Last Friday, we held our year-end, companywide meeting in our Eagan office. The afternoon began with a few words from our CEO John Long and after some catered in lunch, we heard from the Managers of each department about their success in 2012 and their plan for improvement in 2013.
Proud of how our company did as a whole last year, John Long began the meeting by reiterating the importance of carrying the company’s strengths and ethical standards into 2013.
“One of the things I love about this company the most is that we focus on what’s right,” John said. “And I think that shows.”
Before going into the more specific goals of each department, John touched on some more general, company-wide goals for 2013. First, John said we will be making some changes to how we track our finances and how we can use our financial data to reach our goals. As he wrapped up his introduction to the presentations to follow, John expressed gratitude to his employees.
“Avionté is not just us,” John, one of the four founders of Avionté, said. “Avionté is you guys.”
Our U.S. team
John then made an unexpected announcement, saying he’d be adding benefits to employee plans and a generous amount of bonuses to employee accounts – which had already been deposited that morning!
A series of presentations followed. We heard from Laura Schmitz, our VP of Operations, about our involvement with our Nepal team and from our Product Manager, Mike Ferrazzo, about their continuous progress in development. In his speech, Jason Garofolo emphasized how far his implementation team has progressed in the past year.
Our Support Manager Corey Cook spoke about their improved processes in the support department, while Sarah Whitney spoke about what she’s done in her new role as Customer Care Manager. Our Director of Marketing Brenda Long presented the remarkable achievements of our sales team while Jared Gaiser, IT Manager, commended his fairly new IT team on their hard work.
John closed the meeting by emphasizing the work hard/play hard mentality that we try to abide by every day here at Avionté and wrapped up the company meeting with a few words about the opportunities for growth that continue to be available at the company.
“If you want it, it’s there,” John said. “Go take it.”
