Richard Zicchino is appointed Chief Financial Officer; Lauren Blake is Vice President of Product; Rob Hoy joins the firm as Vice President of Partner Experience; Sahil Mehta is appointed to Vice President of Sales; and Kyle Smialek is Vice President of Operations
Shiftsmart announces two appointments, one addition, and several promotions to its executive leadership team. An online marketplace, Shiftsmart leverages its innovative technology platform with powerful workforce management capabilities to connect today’s dynamic workforce with companies facing increasingly complex staffing requirements. By empowering workers with flexible hours, better pay, and greater opportunity, Shiftsmart creates a revolutionary labor ecosystem for individuals and organizations alike. Leadership team changes include:
Richard Zicchino is appointed Chief Financial Officer. An experienced executive with over 20 years experience in the Software and Technology industry, Zicchino joined Shiftsmart in 2018 as Chief Operating Officer. His experience includes key executive positions in strategic finance, operations, and mergers and acquisitions. During his career, he has managed nearly 20 acquisitions and their subsequent integrations. Prior to Shiftsmart, he served as Vice President of Finance at Synacor after managing the merger from its acquisition of Zimbra. At Zimbra he served as Senior Vice President of Operations, after leading its divestiture from VMware. Notably before that, he led the integration of Skywire Software when it was acquired by Oracle Corporation.
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Lauren Blake, formerly Head of Product, is promoted to Vice President of Product, where she leads the planning and execution of Shiftsmart’s product lifecycle. Blake’s primary role is overseeing the smooth convergence of the worker, the employer and the Shiftsmart platform so that all participants align with the vision to empower the modern workforce. Blake joined Shiftsmart in 2018 following her roles at Facebook, Thumbtack, and Goldman Sachs. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Chicago and an MBA and a Masters in Computer Science from Stanford University.
Rob Hoy has joined Shiftsmart as Vice President of Partner Experience, where he is responsible for the recruitment, onboarding and engagement of workers, known as partners, on the Shiftsmart platform. Hoy joined Shiftsmart in 2020 following roles at SiteMinder, Airbnb, and Google. His wide range of experience will help further Shiftsmart’s mission of empowering the global workforce. Hoy graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce from Queen’s University.
Sahil Mehta, formerly Vice President of Retail & Hospitality, is appointed to Vice President of Sales, where he is responsible for global expansion, top-line growth, and customer success. Since joining Shiftsmart in 2017, Mehta has held key leadership positions in the areas of business development, client engagement, and delivery. Prior to joining Shiftsmart, he held roles at both Google and Mercer. Mehta holds a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences from Northwestern University.
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Kyle Smialek, formerly General Manager of Shiftsmart’s Flex Contact Center, is promoted to Vice President of Operations, where he is responsible for global operations and execution of Shiftsmart’s distributed workforce businesses inclusive of remote call centers, audits, inspections, and event staffing. Smialek joined Shiftsmart in 2019 following roles at PwC Strategy and Booz & Company. Smialek holds an MBA from Goizueta Business School (Emory) and a Bachelor of Business Administration from Elon University.
Founded In 2015, Shiftsmart revolutionized the flexible labor market with its digital platform powered by cutting-edge technology. It intelligently matches the right worker to the right job so that employers can increase fulfillment, reduce churn and improve worker quality.
“These recent promotions and appointments put our leadership team in position to lead the next phase of Shiftsmart’s growth and expansion. The company is well positioned for continued success with such a breadth of talent at the helm,” said Aakash Kumar, Shiftsmart’s Founder and CEO.
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With Shiftsmart, companies can fulfill large-scale, complex, time sensitive staffing requirements with proven workers, exceptional performance, and measurable benefits to the bottom line. In 2020 alone, Shiftsmart grew its base of workers from 90,000 to more than 400,000 Partners worldwide. Their global community provides millions of skilled shifts in more than 50 countries. Covid-19 massively disrupted the global labor market and Shiftsmart’s platform was well positioned to provide alternative solutions such as work from home call centers, safety audits, and staffing for vaccination and testing stations. The development and mobilization of flexible call centers emerged as a rapid growth category over the past year. In less than 36 hours, Shiftsmart provided the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) with a virtual tier-1 call center with access to more than 10,000 daily agent hours, thereby reducing SBA call wait times from more than one hour to zero.
In 2020, Shiftsmart was also instrumental in masterminding and launching the Get Shift Done initiative in response to the economic impact of COVID-19. Shiftsmart President, Patrick Brandt, co-founded this ambitious enterprise as he saw the company’s hospitality and service workers losing shifts due to capacity limitations imposed on restaurants and hotels. Simultaneously, nonprofit hunger relief organizations were losing volunteers due to COVID-19 health safety concerns just as the demand for food distribution to their underserved communities was increasing. Launched in four days, Shiftsmart contributed both their platform, funds and countless hours of employee resources to this inspired program to match and provide available service workers to fill open shifts previously held by volunteers. Since March 2020, the initiative has been rolled out to 12 cities, 110 nonprofits, has completed close to one million hours of shifts, over 60 million meals have been served and paid nearly $15M to displaced hospitality workers.
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