TAO Member Spotlight: Yvonne Wassenaar

Where do you currently work?Puppet, Inc. What’s your title? CEOIn which city (or cities) is your company located?Puppet is a remote-hybrid company headquartered in Portland, Oregon, with offices in London, Belfast, Singapore, Timișoara, Sydney, and team members located around the globe.In what year was your company founded?Puppet’s open source software was created in 2005 and the company itself was founded in 2009.Describe the company you work for and its product/mission.Puppet helps enterprises modernize and manage their IT infrastructure through continuous automation; something that is increasingly critical for companies as they accelerate the digitization of their businesses. More than 40,000 organizations — including more than 80 percent of the Global 5000 — leverage Puppet’s open source and commercial solutions to ensure business continuity, optimize costs, boost compliance and ensure the security of their IT infrastructure.Why is your company a member of TAO?TAO’s mission to spread awareness of and support the Oregon tech community aligns with our company values, one of which is “Community powered. Empowering community.” With our open source roots, we’ve always had strong ties to our community of users who help us innovate much more rapidly than we could on our own. But we recognize the sentiment extends further to include the communities in which we live and work. As a company founded and headquartered in Portland, with a significant part of our team located in Oregon, we have an interest in seeing our hometown tech community, and the people that work in our industry, thrive.What do you, personally, like best about being a TAO member? As members of TAO, we’re fortunate to work closely with other organizations that share the values and vision to support tech innovation in Oregon and across the Pacific Northwest. We are proud to link arms with our peer companies to better our community by increasing access to tech through educational and networking initiatives, as well as sharing knowledge and resources about how to hold ourselves accountable to our employees and community.What’s your favorite thing about our region’s tech ecosystem?Although we are increasingly becoming a more global company with a distributed hybrid-remote workforce, our roots are in Oregon and many of our employees call Portland home. The region has always fostered a pioneering, entrepreneurial spirit - one that encourages creativity and innovation with a unique flair of the PNW’s outdoorsy, active lifestyle. There is an amazing ecosystem and real camaraderie here among entrepreneurs, tech workers and employers that still makes it feel like a tight-knit community with strong cultural values that spread powerfully across our company.What is your hope for the future of tech in Oregon & SW Washington? There’s no doubt our region is growing rapidly (spurred in part by tech growth and now accelerated due to the pandemic), as many tech workers are moving to the area due to increased flexibility around workplace location. This presents both opportunities and obligations. Expanding the pool of talented, smart people who bring more diverse experiences and backgrounds to our industry is a real positive for all of us. As we grow we must remain committed to fostering an inclusive and equitable community that welcomes and celebrates diverse voices. We at Puppet will continue to invest in and partner with TAO on the programs, resources and infrastructure needed to support underrepresented groups in Oregon and across our global offices.