Kayla Sanders is known for her expert management of the advisory firm Thinkwise Health and role as CEO of tech startup Remy. Through Kayla’s leadership of the company that she has founded, the business has made tremendous leaps forward in automating the procedures required for health plans. She’s one of the more well known female founders in the tech industry because of her massive success, but here are ten things that most people don’t know about her.
She’s a proponent of female entrepreneurship
Sanders is passionate about changing the statistics of the industry in which men heavily outweigh the number of men who establish new companies within the tech industry. Sanders encourages women to band together and support one another in their efforts, because fundinginstituions largely still fund male driven projects far more frequently than they do startups began by women.
Sanders founded more than one successful company
In addition to her work with Remy, Kayla Sanders is busy working with associates in a health care advisory company.
She doesn’t back down from a challenge
Kayla shared that she’s had her own struggles in the tech startup industry with clients, funding institutions and partners who still cling firmly to gender based biases. The predominant belief that males are superior performers in business is alive and well, but she didn’t let this stop her, or even slow her down.
Taking chances is good, but look before you leap
This is the advice that Sanders has to offer for ambitious women looking for better opportunities. She left her job with a management consulting firm in her early 20s, for a big project on the East Coast that showed promise for growth opportunities. When she arrived, she discovered that the job was not even close to what was advertised. There were no challenges and she was forced to look elsewhere to keep her momentum going.
Sanders knows her strengths as well as weaknesses
Kayla is up front about the fact that she needs a good challenge to keep her motivated and forward moving. She’s not the type of person that can just do mundane day to day things and maintain inspiration. She needs something she can tackle and put her heart into or she tends to become complacent, which is certain death in climbing the corporate ladder or making a business become successful.
She apparently doesn’t have a good poker face
When Kayla Sanders is pleased, it shows. When she’s unhappy, this shows as well. She has admitted that she isn’t good at hiding her feelings, particularly if they’re negative. When she isn’t happy with the direction that her career is taking, she doesn’t take it lying down. She makes sure that those around her know about it, but then she does something about it.
She made some mistakes in her youth
While Kayla was free to share her discontent with those at her level at work, she refused to let her managers in on her feelings. They asked why she wasn’t happy, but Kayla’s stubborn streak prevented her from discussing her reasons with them. She decided to give her East Coast mistake a couple of weeks, hoping that something would change, but being young, stubborn and disillusioned, she only became frustrating. When she finally spoke with the senior manager, it didn’t go well. She had a lot of learning to do, but she did learn a lot about herself.
Kayla knows her worth
Sanders learned a valuable lesson about knowing your self worth. When dealing with the senior manager of the company that she was working for, she learned that there are times when you must make the choice of whether to stay with a company for the money, and be undervalued, or move on to more challenging ventures that would allow the use of her skills while offering advancement opportunities. She chose to move forward because she knew her worth and refused to settle.
Stand up for yourself, but do it in the right way
When Kayla left the East Coast job, she learned that working for a corporation wasn’t the best possible option for her. She didn’t like the rules that she was required to play by, nor could she tolerate being undervalued and underutilized. She knows that she allowed her emotions to surface when she could have been more professional with the senior manager. She could have handled it a lot better, and in retrospect, she still believes that it’s necessary to stand up for yourself, but the way that it’s done is important as well.
If Kayla doesn’t like what’s happening, she changes it
While there is nothing easy about the way that Kayla Sanders approaches business, it’s effective. She’s been careful to admit mistakes and learn from them, but making errors is all a part of the learning process. Being a woman founder is a lot harder than being a man. Kayla’s had her share of obstacles to overcome because of the bias against women in business. It’s cultural so you just have to deal with it, but when Sanders doesn’t like the way things are going, she either pushes through it or finds a way to go around the roadblocks. She’s not the type of woman to give up or acquiesce to the established norms for business behaviors that are proscribed by gender bias. She’s a mover and shaker and if she isn’t happy with the way a situation is going, she’s learned how to change it. Even if it means founding her own company. She stands as a magnificent example as well as inspiration for women who are interested in developing their own projects and she’s shown us how it’s done.
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