What was the biggest lesson you learned while working during the pandemic? That working remotely was not as bad as I thought it would be. Before the pandemic, I had never even considered it as an option. Not that we had much choice once the lockdown came but I ended up being really surprised at how much I enjoyed it once I got the home office set up.

What is the best advice you have received, and who was it from? “Trust your crazy ideas.” A friend of mine, Heather, gave me a gift with that saying on it, when I was transitioning out of my former career to a new one in marketing. Trying out a new idea you come up with can be scary and it’s so easy to talk yourself out of it thinking it will never work. But as the great Wayne Gretzky and Michael Scott said – “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take!”

What are your predictions for your industry in 2022? More touchless solutions being implemented. I see companies upgrading legacy access control systems (badge based) to a mobile credentials platform. You can just wave your hand at the reader instead of having to touch it. And transforming current meeting rooms with software and hardware the enables Bring-Your-Own-Device and makes connecting your laptop or other device really easy.

How has your working environment changed over the last year? For our support staff - Lots and lots of video calls! Which for us at Inspired, was an easy transition, we were lucky to already have the unified communications platforms (Zoom, Teams, Webex) up and running, since it’s one of the solutions we offer as a company. From a marketing and business development standpoint - not having in-person social and networking events has been a huge hit – but the virtual networking events have done great filling that void. I feel like they give us a more intimate experience. Walking into a room full of people at an event can be intimidating and sometimes I find it hard to start conversation. With virtual events – its almost as if that element has been removed, which I have really enjoyed.