Moderated by: Sacha Connor, CEO at Virtual Work Insider,
Panel: Mardi Kaplan, Training and Development Manager, Toyota Financial Services
Kyra de St. Paer-Zeroll, Marketing Director at @Clorox
Eric Schuetzler, VP of Global Research and Development @ Beam Suntory
The COVID-19 office shut-downs has accelerated remote work as a hot topic – not just for tech start-ups and SAAS companies, but also for large, more traditional enterprises. Prior to COVID, many large companies were already working virtually, but had not yet acknowledged it. Often these companies were made up of teams spread across office sites in different cities, states, and countries, mixed in with a minority of employees that were fully remote or had some part-time work-from-home flexibility. When COVID-19 hit many of these organizations had to start working fully remotely almost overnight and did not yet have the skills, tools, processes, and policies in place for any easy transition.
In this panel, Sacha Connor, the CEO of Virtual Work Insider, will interview 3 panelists from large enterprises that were ahead of the game. They started to put best practices into place to enable their teams work better across distance before COVID and are now working hard to enable their virtual teams for the long term.
Mardi Kaplan is a Training and Development Manager at Toyota Financial Services (TFS). She formally transitioned to a fully remote role in February 2020, just a few weeks before COVID-19 forced the entire company to work remotely. She is part of a team responsible for training and development initiatives for the newly remote TFS field sales organization, which includes training related to working and leading remotely.
Sacha Connor is the Founder of Virtual Work Insider, a consultancy that coaches organizations to work seamlessly across any distance. She has 18 years of business and marketing leadership experience, both client and agency-side. She spent 8 years leading large, hybrid teams fully remotely while with The Clorox Company. As one of their first remote marketing directors, she was responsible for leading businesses worth over $250M and sat on the leadership team for a $1 billion business unit.
Kyra Zeroll is a Director of Marketing at The Clorox Company, which is headquartered in Oakland, CA. She has 19 years of Clorox business and marketing leadership experience, and she has spent the last 10 years leading teams fully remotely from her home base in San Diego, CA. Kyra is the co-founder of the first-ever Virtual Workforce Employee Resource Group that’s purpose is to “Enable Clorox employees and teams to thrive wherever they live or work“. She is currently the Marketing Director for the $600M Kingsford Grilling business and has been instrumental in helping her team shift to working in a fully virtual COVID environment.
Eric Schuetzler is the senior executive highly skilled in Innovation & Product Development Strategy. He has the consumer insight to create in-market points of difference, demonstrated by a proven track record of successful products and process in the marketplace across a variety of consumer packaged goods. At present his role is VP – Global Research and Development at Beam Suntory.
