After Recent Fundraising Round, yaza Promotes Key Hire Tara Dugan
yaza Deepens Its Bench-Strength by Promoting Tara Dugan to Director of Product Engagement
LOS ANGELES, March 17, 2021 (Newswire.com) - Last week, yaza announced it closed its latest round of funding, which was oversubscribed, showing the continued promise of growth for the start-up.
yaza, the first truly agent-centric app for real estate, focuses heavily on intentionally hiring into diversity. On the heels of National Women's Day last week and fitting into the overarching theme of Women's History Month, yaza is proud to recognize the tireless efforts of its diverse team and support its growth within the company, and beyond.
yaza has been doubling down to ensure the products it builds meticulously match the personas and needs of the consumers it aims to serve. With that, yaza has promoted real estate guru and one of its key hires, Tara Dugan, to Director of Product Engagement and Editor-in-Chief. As an active agent with Douglas Elliman, one of the largest independent residential real estate brokerages in the United States, Tara brings her fresh perspective and real estate knowledge to yaza's resume of deep tech.
Prior to real estate, Tara spent what she refers to as "formative" years working at Stanford Health Care, being closely mentored by the pioneer of Guest Services and International Medical Services, Barbara Ralston. Tara's expertise transferred seamlessly from health care into real estate and, luckily for yaza, tech startups as well. "The mentorship, relationships and training that my leadership teams provide have empowered me to develop a thoroughly unique understanding of what the gaps in the industry are and be bold enough to attack them," Tara said.
Tara shared how her experiences are contributing to the evolution of the AI-based tech that is yaza. Tara adds, "Jim Jacobson mentoring me into New Development Marketing gave me a newfound 360-degree perspective of the business that has magnified my understanding of what yaza needed to be and become. It aided in the conceptualization of what was needed in a confused marketplace for buyers, sellers, developers and investors."
As Director of Product Engagement and Editor-in-Chief, Tara is tasked with ensuring yaza is building the best-of-the-best social home tour platforms. Tara concludes, "There has not yet been a completely authentic and transparent tool that gives realtors direct control and that appropriately equips them to enter 'The Fight' against big tech. Now that traditional brokerages are openly looking for tools like yaza to support their agents, it will soon be an entirely different 'fight,' with agents at the forefront."
At yaza, diversity is key. In order to effectively meet the needs of such a diverse audience, yaza understands the need to have people who think differently from each other and who have overcome different challenges. "Diversity has been a consistent theme of my career," says yaza founder and CEO Peter Sisson, "not just because it's right, but because it's good for business."
"Fresh ideas come from the healthy clash of different perspectives, which reduces groupthink, the enemy of innovation," notes Sisson, who himself has been selected to join the 2021 cohort of the diversity-focused TechCrunch Include program.
About yaza:
yaza is the #1 real estate app for recording and sharing video home tours. yaza puts the control back into the real estate agents' hands by allowing them to demonstrate their knowledge and experience to build trust with clients and prospects - putting them at the center of the online buying experience. yaza is the flagship app of Yaza Society PBC, a public benefit corporation based in Silicon Valley with a mission to provide tools that promote truth and protect privacy on the internet. The company's groundbreaking Certified Reality™ technology guarantees that what you see in a yaza video happened exactly when and where shown. The Company was founded in 2018, recently won the 2021 HW Tech 100 for Real Estate, was awarded a 2021 Innovators Award and has been selected to join TechCrunch Include's 2020-21 cohort.
Media Contact:
Trevor Laehy
Trevor@yaza.io
Source: Yaza Society PBC
