Back in my teaching days, I was stunned at how little technology was about the need of the user. The adoption of technology was about introducing the next great thing without evidence that it would help.

When technology didn’t help people, or didn’t work at all, the response was usually, “oh well.” As an educator and Nonprofit professional, I saw a wide gap in the marketplace and a terrible injustice that actually impacted communities and the environment – and I believed I could do something about it.

Customers needed someone that cared about their needs first so I took my teaching skills and applied it to understanding the customer and their unique needs. Customers also wanted to understand the why and what of technology. They craved clarity and to be empowered to do better for their organization, so I created a model that focused on education, not selling.

I saw that organizations were often times more interested in convincing them in the “pitch” to sell their products more than they were fixing the issue; especially if the problem was hard. With that I knew in order to advocate and fight, you had to persevere and have resilience. There was an answer out there.

These common challenges, along with my personal experiences, created a philosophy around how to serve and why to serve. They later became the defining core values that still apply today in everything we do at both Varsity Technologies and Plumly.