Kate is president of Global Workplace Analytics (GWA), a research and consulting firm that helps employers understand and prepare for the future of work. Her expertise is focused on workplace, workforce, technology, and other trends that are changing the who, what, when, where, and how of work. She has been helping public and private sector employers implement and optimize hybrid-remote work strategies for over 15 years.

Working with some of the world's most respected product and service providers, GWA helps make the 'people, planet, and profit' business case for workplace change and collaborates to publish a wide range of original and secondary research.

Kate is a highly regarded speaker and writer. She has written or co-authored five business books, numerous white papers, and scores of articles for major media outlets. Her firm’s research has been cited by hundreds of publications including the Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and many others. She is a member of the strategic advisory board and leadership team of Workplace Evolutionaries (WE), a global group of leading workplace thinkers and doers who are dedicated to "changing the world one workplace at a time.” In July of 2020, Kate was one of three witnesses invited to testify before a congressional committee on the future of telework in government.

As a resident of San Diego, Kate teases clients that she charges extra if she has to travel anywhere that's too hot, too cold, too wet, too humid, or too buggy.

Links to Kate's stuff on the World Wide Web:

LinkedIn

Global Workplace Analytics

Our guest today is Laurel Farrer. As the founder of Distribute Consulting and The Remote Work Association, she starts, strengthens and leverages virtual workforces to solve corporate and socio-economic concerns. A global thought leader on the topic of remote work, Laurel collaborates with the world's leading businesses and governments to eliminate virtual worker discrimination, prevent policy retraction, increased remote job assessability, train distributed leaders and design economic initiatives. Additionally, she also shares her expertise as a Forbes contributor, subject matter expert for business education curriculum, and virtual software product advisor.

Links to Laurel's internet resources:

Laurel on LinkedIn
LaurelFarrer.com
Laurel's remote work blog on Forbes
Distribute Consulting
Remote Work Association

Today's guest is Chris Herd, the CEO and founder of FirstbaseHQ. And of course, you already know him from his thought leadership on Twitter, LinkedIn, sending out those fire tweets, the massive threads about the future of living, future of remote working here in our world.

Follow Chris Herd on Twitter

Connect with Chris Herd on LinkedIn

Learn more about FirstBaseHQ at firstbasehq.com

Peep Laja  is the founder and CEO of CXL, Wynter and Speero. He is originally from Estonia but lives in Austin, Texas, and he's a digital nomad that still spends his  summers in Europe. He is an entrepreneur and a conversion optimization champion. He's passionate about driving change and growth through digital optimization. He was voted as number one, most influential conversion rate optimization expert in the world. He is devoted to growing the size and quality of the whole conversion optimization community. You can rely on him for help. He spends most of his time today on making top 1% marketing know-how available for everyone through the CXL Institute. And he's excited to share the learnings he's had in leading remote teams globally.

Learn more about Peep at: https://peeplaja.com/
follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/peeplaja or 
connect with him on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/peeplaja/

Our guest on today's show is Tyler Sellhorn. Tyler is a remote work advocate who is very active on LinkedIn and Twitter where he shares ideas, concepts, and learnings around remote work. He was also the Director of Customer Experience at Hubstaff, which helps organizations manage projects and teams profitably. 

This episode is trial and introduction to the podcast, as Tyler will be helping us out with the Remote Show moving forward as a host. Please enjoy.

Start #LearningOutLoud with Tyler on LinkedIn, Twitter, and at https://www.tylersellhorn.tech/

Many of you know Matt Mullenweg, but what you may not know is that Wordpress (the open source blogging platform that he co-founded in 2003) now powers over 40% of the internet. You read that correctly -- 40% of the entire internet.  

After briefly reviewing the arc of Matt’s entrepreneurial journey, we discuss how remote work evolved with Wordpress, as well as his brief stint with a designated office space. Wordpress is one of the largest and most successful remote companies in the world, so digging into the beginnings of Wordpress and scaling was a particularly unique insight. 

One of the insights was the importance of a balanced work, and top down encouragement to lead healthy and balanced lifestyles. For example -- giving back and supporting your community is something Automatticians are encouraged to do. 

We also discuss at some length Open Source vs proprietary software, what this means for the future of the internet and freedom of speech and expression in an internet dominated society. That could likely have been its own. Hopefully it will be!

This discussion was particularly interesting because of Matt’s success and notoriety as influence on the internet, but I was struck by how kind and thoughtful Matt was. The team at Automattic are aiming to democratize the internet, and they practice what they preach!

Matt’s advice to Entrepreneurs: “you have to be very comfortable being misunderstood for a long time. And that long time could sometimes be a decade.”

To look for openings at Automattic, see the positions on We Work Remotely, or go to they page for all of the live positions: https://automattic.com/work-with-us/

In this first episode of 2021, we’re excited to share our conversation with Steli Efti. Steli is a longstanding remote work advocate, and the team at Close has been fully remote for six years with 40 people in 13 different countries. Close is a leading sales automation CRM for inside sales teams.

We talk about many things in this conversation, but the most important insights we get into are the details of leading a company through a crisis and how Steli and the management team responded and supported their co-workers. We are fortunate to be able to chat with leaders across many companies, but Close is certainly one of the companies that many of our many job seekers are always excited to work for and learn from. Chatting with Steli, it is clear that the team at Close took the right approach, didn’t make panic decisions and navigated thoughtfully.

We dive into transparency, content production, leadership and much more.

Steli’s recommended reading: “Wherever You Go, There You Are” from Jon Kabat-Zinn

Close is hiring on WWR! Find them here: https://weworkremotely.com/company/close.

We couldn’t recommend Close highly enough. They’re culture is based on these fundamental values:

🏡 Build a house you want to live in

🥇 Strive for greatness

💪 Discipline equals freedom

🚫 No BS

🤝 Invest in each other

Thanks so much for listening! 

In this episode of The Remote Show Live, we were fortunate enough to chat with Dr. Tolonda Tolbert about the realities of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in remote work environments. 

We were fortunate enough to cover many different components of DE&I in remote teams, and companies more generally. This was a very important conversation, and we were happy to have hosted it. Dr T gave many important insights including practical teams and actionable projects for improving Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.  

We covered:

• How an action based approach is needed, using analytics and metrics. 

• How remote work influences progress in corporate DE&I 

• Does diversity in the work place help spark innovation? Hint: Yes, it does. 

• How can remote companies improve their hiring and onboarding that optimize DE&I?

• How can managers best support their underrepresented employees - especially during this time?

We're aiming to help keep the momentum going with the recent spike in conversations about Diversity, Equity & Inclusion -- if you're a remote manager/leader/hiring manager, this one's for you!

Interested in continuing this conversation within your organization? Check out  https://eskalera.com/ for more information!

Tolonda M. Tolbert, Ph.D., is the Co-Founder, and Head of Strategy and Culture at Eskalera, Inc. She comes to the role with almost two decades of hands-on experience in Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) and culture change. Prior to that, she served as Senior Director of the Inclusive Leadership Initiative for Catalyst, partnering with global organizations to build their capacity to create and sustain inclusive workplaces, specializing in DEI strategy, curriculum design, and implementation. 

She also led the Employee Resource Leadership Initiative (ERLI) with a mission to engage and connect ERG leaders to share ideas and best practices while learning how to amplify inclusion. Previously she led special anti-bias projects at the Anti-Defamation League’s A World of Difference Institute and GLSEN(Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network). 

She was also a staff developer at Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility and a faculty member at NYU’s Silver School of Social Work teaching graduate and faculty courses on Inclusive Pedagogy. She holds a BA from the University of Colorado, Boulder and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Rutgers University, she is a published writer, independent scholar and community activist.

Connect with Tolonda here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tolonda-tolbert-phd/

Listen to The Remote Show podcast: weworkremotely.com/the-remote-show-podcast

Mesh brings a fresh perspective here on the Remote Show. Unlike other operators/managers we've interviewed, Mesh focuses mostly on business education by way of storytelling, journalistic inquiry and content creation. It was particularly interesting diving into what Mesh believes New York could look like in five years post Covid19, and what remote work means from the perspective of an investor, rather than an operator.

This is a bit different from our typical conversations, and I'm hoping you enjoy this perspective on technology, remote work and business. If you have any suggestions, or feedback -- reach out to us at [email protected]!

Follow Mesh on Twitter @meshlakhani and visit his podcast page to learn more about Talk Money. I personally recommend Mesh's content to everyone wanting to learn more about personal finance, business and investing.  The shows are informative and entertaining, trust us!

Please enjoy our conversation! If you like the show, please remember, review, subscribe and tell a friend! We'd really appreciate it. 

In this second episode of our Remote Show live, recorded earlier in June, were were able to dive deep into the nuances of remote education. Barb has an extensive work history that spans marketing, small business ownership, writing and finally teaching (or guiding, as Bard likes to say) students in the realm of communication and culture. 

We have been looking for some time to speak with someone in education about what remote learning looks and feels like, and we thought now is as good a time as any to explore the topic further. What's great about Barb is that she was able to expand on many of the things that remote companies struggle with -- how do you create a team and a company people want to be a part of? How do you communicate well when people's strengths are so varied? What does collaboration look and feel like?

We go into this, and much more on our second episode of the remote show live.For those who want to participate in future events, please be sure to follow us on twitter when new webinars get announced! 

Connect with Barb on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barb-collombin/

Interested in learning about Royal Roads programs? (they come very highly recommended). Check out their course offerings here: https://www.royalroads.ca/

I hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did!