operating in all 50 states and 9 Canadian provinces. They are in many countries such as – the UK, Australia, Mexico, Portugal, France, South Africa, India, Panama, Colombia, Italy, Germany, Hong Kong with many more opening soon. Inman has named eXp as the “Innovator Brokerage of the year” as well as  the “Best Place to Work” for several consecutive years.

Obstacles and challenges along the way

The most difficult obstacles she faced launching eXp in Quebec were due to system changes that needed to be compliant in Quebec. For example, their MLS system is very much different from that of North America, so they had to build a system that worked with their Quebec MLS Centris system. They also had to build their website and lead generator in 2 languages such as French and English. Bringing any industry in any field to another Province is always very challenging still she managed to pull it off with her great business skills. During the first year, they reached a total of 40 agents which was considered to be a great milestone. The whole team lives like a big family. They support and teach each other. It creates positive energy and increases productivity in the company. 

Nowadays, there is a huge increase in buyers but little inventory. An agent’s life is listing and selling. As of late they have a listing one minute and sold in another. Multiple offer situations and selling over asking are complicated. It is not only in their market, it’s everywhere such as Vancouver, Toronto, and the US, etc. In the contemporary world, a lot of investors are buying second homes. The company is the best fit for individuals buying or selling, agents provide deep local real estate experience and knowledge to make your experience as frictionless and empowering as possible. 

Donna Dalonzo on her brand expectations in the coming years

They, meaning their industry, actually say that eXp global would probably be the first company to hit one million real estate agents, 500,000 agents within 5 years. The teams that they are bringing over are incredible from every angle. The eXp does not ask you to change your branding to sell theirs. While you will keep your branding, your deals will be brokered by eXp Realty. By this process, a lot of very successful individual agents, as well as large teams and brokerages that are already branded, are making the move. In the present day, the number one luxury Remax team has joined eXp.

 The agents and teams who have worked at other companies such as Remax for as long as 34 years are joining eXp realty of Canada instead of opening their own agencies partly because they could keep their branding. eXp Realty is growing day by day with brokers from all different banners who are making a move to eXp Realty. 

What separates Donna’s company from the rest of the market

The thing that attracted her most to this company was everything they offered to each real estate agent. Being fully virtual was  great timing for her. She had noticed over the last several years that agents were not coming into the office much for meetings and coaching. She wondered why they needed so many physical offices in this day and age, so she found a company with a great plan to solve it. Being virtual allows us to use technology exceptionally. Virtualization reduces tremendous brick-and-mortar office expenses that are pretty much paid by the agents. eXp Realty makes it possible to give so much to agents while keeping the cost low.

 In the case of traditional brokerages, the companies where the more an agent earns, the more the agent pays. In that situation, she thinks of why a high-producing agent should be penalized for that? She loved this part about eXp, her company rewards them with stock options that cover their fees for the year, so the company ends up paying the agent instead of the agent paying. That’s how this plan works!

She loves building and expanding. She loves helping agents to build their businesses and finding out exactly what they need to do it all. Whether it is team building, structure, guidance & them to reach and or surpass their goals. 

 The real estate market, post-pandemic:

Most companies have felt many challenges in the past 2 years and had to learn how to pivot their business to work virtually, some took months to figure that part out. We were blessed to continue business as usual and see unparalleled growth, said Donna In the situation when they look at upcoming challenges, she doesn’t see those & only focuses on her goals to make eXp Quebec the best brokerage to work at. 

So when we asked Donna about the challenges she foresees, her answer was, “I don’t see obstacles, I see opportunities”.

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