In Her Own Words: Mariel Reed mixes public procurement and parenting
Read the full article on The Business Journals here.
The pandemic changed our relationships to work and our families. For government technology entrepreneur Mariel Reed, becoming a parent while starting a business during Covid-19 helped her establish a healthier relationship with her work and redefine what it means to build a legacy.
"I left my job in tech for local government service to have a greater social impact. After college, I lived as an expat, proudly representing America overseas. But after a few years in San Francisco, I felt a growing sense of shame and frustration: in our wealthy, talent-dense, tech-forward city, why aren’t our public services better
Working in local government, I started to understand the constraints and challenges that public servants face in delivering public services. Coming from the tech industry, I was used to ordering food, calling a ride, or booking a place to stay in just a few seconds online. But as a public servant making much more expensive and important purchasing decisions, I had to rely on technology that hadn’t changed much since the 90s: phone calls, emails, and one-off visits to government websites.
I became obsessed with public procurement. I saw an opportunity to improve lives at scale by making government procurement work better, not just in San Francisco, but across the country. Eventually, I decided to start Pavilion, a venture-backed technology company to help public servants across the country streamline procurement and deliver better, faster public services.
When the pandemic hit, we were just getting started. I’d found a cofounder, raised capital, and we’d recruited a small team to build the first version of our product in a shared office in San Francisco. The week before our first two engineering hires started at the company, we decided to work from home as a temporary precaution. I remember driving around San Francisco to drop off new laptops, equipment, and a batch of homemade cookies for our new team members’ ad hoc home offices.
