It was four and a half years ago, in March 2011, when Rachel, a stay-at-home-mom, received a call from Keith Cotton, DerbySoft’s SVP Global Business.
At that time, DerbySoft’s connectivity business was rapidly growing, and it needed a professional client management team to provide the international hotel chains with technical implementation services and ongoing support. Keith initially invited Rachel to work as a part-time client manager, bearing in mind her family duties, and he entrusted her to help DerbySoft build a solid foundation for the client management team. Just four months later, Rachel decided to take the leap to work full-time and return to a role at which she excelled.
Despite previously being a successful IT engineer in the industry, Rachel initially had doubts about her ability to be valuable in returning to the fast-moving travel technology industry after four years of full-time family life, those doubts quickly evaporated as she engaged with the clients and the DerbySoft team.
Since then Rachel has been working with suppliers, including Hilton, Best Western, Choice, etc., and distributors, where she has maintained good cooperative relationships with Expedia and other leading channels. She is recognized for her deep professional knowledge and her ability to provide technical solutions that help leading players reach their business goals sustainably with advanced technology support. She currently leads a high-performing team of ten that provides consistent technical solutions and support to the various DerbySoft clients.
“If someone had told me four years ago that I would be a Vice President, I would have laughed. I had been out of the industry for a number of years at that time, but here at DerbySoft it has actually happened. During those first few months working part-time, I fell in love with the culture at DerbySoft where I was able to do what I am good at and speak freely. The collaboration among colleagues at DerbySoft is awesome—everyone tries their best to add value to the industry, so working at DerbySoft made me very happy.”
Ted Zhang, co-founder and CEO, believes that Rachel represents the core values at DerbySoft, saying that “At DerbySoft, we respect engineer culture, we need our employees who could face the problem and solve them accordingly. We focus on cooperation, productivity, innovation, and we give full scope to the talents. Our promotion system is not based on this person’s previous experience, but based on the current situation of this person’s ability to solve the problem and the contribution to the company and the industry. We need people who understand the industry well, and who is an innovative problem solver, growing together with the company and the industry. When we recruit, we don’t hold any biases. If people have the ability and want to add value to the industry, DerbySoft would like to provide the opportunity for them to do so. In my opinion, if you have ability and confidence, then we are more than happy to give you the platform and opportunity to excel; we hope there will be more “Rachels”, as we strive to help all of our colleagues grow professionally.”
