ONLY THE UNSTOPPABLE

Kelsey Abernathy strives to be the type of leader she’d want to work for. She makes a tireless effort to identify her team members’ individual strengths and opportunities to help them grow, and she leads by example with honesty. “I’m not afraid to admit I do not know the answers and take that as a learning opportunity for both myself and my employees,” Abernathy said. In weekly one-on-ones with her team members, Abernathy discusses their strengths and goals and ways they can improve to achieve them. She provides encouragement and access to training, and, above all, a supportive space.

When Baldini joined the engineering team, it was a small ragtag group with little experience, but they worked together to build a successful company. The team is now more robust with complementary skills and levels of expertise, plus strong code-review and mentoring processes — yet they maintain a fairly loose organizational and development process. “Our engineers have the freedom to build the solution that is most appropriate to the problem at hand,” Baldini said. They take ownership of those solutions and push themselves to make a difference for people who rely on the tech to do their jobs.