At Brighter, we pour our hearts and minds (and whole lot of soul) everyday into solving the biggest problem leaders face today — Creating a culture that engages employees and makes top performers want to stay.
It all started in the winter of 2014, when two long-time friends and co-workers stumbled upon an interesting conundrum: employers want to reach out to their employees, and employees want to feel connected. Yet despite these reciprocal intentions, there exists no bridging tool in the market that works for both parties.
Having reached out to hundreds of companies across industries including retail, banking, hospitality, healthcare, and benefits consulting to understand their unique challenges, we realized that if there isn’t a perfect solution available, we'll create one! We assembled our management "bench" by engaging leading national experts on Employee Engagement, Corporate Communications, and Behavioral Change as part of our Advisory Board. Together, the experts guided us to build a solution that is no-nonsense, measurable and genuinely effective.
At Brighter, we believe that effective employee communication is the foundation for successful employee engagement. It's our mission to create truly personalized, one-to-one interactions between employers and their employees. And we make this connection easy and quick by using just one single system. Fuss-free for the employers, clutter-free for the employees. A win-win for all.
We're Brighter - Better Culture, Better Lives
Before Brighter, Herbert founded two other remarkable businesses. In all of his companies, he has thrived to build the same culture which is predicated around the one driving principle of "being meaningful." And before he became a wizard CEO, Herbert worked as a product manager for many companies, where he fine tuned his radar for spotting exactly what consumers need and want.
"I'm as passionate about User Experience as Steve Jobs. I have years of experience in informatics much like Russell Crowe from the Beautiful Mind. Unfortunately, I have nothing in common with Elon Musk."
Anyone who has met Kei will tell you he’s always been obsessed about User Experience. Now he is just as engaged about Customer Development and objective assessment of the business through metrics. Combine that with his attention to details, and high standards for beautiful designs and functionality, Kei is everyone’s go-to problem-solver!
As a mobile and full-stack web developer, Angela has honed her craft over years of startup service as architect, prototype wrangler, data spelunker and debugger of last resort. Now at Brighter, she unites her passion for development with her drive to fix broken processes and make organizations - not just software - a little more elegant, functional, and comfortable in everyone's day-to-day lives.
Ex-Chief Communication Officer at T-Mobile
Wendy has 15 years of experience leading Corporate Communications as SVP/VP Corporate Communications for Fortune 100 companies such as Wells Fargo, T-Mobile and Expedia. She served as Chief Communications Officer and member of the executive management team reporting to the CEO of both T-Mobile and Expedia. She was nominated as a finalist for Best Communications Executive by the Stevie American Business Awards in 2006, 2010 and 2011.
Wendy is currently a Board Member at Washington Business Alliance. Her education background includes M.A. from UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and B.A. UC Berkeley.
Author of acclaimed book "Changeology"
Dr. Norcross is an internationally recognized expert on behavior change. He is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Scranton, Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at SUNY Upstate Medical College, a board-certified clinical psychologist and author of the acclaimed self-help book, Changeology.
In addition to authoring over 300 publications and editing/co-writing 22 professional books, Dr. Norcross consulted with dozens of healthcare organizations, including the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) and leading pharmaceutical companies.
Dr. Norcross personally curates and edits every wellness tip in Brighter's archive. His advice guides the team in building more effective communication, from ensuring the helpfulness and credibility of the content, to the way they should be presented to the end user for maximum positive impact.
Chief Talent Development Officer at Ebay
Marianne has nearly 20 years' experience as the Chief Human Resource Officer and Communication's executive in some of California's best known corporations. Her experience spans both healthcare and technology industries including Cisco Systems, Palm, Sandisk, Sun Microsystems, Blue Shield of California, Workday and eBay, where she currently serves as Chief Talent Development Officer. She is well known for her practical approach to organizational effectiveness, executive/leadership development, workforce optimization, strategic planning and culture-shaping.
Marianne is on the Board of Directors for The Institute for the Future, the Board of Trustees for the Health Trust of Silicon Valley, The Cancer Prevention Institute of California and the advisory board for Saama Technologies.
CEO and Founder of JB Training Solutions
Brad is CEO and Founder of JB Training Solutions, a learning company that develops employees though critical soft skills training. An accomplished public speaker and author, Brad has been featured on CNN, CNBC, and Dr. Phil, and has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, and many others. Brad is also the author of three business books including the critically acclaimed “Manager 3.0: A Millennial’s Guide to Rewriting the Rules of Management” (Amacom, 2013).
Prior to creating JB Training Solutions, Brad spent 15 years at advertising giant Leo Burnett in Chicago. Today, Brad conducts training and delivers keynote addresses at major companies around the world.
Ex-Chief HR Officer at Gap
Eric is a 25-year retail veteran known for building leading edge, evidence-based systems to manage talent and drive organizational performance. The talent innovations Eric led over 15 years at Gap Inc. include the Fortune 500's first performance management system based on mindset psychology and neuroplasticity; the largest implementation of the Results Only Work Environment in the world; the first publication of gender pay statistics by a Fortune 500 corporation; and Gap's status as the first major apparel retailer to raise its minimum wage in the U.S. to $10.00.
Coverage of the leading edge talent practices Eric and his team implemented at Gap have been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Washington Post, Huffington Post, and in the books Pull: The Power of Magnetic Leadership, The True Happiness Recipe: How to Stop Your Job From Killing You and Create Work-Life Harmony Everyday, Why Work Sucks and What to Do About It, and Why Managing Sucks and What to Do About It.
Eric is also Director on the Board of the Felton Institute, San Francisco’s oldest and largest non-sectarian non-profit. In his 13 years at Felton, Eric helped lead a robust people strategy that includes an annual CEO evaluation process, employee engagement survey, leadership competencies, a talent review and succession planning process, 360 degree evaluations, and management training. In 2008, Eric won the Gap Inc. Founder’s Award for his work with Felton’s breakthrough early psychosis prevention and recovery program, PREP.
Based on his track record of innovation in talent management, in 2014 Eric was appointed by U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker to a 2-year term on the National Advisory Council on Innovation & Entrepreneurship (NACIE).
Astri is Brighter's jill-of-many-trades. When she's not busy overseeing every content that goes out from our App, designing and coding for the website, and managing the Brighter brand, Astri channels her talent for capturing what is being said (and sometimes, even unsaid) and translates mere visions into beautiful, relatable, effective, and meaningful end products.
A zealous go-getter, Lucas supports Brighter's Lead Generation efforts. His quick wit, innovative strategic thinking, thorough work approach, and genuine love for connecting with people make him a rare natural at what he does.
Daniel combines his dedication and experience in healthcare and wellness with his bold entrepreneurial spirit to help move the team and company forward by identifying and developing exciting new ways to extend Brighter's reach.