July 2020 Update
We welcomed many new faces to the Upper Hand family in July! Vanessa Palestino joined the team as VP of Business Development and is focused on leading the sales team to new heights. In addition to her previous role as Director of Enterprise Sales for EIS Inc., Vanessa previously owned a Pure Barre franchise in Tucson, AZ, bringing an abundance of industry knowledge to our team.
“Upper Hand fills the missing gaps of fitness tech software that is currently on the market. There is so much that goes on behind the scenes for a business owner. Upper Hand offers a seamless platform to truly create best business practices and ultimately, an outstanding end-consumer experience” says Palestino.
Other faces that joined the sales team include Heather Hunt and Erica Cohen. Heather, a former D1 student-athlete at Depauw, previously worked at adidas and Indiana Sports Corp. Erica joins us from Mindbody, bringing valuable industry insights and experience to our team.
The Product team welcomed Megan Loney as Product Owner, where she will be focused on prioritizing and managing the product backlog in order to maximize the value that our software can deliver to customers. She most recently served as sales representative at Stryker, a Seattle-based medical device company, where she was responsible for growing sales for the Navigation business across the Pacific Northwest territory. Meg was also an OrangeTheory coach, bringing more industry knowledge to our team.
“I have a strong empathy for customers, and am genuinely interested in finding ways to make their lives easier. Having worked in a customer facing environment my entire career, I’m excited to have the opportunity to couple my experience as an OrangeTheory coach with my organization and analytical skills to help bring new product ideas to life.”
Rounding out the new team members includes Alexus Jimson-Miller, who is joining as Customer Support Rep. A former D1 track and field star at Miami University, Alexus then served as the Assistant Track & Field Coach at Ball State University and University of Illinois. She is looking forward to tackling customer requests with a coach’s mindset to problem solving.
In addition to all of the amazing new additions to Upper Hand, Michael Trilus was promoted to Chief Technology Officer. Michael joined Upper Hand in September 2019 as the company’s Sr. Payments Engineering Lead. Learn more about Michael’s background and his vision for Upper Hand’s engineering team here.
In our efforts of continually improving the onboarding experience, we have added new product guides and product walkthroughs in the software for new admin and staff users. These guides range from basic software navigation to more specific walkthroughs like building events, creating memberships, setting up payroll, and more. These guides are tailored to the user’s role after they fill out a quick poll when logging in for the first time.
The engineering team is wrapping up the Transaction Refactor and building a handful of brand new reports that simplify the way you manage your business’s finances!
These reports are in QA right now and will be available for beta testing soon. Stay Tuned!
Do you have questions about the features in our latest round of updates? Let us know at [email protected]!
To see a live demo of Upper Hand in action, click here to schedule a time!
And just like that, another year has come and gone. As we look back at the past 12 months, we saw a lot of growth, innovation, and development. And, we saw a lot of intention behind the changes that you implemented. Both in your athletes, and in your businesses. At Upper Hand, we’re excited to have made quite a few innovative changes of our own.
In our latest edition of The Huddle, we outline the most frequently asked questions regarding memberships with Upper Hand. Why aren’t memberships automatically cancelled when they reach the commitment length? This not only gives Staff Admins the ability to lock in business for a certain amount of time, but it also gives the client the flexibility to continue their membership at a given rate. This is another way to keep steady revenue flowing into the business.