Who We Are - Brize

Our Core Beliefs & Values

Who we are…

A group of individuals committed to driving positive change in the way work gets done. We are leveraging our experience as relentless disrupters and focusing our passion for problem-solving and creating delightful experiences to power individual self-empowerment.

What we do…

Empower individual career growth through continuous learning and development. Our mission is to unlock career success (however an individual defines it) with lower stress and anxiety.

How we do it…

With extreme respect, constant curiosity, relentless service, sincere community commitment, and unwavering integrity.

Our philosophy…

We are debunking the notion that career happiness and success are determined by our natural intelligence and technical skill expertise.
Research more than 100-years ago concluded that high-competency soft skills, or as we like to call them, power skills, lead to greater job satisfaction, meaningful work relationships, and higher mental and emotional well-being.
We believe when individuals have strong self-awareness, an ability to identify work-styles and unique characteristics of their colleagues, this knowledge leads to career empowerment.

Our idea…

Build a highly engaging and useful app that raises an individual’s awareness of their current abilities, then offer actions to speed development, growth, and happiness.

Brize Impact

We envision a world of opportunity equality.

Mission

Provide underserved communities access to new opportunities by empowering social impact organizations to realize their mission.

How

Our corporate responsibility commitment comprises two elements.

Cash donations to organizations to help them meet their commitment to underserved communities. We will donate a minimum of 5% of revenue to social impact organizations dedicated to providing healthy food and learning opportunities.
Low-cost Brize product access to empower nonprofits to scale their impact.

Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Leslie is the founder and chief executive officer of Brize. Throughout her more than 30-year career, Leslie has disrupted industries and propelled businesses from challenger brands to market leaders for equity-backed and publicly held companies. She was an instrumental member of the executive team for one of the most successful IPOs of 2010.

As a described analytical thinker and problem-solver, Leslie has leveraged emerging technologies to bring-to-market solutions that eliminate frustrations and influence users to take action and change behaviors. She has a unique ability to transition from visionary, strategic thinking to daily operations, which has served her well in quickly moving startups to the growth phase.

Leslie founded Brize with the mission to help individuals reach their full potential. Brize uniquely transforms its users by raising their self-awareness, which leads to stronger work performance, positive teammate interactions, and higher job satisfaction.

Before founding Brize, Leslie held senior executive Marketing, Operations, and Finance positions with leading technology brands, including BroadSoft, Inc, SnagAJob, Network Solutions, CareerBuilder, and MCI, now Verizon Business. Leslie is a co-holder of an employee match-based system patent through her human capital management work.

You are equally as likely to find Leslie happily sitting at her desk in the evening tackling a business challenge, cheering on the Washington Capitals, the Washington Nationals, both men and women professional tennis players, entertaining friends & family, traveling the world, or taking in the performing arts, as lounging on the beach listening to the waves crash to shore. Leslie lives in Northern Virginia with her husband Pete and rescue lab mix Remy.

Chief Growth Officer

Gio Van Remortel is a strategic futurist and business development professional whose experience spans the highest levels of Congress, government agencies, and Fortune 500 companies. As a trained futurist, Gio began her career conducting trend analysis, scenario, and long-range planning for government agencies, associations, and corporations.

She served as a Congressional liaison and director for a revered educational program designed to promote and advance biomedical and pharmaceutical research and policies on Capitol Hill. In this role, Gio worked closely with Members of Congress, their staff, and Committees and Subcommittees on various policy initiatives.

Gio was also instrumental in the growth of an international futures consulting firm whose clients included over 25 Global 100 companies. In addition to providing futures and management consulting services, the company developed interactive software solutions. Her insights on the future have been featured in national publications and television, including Businessweek, Fox Business, and MSNBC.com.

Before joining Brize, Grio had worked in the government SaaS, digital solutions, and federal contracting space. She has led digital transformation efforts, spearheaded large strategic partnerships, and helped companies across numerous business sectors win large government contracts totaling billions of dollars in aggregate business.

Gio brings to Brize a multidisciplinary perspective that draws from her experience helping companies across multiple industries manage and overcome the forces of change and the impacts of technologies on their workforce and day-to-day operations.